 Welcome to the World Changers Expat Podcast. I'm your host, Scott Bowers, an expat who's lived the last third of his life in Costa Rica. This podcast consists of delightful, informative, and fun conversations with expats around the globe whose expat MO is to make our world a better place. Listening, you just might be inspired to become a World Changer Expat yourself. Welcome to World Changers. Today we're having a conversation with Daniel Rosehill. Daniel is from the town of Cork in Ireland. He made his first visit to Israel at the age of 16 as part of the Birthright Program. About seven years later, he made his expat move and is currently living in Jerusalem. Daniel is a freelance tech writer and also has a blog and podcast on which he discusses tech issues as well as political goings on in Israel and the rest of the world. So without further ado, welcome Daniel to World Changers. Welcome Daniel to the World Changers Podcast. Hi Scott, thank you very much for having me on. Great. You have definitely set the record for my most long distance call. We're talking from Costa Rica to where are you at? So I'm based in Jerusalem in Israel. Well that definitely sets the record for World Changers so far. The magic of technology. Yeah, every interview I've done so far has been in Latin America so I'm really thrilled to have someone all the way across on the other side of the world. Well let me start off like I do with all the guests asking for you to give me a little bit of background information, you know, pre expat life in Israel. Where do you come from and tell us a little bit about who you are. Sure, so I mean I actually did move about as small as a kid so I was actually born in Dublin, so in Ireland for people that aren't aware of the capital city. And we moved when I was a kid, we moved actually over to Scotland for a few years. My late dad was in the oil industry so I guess he moved there for his job. We actually, I don't think, I know we spoke, we spoke for a few minutes previously so I didn't tell you some of this stuff. It's not super exciting but I mean it's kind of like us. No, no, let us know. We didn't know all about you. I did one year, we did one year in the Netherlands which I was too young to remember and then we moved back to Ireland and we moved to Cork so I basically all my kind of memories are growing up in Cork which is the second city in Ireland in the south of the country. So yeah I grew up at Cork, you know, went to high school there, went to university there and then I moved to Israel in 2015 so I've been here for five and a half years. That's right and you told me during our previous conversation that you are Jewish, right? Right, so that's, I said there's only three reasons that people move to Israel. They're either Jewish, they're fleeing some kind of prosecution or they've gone crazy so I'm just number one and a small bit of number three. Is that a little bit odd for an Irish Jewish person? Most people are Catholic in Irish. That strikes me as being odd. Maybe I'm off, I don't know. No, no, no, it's fine you point it out because I'm currently going through something of an identity crisis because yes as you say not only is it probably the weirdest combination of ethnicities there is so I've also had to kind of, for medical I had a medical just abdominal surgery a few months ago so I've had to stop drinking for at least a few months so now I'm not even a drinking Irish man. I'm just an anomaly in all cultures. Well that sucks. I hate to hear that for you because I know you miss your Guinness. You get used to it after five years in Israel we make do with what we have so although there actually is Guinness over here but it doesn't taste the same. We have Guinness here in Costa Rica actually. I love Guinness every once in a while I'll pick one up but they're real expensive but they sure are good. Okay well great that's a good background so let's get into a little bit about how you made it to Israel. What motivated the move and how did you end up doing that? Sure so I mean I guess it's funny because one thing that changes when you when you move to Israel is now I'm living in kind of obviously to an extent a bubble. I actually grew up I mean in Cork we were like pretty much the only Jewish family in the city I mean there were a couple more and there's really a non-existing community not I didn't have a single Jewish friend the only Jewish people I knew were really my family members so that was that was pretty weird so that that was actually kind of largely the impetus. I mean I grew up there and it was you know I always find it felt a little bit strange being the only person the only Jewish person and you know basically that was so then I went on this trip to Israel which is called Birthright and so that was my point about bubbles sorry I didn't finish it because you know you you hear all these words a lot here and I realize most people haven't heard of them so I did Birthright which is like this trip where they bring people to Israel to like show it to them whatever. Who is they? Who organizes these trips? So it's a philanthropic organization to the best of my knowledge funded by I believe a Canadian philanthropist so I mean the idea is that people you know who maybe couldn't afford the trip are able to go and it's a really big initiative but you know again because Ireland being such a kind of off the beaten track place in the Jewish world I kind of went with a group out of the UK by a Belgium and that was my first experience here so I that was when I was about 16. So are these people all over the world that are taking advantage of this program or is it just Europe or? Yeah I know it's a worldwide thing but you know when it comes to