I live in Asia. When did it happen?

I live in the worl's largest and most populous continent. I live squeezed between the Mediterranean sea, i.e. Atlantic Ocean, and the Red Sea, i.e. Indian Ocean. I know that the mountains of Lebanon are up north and the desert of Sinai is down South, despite I can't go to any of them. People often ask me: "at miHodu? ("are you from India?"). I only smile and politely answer 'no'. I live not far from Africa, also not far from Europe. But even though I live far away from the places of my childhood, teens, and early adulthood, because I live in Asia. 

When did it happen? I don't know. All I do know is that life changed abruptly and hands down I must confess that bringing life back to normality is much more difficult. Crossing the stormy sea was much easier than sailing on calm waters. For the first situation, you'd need tons of courage, audacity and clarity of mind to see what anyone has seen before. For the later, you need so much experience, patience and cold blood that the minimum mistake might sour everything. But I'm learning to lead the boat easily and I tell you... It takes too much strength.

But I live in the Middle East. Things are so unreal here. I speak a language spoken by maximum 9 million people on the globe. I write from right to left, see camels and sheeps along the roads, olive trees all over. The desert reminds me of how small I am. And the sea comes to show me the immensity that lies before my feet. Despite I live in the heart of the world I feel stranded on a crazy dream named Israel. I live in Asia and I don't even know when it happen, because it feels so much like home, that it seems i have ever been here and all the time when I wasn't here I was just finding my way HOME.

         

Beginning the day SMOOTHLY

By now, if there's anything all my roommates have learned about lving with me is that mornings are extremely difficult to me. Since very young, coming out of bed is a nightmare. My roommates have experienced even TWO hours of "snooze" time. And I have suffered because of this: threatens of pillow attacks from a roommate who used to sleep on a bunk bed. And nothing worked to take me out of my dreams during the morning.

So now I'm trying to make this moment a little bit less... let's say... traumatic? Stretching, green tea and a good smoothie help life to come back to this human being. I tried cold coffee on some days. But since I'm not pretty much used to drinking coffee, the quick increase in the caffeine levels on my blood always caused a sensation close to drug abuse. I REALLY felt stoned for the whole morning. So better not trying...

The smoothies worked perfectly though. Mainly in this pre-Pessach time, when you want to get rid of all oats , whey germ and granola you were storing at your kitchen. (And, since I'm ashkenazi, I also got rid of all kitinyot). In all this there was still one problem. Smoothies are wonderful with real yogurt, but I'm intolerant to lactose (affff...), then I had to apply extra amount of creativity. But now my two fav recipes are totally dairy-free. First I mix mango juice, vanilla soy milk, bananas, oats, honey and (if budget allows) strawberries.  For the second mix i use my own chocolate rice milk -I'm a very DIY person, vanilla extract, dates and pears.

A full glass of a good smoothie, a cup of green tea and some pomegranate don't make me happily ever after on mornings, but help things fall back into place in such early hours.