Trick or Treating in the Holy Land
The first time I celebrated Halloween abroad was in college when I spent a semester in India. Unsure what to do with ourselves but resolute in our determination to acknowledge the pagan holiday in one way or another, we got gussied up and went to a fancy bar on the rooftop of a luxury hotel. [...]
Israeli Food: A Primer
Last week marked my one year anniversary of living in Israel. Prior to moving here, I had never even visited the country, so was not entirely sure what to expect. As a food writer, I was most excited about one thing: the food. As a fairly young country, Israeli cuisine is something that is still [...]
Reflections on Home
Home is a funny thing. For the first 18 years of my life, home was the one bedroom apartment I shared with my mother, father, and sister in Manhattan. And that was it. I never went to summer camp, and my parents didn’t have a “country house” like some of the other families. We didn’t [...]
Facebook: A Reluctant Love Story
I held out for a long time. Years, even. I resisted MySpace, scoffed at Friendster and was stalwart in my conviction that Facebook was not something I needed in my life. “Why do I need Facebook to tell me what my friends are up to,” I reasoned, “when I talk to them all the time?” [...]
Alone in the Desert with Camels
As a fiercely independent woman, it felt odd when my husband and I packed up and moved to Be’er Sheva, Israel so he could attend medical school. I had always been the one leading the travel charge, packing up to travel through India or China or drive cross-country with friends. But since we were moving [...]
A Different Kind of Siren
I’ve become accustomed to the sound of rocket sirens, the blaring noise that wakes you up in the middle of the night, prying you from the depths of REM sleep, urging you to get to your safe place within 60 seconds. I thought growing up in Manhattan meant that I was used to sirens, but [...]
Product Review: My Vacation HD
I have never been a first generation adapter of anything. My iPod is five years old, I don’t have a smart phone, and I only joined Facebook in July. The iPad was the exception to this rule. Light and easily transportable, it was the perfect piece of technology for someone moving to a foreign country and not wanting a lot of baggage.
Sharpen Your Elbows and Other Tips for Riding the Bus in Israel
A country smaller than the state of New Jersey, Israel is immensely easy to travel around. One could drive from the northernmost tip in the Galilee to the southernmost point in Eilat – practically to Egypt and Jordan – in less than six hours. While rental cars are fairly inexpensive, gas prices are exorbitant and [...]
Learning to Live with (but not love) the Bomb
I was in a dark yoga room when I heard the sirens. I’d heard them once before, when they ran a test, because I live in a place where instead of fire drills school children have bomb drills and line up to go to the bomb shelter. This time I was in such a daze [...]
These Boots Were Made for Walking
When I recently packed my bags to move to Israel, my hiking boots were one of the only pairs of shoes to make the cut. When I pulled them out of the closet a few weeks ago for a trip to Mitzpe Ramon, I was quickly reminded of all the places they have been. It [...]
A native New Yorker through and through, Katherine is a food writer with a serious itch for travel. So when her husband had the opportunity to attend medical school in Israel, she knew they had to take the plunge. Having never been to Israel, Katherine quit her job, packed her bags, and set off on her latest adventure. She’s happily settled into life in the Middle East and is busy freelance writing, learning Hebrew, discovering the local markets, deciphering what makes up Israeli cuisine, and cooking up a storm. She’s excited to travel around Israel (a country the size of New Jersey with, well, more to see) and use it as her jumping off point to explore the world. Katherine also writes about what she’s cooking and eating at www.katherinemartinelli.com/category/blog/.