the Jewish world so it always tends to be very heavily slanted towards Americans so I see these groups now and they're mostly you know containing American visitors. Are they mostly young people that are doing this or are all ages? Yeah I think there's an age cut off but they also organize older you know different programs or let's say older people who want to check it out as well. Is the motivation or the idea behind it is to actually encourage people to I mean here in Costa Rica we have the expat tours I actually do those myself and there's some other groups that do that kind of thing that encourage people to actually come and live here is that the same thing that this birthright program is doing is encouraging people to live to migrate to Jews to migrate back to Israel or is it just to let them have an experience of the country? That's actually a great question and I'm not sure that the answer is so clear because I think it's to give people the experience that may be the idea that it will kick off some kind of a process but I don't remember being you know getting like propaganda about you should move here when I was here to put like that so I think they just showed us around the place. Okay all right cool and now did you make the decision to move as a because of that program or did that come later what give us a little bit of history behind that? It was it was kind of this awkward awkward thing because I mean I'd gone on this program I did actually another short trip for learning the language and it was kind of a good when you say the language is that is that Hebrew? Yeah they speak they speak Hebrew so I did like a summer course after finishing high school here as well so it was a good and a bad thing because the bad thing was that it's I don't know if probably other expats can relate to this but once you kind of get the idea to move somewhere it kind of nagged at me so I'm not sure if I had had not done this trip whether I would have ever actually come here but once I had come and as I said it was a lot from from my personal reason of you know seeing that there was a place where I wouldn't be like kind of a weird as you as you said there you know an Irish Catholic but it's just like a weird it's a weird fit so after that point it was kind of always on my mind and then it took a few years I did college and you know worked for a bit and and then I made the move so but it was kind of always at the back of my head since I since I took that trip. So you were maybe you were 16 at the time right? Right right exactly. And what what what what age were you when you finally made the actual move? I was 25 so yeah there was there was a bit of time I looked at coming here when I was 19 and you know ultimately decided against us and then yeah came at 25. Okay do you have a family are you married or are you just a single guy there? No I saw yeah I got married last year so my wife is from American so we're really an expat couple. Okay. But no besides that I don't have any family here which I think is actually I've come to appreciate over time just how difficult that is and I think that goes not for Israel but for any anybody in an expat situation I have come to appreciate you know the advantage of stuff like family and having network of friends in the country so no no we don't really don't really have that. Does she come on the birthright program too? She did but she's actually been here longer than me for about six years. So that's a lot of people get there that way I guess. It must be a pretty pretty pretty large program. Right. Yeah well that's that's interesting so how what are you doing now what are you doing to make a live in there? So what I do is basically writing so I write for there's a lot of technology companies here there's a lot of technology companies in the world of course but so I was working in marketing communications for a number of years both here and before I made Aliyah and that's that's the one piece of jargon I want to explain that just means moving to Israel it's a Hebrew word Aliyah so before I did that I also worked in the in the fields relatively briefly I'm only I'm only 31 and yeah so now I've for since two years ago I've been basically doing this full-time so I guess you could call me I try not to use a word freelancer but you could call me independent self-employed however you want to put us. Right what kind of challenges are there in being an expat and making a live in Israel I know that's a big topic here in Costa Rica people come here and I think it's going to be easy but if they don't have a pension or some kind of built-in income when they get here they find out real quickly it's not that easy what's what's your situation been like? I would say it's the exact same situation it's uh it's really really tough I mean both you know there is there are definitely positives to the job market here there's a lot of good PR or you know positive PR coming out about the Israeli high-tech scene which means just you know computers and that kind of thing but it doesn't necessarily translate in my experience I think in a lot of people's experience to being you have to remember that this is like Costa Rica it's not an English-speaking country so I think I've been kind of a challenging position of being in English writing in English and that's really my thing is writing and marketing communications it definitely for me it makes the local market challenging when people don't always really understand the value of that so but that's something I see you know I speak to a lot of guys you know 20 30 years older than me who kind of find a lot of the same challenges here trying to convert their old careers into Israel and it's to be honest it's just