In June, 2011 Alis and I landed in Israel for a full academic year stay to study at Tel-Aviv University. It so happened that it was the day that Gilad Shalit the Israeli soldier was released from 5 years of captivity by the Hamas in the Gaza Strip. It is hard to describe the feeling of living in your home country for almost a year after an absence of 40 years in which we established life and a large family in Canada.  There is this strange mix of it being your home and yet you're only a guest, that things have changed so dramatically in term of the society's values and norms and morals and in your mind (nostalgically) not necessarily for the better. On the other hand objectively it is the best of all worlds. At the ripe age of 70 we are back on campus as University students, we rediscover Israeli culture, cinema, theatre and above all rediscover the beautiful country that it is and which has not changed but only improved in terms of beauty and charm. We traveled to places we have not been to before in our entire life in Israel and we soaked the smell, the taste and the sounds of our homeland with all our senses. We wrote much about it. Some good, some bad, some critical, some sarcastic, some nostalgic. Above all we had to remind ourselves that we are only here as observers and not citizens, that we did not watch the evolution and did not experience the struggles that our contemporaries may have experienced in the past 40 years. Never the less we offer our perspective to the interested reader. We are entitled to our opinions. Read, laugh, cry and enjoy.