China or Yarkon Park – edited for silly patriotism

In about a week i’m flying to China for close to a mont. It’s probably going to be the most serious backpacking trip of my life. I’m not really computing the whole thing yet. We just got plane tickets a few days ago. We haven’t even begun to pack.

It’s kind of weird that we suddenly found ourselves at this point. I was like "wehre will we honeymoon" "what about Tahiland", "I want something more urban. I want somehere where not every Israeil couple spends there honeymoon" "China’s the most urban you can get and no one goes there "Okay, let’s go" "But we need at least 3 weeks for China" "nah, our jobs won’t let us"….. and then they let us.

I’m trying no tot freak out here. It’s hard to leave my job for so long. What if my sources learn they can talk to my competitors? What if my job decides they can o without me and don’t need me? I wonder how i’ll get along with Nir for 3 and a half weeks just us? China is supposed to be really toufh travel. No one knows English and it’s really hard to get around… it’s also not cheap. Extremely not cheap. Freaking out about that one…

But then again – 3 weeks of not working!!!!!!! And of seeing things so completely different than what we have here – different people, different food, different smells, different scenery. I’ll finally have a chance to see real autumn again. Leaves changing and all… If everything in our life goes well, this is probably the last time we’ll travel without kids. If not all goes well – I don’t even want to think about it. In any case, this is poably our last chance to take a real young, fun, backpacking trip. Now that i see it this way, I wish I could have planned it better. But it’s also cool to just go and do it.

I can’t believe we’re doing this. I’m excited and kind of scared that we’ve put too much on the line. Too much money, too much leeway from work, too much of a test on our relationship… and what if it’s great, and we come back and can’t get back to work because we’re too down not to be travelling again? I know those people, the kind who have to travel all the time, who can’t live the regular life. I want to live and enjoy the regular life. I like my every day, my strolls down the yarkon stream near my house, my guyava tree…

WEhen I was in the states, Em asked me whow come I travel so much. I said it was because everything here is so tiny… I know Israel by heart now. it’s a 10 minutes drive to the sea on the west, half an hour to the border on the eadt, 4 hours to the border up north, 4 hours to the border in the south – all of them borders you can’t just cross… to get out of this tiny place it has to be a plane. And if you’re on the plane… i guess it might as well be China. But even though Israel is small I never get tired of walking in the Yarkon park, near my house. It always looks new to me. And tel aviv always has something new to show and when I go on a hike I always feel refreshed. Am I putting too much effort in traveling to places I don;t know when I can have an amazing time at home? But then… I haven’t seen real autumn or snow in 15 years…

Carrot asked me today: "The Yarkon park is bigger than central park, right?". I always thought it was miniture. There’s this tendency to think that everything we have here doesn’t measure up. If you’d have asked me how big the park is compared to central park I probably would have said "oh, maybe a fourth of it, maybe even less". But then i’ve never measured either park. So maybe i’m wrong.

edit:

The yarkon park actually ID bigger than central park! 990 acres of Yarkon VS 843 acres in Central. Imagine that.

It’s weird. I suddenly don’t feel that special anymore for really appreciating the park. I love the park. I always thought "I’m so lucky to be able to find so much beauty in one little Israeli park". Little?! Litlle she says! It kind of bums me out that it’s not a given that anywhere i’ll ever live in my life, there will probably be a park just as nice as this one and that most places have much better parks… that’s what I used to think.