Saying Goodbye

(I had to look it up online to see if goodbye needed a hyphen. Apparently it's a machlokes between the Americans and the Brits.)

Anyway, it's amazing here that when we say goodbye to people everyone wishes us well and expresses their hope that we return soon. It doesn't matter if they're good friends or people we're just meeting for the first time. Everyone seems genuinely sad to see us leave. I've moved quite a bit in my lifetime and sometimes people are sad when I move (usually it's because of Shira or the kids and not me but that's not the point) but they don't tell us that they hope we move back. Here people are really sad that we're leaving the country just because they want Jews to live in Israel. It's pretty cool.

Today we Shira finished packing the last of the clothes and we loaded Amy's car. We Shira had basically finished packing Thursday morning and our house has been completely empty since then besides our 14 duffel bags. It was a great move because the last couple of days have been pretty relaxing. We came with 17 pieces of luggage eleven months ago. We're six people so in the course of one year we collect a lot more junk and other things that we'd normally keep. Thanks to my cousin we were allowed two extra bags so over the last couple of months we've been busy sending our bags back to Baltimore (thanks to all those who shlepped them for us and to Avi for storing them). We sent back five full duffels and now we have 14 more to bring back with us. We also gave away a lot of our stuff to my parents and a little bit to Amy. So my parents house is now full of lots of our junk but I think they got a few pretty useful things also so it's worth it for them. We also threw out a ton of stuff and somehow we fit all the rest with just two more bags than we brought. Way to go Shira!