Thanks for the help

We've always had a lot of respect for all of our friends who have made aliya. We realized how hard it is to make aliya and while we've talked it many times during our ten years of marriage we've always been too scared. This year we know three other families who were seriously considering going from Baltimore to Israel for one year besides at least one other family going from New York. When we heard about some of the others with that plan we figured that was something we could do too. I was a lot more hesitant than Shira (for some reason many of our friends and family think that I'm the driving force behind this ... trust me I'm not the driving force behind much in our family) but most of the family was very excited about the chance. So after waiting a few weeks to get the approval from work we made the final decision to go and haven't looked back since.

Unfortunately two of the other three families from Baltimore weren't able to go this year for different reasons. We're just really lucky for a number of reasons. One reason is that my job is letting me do everything the same in Israel including my salary so I'm going for one year without any change in my employment. Not everyone gets that chance. The main thing though that is making our lives so much easier is the family and friends that we have in Israel. If we didn't have this huge support network I'm sure that there is no way that we'd have even gotten this far. So thank you very much to all our family and friends in Israel who have helped us get this far and hopefully you guys won't stop being such a big help once we get there.