At last! An Update.

 

I apologise to anyone who looked at our blog recently to see what was happening in Gilo, they would not have seen anything new for several weeks. Preparing for Pesach plus Norman having an operation for the removal of a cataract, which to avoid a wait of many months, he had done in the hospital in Naharia, left no time for updating the blog .  Happily, all went well and we are now awaiting an appointment to have the second eye done.

It is very many years since we were in Naharia and we were very interested, during our brief visit, to see how totally different it is in every way from Jerusalem. The hospital is a large, sprawling complex, and we must have walked several miles during the course of the day, going from ‘Admissions’ in one building to the clinics for a pre op check-up in another, to the eye department which turned out to be the wrong eye department and, having located the right one, back to the main building for the operating theatre. The entrance takes one through a shopping mall with a variety of eateries, pizzas, falafel and schwarma plus a proper restaurant, a pharmacy, well stocked with all kinds of cosmetics and herbal preparations and a gift shop What we noticed especially was the mix of Arab and Jewish owners and workers and the presence of many Druze residents, the men easily identified by their hats. Inevitably, the operations scheduled for 5 p.m. because our surgeon had noted we had to return to Jerusalem afterwards, a three hour journey, was late, by nearly two hours because of an emergency but otherwise the day went smoothly if long and tiring.

Since I last added to our blog, Purim has passed and we are in the middle of Pesach and summer has come, arriving overnight with a leap of 20 degrees in temperatures. The barbecues are out in full force and the smell of meat cooking and smoke fill the air in the early afternoon and evening. We are going to a barbecue lunch ourselves, at our daughter and son-in-law’s on Friday.

We send belated good wishes for Easter and Pesach to any one who is still bothering to look for news on this site.