Good news! The boys are back on schedule and have had good nights sleep the last two nights. This makes for happy campers all around.

So since we haven’t really had opportunity to explore, I can only update on the day-to-day stuff. Let’s go with transportation today.

To date, I have had the opportunity to drive in North America (obviously), Germany, Spain, England, Australia, the Azores and St Kitts. If I would compare the driving here to somewhere – it would be America. Driving is obviously on the right (unlike Japan, St Kitts, England and Australia) and people generally drive with the same agressiveness.

The differences are very subtle. Israelis do use their horn a lot more and for a lot less, they also have the most annoying habit of never using their turn signal (don’t get me started), and are not allowed to turn right on red. (One of the locals told me that the right on red thing was started in North America because of the severe gas shortage in 1973 as a method to save money.) Similar to the UK, they never have any four way stops and instead use round-abouts or red lights. If you are turning left on a green light, the opposing traffic always has a red light. Don’t hesitate or you’ll hear 10 horns behind you.

As for vehicle choice, you would think you were back in North America. The most popular four car manufacturers appear to be Toyota, Ford, Chevrolet and Honda. Sound familiar? The cars do tend to be a lot smaller, but that is always the case when the fuel is expensive. You also see a lot of scooters that weave in and out of traffic like maniacs. I don’t think that any rules apply to them … 🙂

Woo hoo! Our phone is working … but don’t call after 4:00 PM EST. We’re seven hours ahead. Thanks to the wonders of VoIP, our home phone and my work phone remain the same and it’s just like calling us in NH. 🙂

Did that last update bring us to Thursday night? Thursday night was fun! It started off well with both boys going to sleep around their normal time … but fell apart after that.

Around 2:00 in the morning, Isaac wakes Jake … who wakes Heidi … who wakes me. Heidi spent the rest of the night throwing up, and worse. Just to keep things entertaining, Jake decided that it was daytime and refused to go to sleep, while Isaac did likewise. At around 8:00 in the morning, Jake and Isaac collapsed in exhaustion, while Heidi continued to battle sickness. (I wonder what our neighbors must think of the commotion.)

Needless to say, Friday (the first day of the weekend) was a total write-off. We dragged ourselves out to the grocery store in the afternoon, only to get out of the apartment. It meant we lost a beautiful sunny 70 degree day, but we were too tired to care.

Last night was a little better. We put Jake down at 7:00 (usual time), only to have him wake up at 10:00 at night – bright eyed and ready for the day. (sigh) But this time I figured it out. This was his nap. Seven o’clock here is noon at home and 10:00 is when he would be waking up (3:00 PM). That that things a little easier to understand. But it also meant that he would not be ready for bed until 2:00.

Knowing that, made things a little easier. I stayed up with Jake until 2:00 (and didn’t try to put him down) and he went down for the night like a charm. It will probably take a few days to move him backwards to the new schedule. We woke him up early this morning, napped him an hour early and expect to go for midnight tonight.

(Isaac was still a bit of a monster last night, but we’re working on that. :-))

We missed the sunshine last night, and got cloudy skies and showers today, but we headed down to Jaffa (Joppa) this afternoon. Tel (hill) Joppa has a known history that goes back to 1800 BC and there was a lot of really neat things to see and explore.

I thought the fact that there was Roman Catholic church, Anglican church and Armenian church literally built on top of one another very fascinating. We were there for the haunting call from the Muslim minarets in the afternoon and it was very eerie – definitely making us feel that this was not North America. The architecture and structure of the old city is incredible.

I believe the first reference to Joppa in the bible is in 2 Chronicles 2:16. “And we will cut wood out of Lebanon, as much as thou shalt need: and we will bring it to thee in floats by sea to Joppa; and thou shalt carry it up to Jerusalem.” This was the port.

We told Jake that this is where Jonah got in his boat and he seemed pretty excited. His books on Jonah, Noah and David are his favorite three.

No pictures this week, but perhaps there will be some next … 🙂