When Best Intentions Fail

This post will briefly highlight one of the more frustrating days on this tour.  We have stated before that the primary purpose of this blog is to document what we are learning and experiencing.  One direct consequence of that is that it often appears everything is smooth sailing and this trip is just one giant experience of a lifetime after another.  It takes enough effort to write down what we do actually do, that we don't take the time to journal the failures (or want to remember) too much.  The reality is that we are living out of backpacks while planning, driving, eating, learning, doing school, documenting the past and planning the future.  Some days get too long and others are too short.  We get sick and have to make the most of it.  We have done our best to "keep it real" and explain some of the hardships but we then worry that that just sounds like whining... so bottom line it's not easy to document or to share in a realistic manner.

Today we had big plans which was version 2 of our original plan for our border crossing day. We were getting dropped by our friends on the Jordan side of the border and planned to walk through to Eilat, Israel on foot, where we had arranged a rental car.  Originally we were going to just drive straight to Jerusalem and then return the car the same day. We already had an Airbnb place rented in Jerusalem for this evening.  But upon further research we learned that three of the things we wanted to see, Masada, En Gedi and Qumran, were all further from Jerusalem than we thought and on the way there from Eilat (which is the most southern part of Israel).  So we changed plans and decided to spend the night at the Dead Sea again (this time on the Isreal side) to give Dad's skin another chance to soak in it and take in these three sites.  This meant a wasted night and money for our Airbnb though.  And we later learned that this required keeping our rental car not just one extra day but 3 because we could not return the car Friday afternoon due to Shabbat (everything closes down) and if we wanted to return on Saturday, it would require driving it to Tel Aviv (over an hour away).  So we had to keep the car until Sunday.  This 3 day rental car, cost more than our 3 week rental car in South Africa and it's the same model of vehicle! We also had to stay in a hotel at the Dead Sea because there were no other options, which meant we needed two rooms and they were expensive too.  So all this is not a whine about how expensive Israel is, but rather meant to explain that in order to see these three sites, we had to incur some hefty extra fees - we believed that it would be worth it though.

Crossing the border we had been prepped to be ready for questioning on the Israeli side because of our heavily stamped passports. But it was the Jordan exit that caught us off guard. We got through the first two staging areas with no problem, but at the final exit area they looked increasingly alarmed and would not give us our daughter's passport back.  They then asked for Dad's again, disappeared for a while and ultimately came back asking for the two of them to follow to another room.  You can imagine the tension at this point.  As they were told to sit, a higher ranking official walked into the room and was pleasant but began asking questions.  Some questions were of the type that you would rather your adopted child not hear, but none of that can be worried about at this point. Part of the problem was that they did not understand the concept of adoption, it seemed completely foreign to them. They wanted to see paperwork that explained this, which, of course, we don't have.  We do have a birth certificate though after our episode with South Africa and that seemed to help (maybe the point of that ordeal?).  After about 20 minutes of discussion things were sorted and they were released and we were allowed to leave Jordan. Ultimately the commander told Dad that he was both an "excellent" and "respected" man - ha!:)  But what should have been a 20 minute (tops) ordeal took about 90 and we were not even to the Israeli side of things yet! Remember we had a schedule we had paid considerably to accomplish today.

The Israeli border had its own set of complications.  We could immediately see the step-up that a developed nation has as soon as we crossed the neutral zone.  The kids commented on this right away as Israel has A/C in their buildings, covered walk ways, clear signs, its clean, and everything is nicer and more modern.  One thing we had not really thought about was that the Belgium bombing had just occurred 4 days prior to our crossing.  This (we later learned) meant that everything coming into Israel is being checked with a fine tooth comb - who could blame them?  We were screened several times, but the biggest time-sink was them checking our bags. They literally required us to remove everything from every bag. Packing for a year is a bit of a science that we have almost mastered by now, but it doesn't happen in seconds. It took us about an hour just to get through the bag screening as 4 Israelis looked at one bag at a time together.  Thankfully the passport portion of things was very easy and we were not asked one question.  Welcome to Israel!

Israel here we come!

Now we knew our time had been cut short but we still hoped to see one of our three sites today so that we can do two tomorrow.  We crammed into a small taxi (yes, all of us and our bags) and were driven to our rental car pick up point by a man in a Hawaiian lei and wearing a head piece with boingy caterpillar pompoms.  Getting our car actually went fairly smooth and we were off to look for SIM cards.  Here another set back hit hard as it took us over an hour to find a store.  All the names were in Hebrew, so even if we saw one, we easily could've missed it unless it's super obvious as we can't read the Hebrew alphabet. Google took us to two wrong places. Congrats if you were quick enough to ask, how can you use Google if you dont have SIM cards? - You are paying attention. The answer to that astute question though is that we can still use our Jordan cards because we are near the border.  Anyway, not finding a store, we began asking locals.  It turned out that many local stores are closed because today is a holiday as the Jewish population is celebrating Purim - of course it's a holiday today!  Purim is celebrated once a year in remembrance of Esther's brave act to save the Jewish people, and it is celebrated by dressing up as though it were Halloween all day long!  After much searching we eventually find SIM cards but by now its 3:00 and we had no hope of reaching Masada before it closed.  We were bummed but nothing could really be done.  We made the drive to our hotel and hoped to get into the Dead Sea before it closed.

Upon arriving at the hotel we were fit to be tied. The kids had fought for two hours, we were all hungry, tired and frustrated, not having eaten anything resembling a meal since breakfast.  Mom headed up to the room with the kids while Dad parked because the lot was huge.  But she then texted Dad that he would have to pick 3 of them up in the lobby because they were too busy fighting to follow her and she arrived at the room with only one in tow - this is sort of funny really but we are not laughing.  Dad found SJ on top of G in the lobby with several strangers looking at this concoction with very inquisitive faces.  Our hope was to take a swim but it's now past sunset, so both the beach to the Dead Sea and the indoor pools were closed, so that won't work either - it just kept getting better!

Dinner at this hotel has two options - a crazy expensive buffet or some bar-type food.  Feeling annoyed at the added expense of this day already, we opted for the bar food only to realize that they don't have most of the menu available and none of the slim pickings contained meat.  So we were forced to opt for the expensive buffet - uggh.  While it's decent it was not worth anywhere near the money but there were literally no other options other than a McDonald's and we just were not prepared to head there.  We made the most of our meal and headed off to bed.  Just prior to bed our oldest realizes he left his iPad charger, cord and converter at the last place we stayed.  He erupted and began to take it out on others. Yes, this all happened.

We have certainly experienced all these types of events in our travels, but having them all hit in the same day was... well, let's just say "interesting."  Stay tuned to read how the next morning begins!  (Spoiler alert: we woke up to learn that daylight savings occurred over night!) If you are sick of reading about all the great times and wonderful sites, we hope this post encouraged you! :)  We are all works in progress.

On the upside we are headed to Jerusalem for Easter!