Departing On Our Pilot Trip

Tommorrow morning we depart on our pilot trip to Israel.
 I have been preparing for this for 10 months like a second full-time job, using the WWW and Nefesh B'Nefesh in particular to make contacts in all types of places.  I have looked for people working in various careers in Israel and have looked for a least a person to give us a tour of every communtiy and an additional family to speak to in each community.

It will be the most important 2 weeks of my life.  My wife and I will visit 11 communities and I will hopefully make it to 11 informational interview where I will find out about possible careers for me.

We are using Ramat Shilo (in Ramat Beit Shemesh) as the status quo - the community that we know we could move to, that would be good for commuting to jobs, and that my wife and I would definetely find friends, a shul, etc. 

However, the rest of the communities we are visiting are yishuvim that have a large Israeli prescense.  The reason that we are going to the yishuvim is because I know that its better for my kids integration to be with more Israelis.  Second, the yishuvim seem to have a smaller and warmer prescense that I imagine would make it easier to do klita.  Third, if I wanted to stay with americans and American values, I could just stay in the U.S. - we would be moving to something different.  Finally, some of the yishuvim we are visiting are cheaper to live in.  The burning question that I really want to know is how people are affording this places in Israel where most communities have $1,000 rent and apartment prices that start at $300,000.  People afford this housing somehow while the Israeli salaries are significantly lower.

However, we are not 100% moving to Israel until after this pilot trip is over.  We need to make sure that it is the right place for us with our situation.  Especially we are looking for kippa surga communities even though we are more Charedi here living in the U.S. because we know that the Charedi world is too extreme for us.  That being said, we need to find a kippa surga communty that we feel comfortable with, particularly in terms of level of observance.

I will send an update on our trip, and whether we will be moving, when I return from my trip.