Moving country: pros and cons

Dear Diary,

Ok lets nut this one out...

Pros:

Reasons I am excited about moving to Israel in a month (a month!!),

You know that feeling when you are in another country, at a beach somewhere and there is reggae music playing, or a few guitars around a campfire, people are singing and talking, the night air is warm and smell exotic, and maybe there is a joint being passed around? Maybe there is a dog asleep on a lounge chair that has been dragged outside... everyone looks pretty comfortable with themselves and smile at you when you catch their eye?

And you know when you are in another country and it is late at night, and you are hungry, and you drive around a wide awake city to a little sidewalk somewhere near the beach and an old Arab man is rolling dough making sweet and savoury delicacies in his wood fired oven? There are a bunch of teens and others standing around, you can hear the waves crashing and see city lights across the bay as you eat the steaming hot pastries and listen to the Arabic and Hebrew...

And you know that feeling you get, when you are walking somewhere, somewhere really really old. Somewhere where people have been walking, singing, fighting and loving for centuries, the paving is worn smooth with small hollows from people walking along it...the huge blocks of granite and sandstone are worn from fingers touching them and sitting stacked for hundreds of years. Layers upon layers of human civilisation, and you can feel it...

And you know, when you are in another country and you meet with a stranger, and you manage to master a phrase, or a small conversation, enough to make contact entirely in another language? The feeling of connection to the "other", the realisation that others are like you, the good will generated by your trying and their patience...

Cons:

The news today...

And, you know, some nights you can hear helicopters flying low, blacked out (no lights) maybe heading for Lebanon? Gaza? And cold fear awakens ("look mummy there's an airoplane up in the sky..."), the necessity to have a gas mask in the house... a bomb shelter in every building, fragile people hiding in a shell, and the young men and women, with friendly, hard faces carrying their M16s.

Conclusions:

Confused.

(This part to be filled in with more detail on my way home... ).