It's been far too long since I last blogged. I've moved cities, stumbled into despair and desperation that aliyah just wasnt working, almost ALMOST decided to make a rather big decision concerning the Y word (yeridah, in case there was any uncertainty) but have somehow found my way back to stability and routine. I could never have imagined craving either of those things, when I was 18.

I have a job! Rejoice! Not just any old job, either. A job working alongside lovely, funny people who take their work seriously but who nearly all made aliyah.. we have a connection. Not only this, but my previous job trained me so well for this one that it's almost as if it were pre-ordained. As if it had been decided already, that this is where I was headed.

Oh wait - He IS in charge...

In case I hadn't made it clear previously, eretz Yisrael is by no means an easy or lenient place to live. I'm not throwing in lenient to sound clever (does lenient make anyone sound clever?), but because I mean it. Nobody goes easy on you, nobody gives you a break. If you're religious and keep Shabbat, you spend your one real day off cooking/cleaning/running about like a headless chicken just in preparation for Rest. So much build-up, so much pressure directed towards this one day of the week on which I MUST rest can only result in one thing : a day of unreasonable anxiety. I seem to spend most shabbatot avoiding work-related, "6.15am alarm" thoughts. Oh how I miss Sundays.

I think it's possible that I don't smile as much as I used to, about being here. Things I found endearing when I first arrived, have become irritating. I suspected this may happen over time, I didn't think it would be as quick as a year. Except the other day, when I took a sherut took far in one direction and had no idea where I am. The driver calls his friend driving the sherut on the opposite side, who stopped especially to pick me up. Am unconvinced this would happen in England, theyd open the doors for you and wish you luck.. maybe not even that.

Every day, I walk home through a pedestrian street, closed off to cars. It's a special walk to and fro on Tuesdays, when the street market comes to Nachalat Binyamin.

I walk through as they set up at 7.30 in the morning and later as the weary vendors pack up at 5. I wander past jewellery stalls, glass photo frames, a young guy who sells photos he takes of Israel, an old hippie looking man with a long white beard selling brightly-coloured clocks for children. He sees me every week, I try and smile but he doesn't smile back.

One woman sells pink, fluffy, glittery decorations for girls' bedrooms and there's the guy who sells old movie posters frame by thick, dark paint in vibrant colours. The Nachalat Binyamin cats sit in throngs by open-doored cafes, waiting for scraps. The four elderly Russian ladies squeeze onto one bench, always pausing in converdation to eye not only my outfit, but all the women who walk past them.

It's a scene I love, I feel as if I am actually Hugh Grant at the beginning of Notting Hill, strolling through the market, the noises, the faces, the passing of the seasons. It makes me feel a little bit more alive, walking through that scene once a week.

I emerge from this wonderful windy street, onto the drudgery of Allenby. Open garbage bins, homeless men lie shoeless in the middle of kikar Shenkin, the Chabad chanukiah still taped to the metal pole leading to shuk HaCarmel.

I miss Jerusalem desperately, even when I remind myself how claustrophobic I felt living there. I feel myself being pulled towards frum people I spy on the streets of Tel Aviv. Though I may be wearing jeans, I feel more affinity with their sheitels and skirts, kippot and tzitzit than I do with the rabble and crowds of TA. Now, suddenly, it's the end of December and I have been here 11 months. Sometimes I feel elated and so privileged to be living here, to be independant - compared with so many unfortunate, deprived people living all over the globe. Inevitably, sometimes I cannot help but compare my own life to those of people I know, of my friends and then I WANT. I find things lacking, I find myself wanting, wanting, wanting.

After almost a year of living here, I have started to teach myself patience. Contentment is a long way off but first... patience.