25th March 2014

March 25th 2014.

A day to remember. It was a fine Tuesday and I woke up bright and early to rush to Kiryat Moshe, the part of Jerusalem which is a) where school is and b) where I was to meet my cousin, Michael, who had just returned from England and had my birth certificate all ready for my meeting with the Israeli Interior Ministry in the afternoon to change my status from British student in Israel to a British-Israeli / Israeli-Brit / whichever way you want to put it.

After having once accidentally and inadvertently lost the only original long copy of my birth certificate, it may have taken some persuading to get it over here, but I succeeded. With birth certificate (and several other original pieces of paper) in hand, I headed over to the Nefesh b'Nefesh office, a ten minute walk away from school, at lunch time for my meeting. Nefesh b'Nefesh had already handled all the paperwork and all I had to do was meet with someone from the Ministry and show them some original copies of things that were in the file and sign some papers and give in my passport and that was it.

Having heard horror stories about the Ministry of Interior, I was petrified about this meeting, but very relieved to see my Guided Aliyah advisor's friendly face at the welcome desk and 5 minutes later, the meeting was over and I was officially Israeli! I handed in my passport to pick up a week later, said goodbye and left the meeting with a weight off my shoulders. (I was a little bit worried that the address that I had given them was different from the one I had given on the form, but moving happens!)

The relief call to the parents then followed, with my dad asking if I would have to join the army (the thought only just occurred to him once I was already Israeli..). Pretty much every phone call with him since then has begun as follows (hence the name of the blog):
- "Hi Daddy!"
- "How's my Israeli daughter?"
- "Israeli!"