It's really weird to have all of our immediate family members who are in Israel in our house and the sum total is....three: Penina, Menashe and me. (Well, four if we're including Percy, but he's not a big traveler)
Shalom Shachne left two weeks ago to go visit his mother and brothers in Los Angeles and then go to NY to visit our kids there. And there he remains. There are something like 100,000 Israelis who are out of the country and trying to come back now. First spots are filled with humanitarian needs (although even our friend who is an MD did not get on a flight yet), soldiers returning for reserve duty and unaccompanied minors (geesh--get those kids home NOW!). El Al keeps sending him emails like, "Sorry, today's not your day, buddy".
Ilana was on a school trip to Poland when things heated up with Iran. She was supposed to come back home for a few days, pack her stuff and then head to NY to work in a summer camp. When it became clear that she was not going to be able to come home, Penina played travel agent and switched her tickets around to get her to New York without coming home. Except Ilana only had her Israeli passport with her, since she had flown directly from school and we keep her US passport here (it is not necessary to send me messages about always traveling with both passport #WeKnowThatNow). So she missed the last day of the trip and spent the day at the US Embassy in Warsaw getting an emergency passport (thankfully. It was unclear if they would even see her that day, but she was persistent when they tried to send her away).
Just to add to the fun, Israel is now saying that anyone who leaves the country cannot return until 30 days or more have passed. While I understand the reasoning, I hope that changes by the time my next tickets to the US roll around in a month....
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