a it's a huge amount of work I work very very hard and I would like to you know cut cut down a little bit but yeah it's a challenger for sure but is it is is English I mean you say English is not widely spoken there I would think that it would be but it's not is that what you're saying right no no it's it is widely spoken but you know ultimately the companies here work in Hebrew and I think my Hebrew now is at a pretty professional level but you know it's great ultimately you are in the Middle East and you're not in America and it's different you know are you just self-talked you take classes how did you how did you come along with yours that's even learning a new alphabet and everything isn't it yeah there is it's a different alphabet so yeah it's I mean it's it's definitely challenging there is as you say there's Hebrew and of course the all the tax stuff needs to be done through Hebrew so I kind of didn't really I didn't have the traditional path to going to a Jewish school because again it was a city of essentially no which with no Jewish community so yeah I did kind of pick it up from the internet and I think that's partially why I just love the internet because oh yeah you know if it weren't for this is back in the day when the the screens were like these crazy boxes that's kind of how I just get information so yeah that got me started and I just kind of improved slowly here yeah well I've got 20 years in Costa Rica and I still people ask me if I'm fluent and I tell them I don't think I'll ever be fluent I don't you know I have met very few people that had to learn a different language in another country that are fluent you know if you grew up if you grew up with a parent or something like that that's different but man if you're if you migrated to another country and you're trying to learn the language the chance of you ever being fluent or very unless you're just super at languages and I'm not my wife does not speak English at all so that helps me a lot of practice I think the same thing I think I also wouldn't describe my Hebrew as fluent I use that word professional yeah I can send work emails and communicate with people people use the word I have to say people throw away throw around the word fluent very liberally here yep so I have a high standard and as I tend to agree with you that it's it's probably unlikely that I'll ever achieve that kind of native level right but you know it bothers me less and it did to be honest I'm happy with me learning a few more words each day and you know you kind of make make funny gestures with your hands if you need to and people understand you somehow so yeah it makes life makes life interesting makes it more of an adventure yeah yeah sure what what is the situation with COVID there how's how things get along I would I would love to tell you but I'm on a news blackout Scott so no I mean it's it's for my to understand what does that mean what does that mean you're on a news blackout that means that I got overwhelmed by the COVID news and I completely back away from it yeah that's that's healthy I mean it's it's impossible to escape when my my mom tells me that the situation is bad the numbers are so they they did very good on the first wave yeah we did the second they opened it up too quickly and now it's coming back with the vengeance and the hospitals are achieve it you know they're already reaching their capacity I think over 100 percent in the in the ward so I've just been trying to I've been living like kind of a sort of semi hermit the last three months mostly occupying my home office where I'm speaking to you from and you know keep it keeping up with the world through Facebook and this kind of thing but it's a weird situation here it was good and then it went it went south pretty quickly so that's kind of where it is now that sounds exactly like coastry what's the population there it's about eight million people give or take okay you're you're you're larger than us we're a little over five million uh yeah I mean we were being touted as one of the country's best you know this handled it the best in the world I mean we're comparing us with New Zealand New Zealand and but then June happened and all hell broke loose and you know and it's just been awful since June the cases have been going up five hundred six hundred a day well not where I live but in the in the more densely populated part of the country around the capital so yeah yeah but uh I yeah I'd love to see an end to this thing because it's no fun I don't I think that's I think that's the hardest part is there is no there is no sort of end around the horizon so to keep to keep motivated and to keep optimistic is uh is a challenge right now I think that we all have to you know work on well how is the expat life in Israel what what is there I would imagine there's quite a mix a cosmopolitan mix of different nationalities that are living there right or what's what's right so it is so I was definitely more involved than it's in the first few years I was here as I as I said when we spoke last week there is a huge amount of Americans there is some a few lesser Canadians there's a big amount of Russian people here a lot of Ethiopians basically wherever there is a big Jewish communities is you know basically that's where the people are coming from who moved to Israel so those are the countries so I mean if you're an English speaker probably your your initial friends are going to be Americans and yeah aren't there a lot of Europeans um there are French people there are some Brits very few Irish I really I've only met two um and yeah that's I'm sure I'm sure there's other ones I'm skipping over but it's it's quite as you said American dominated you're in Jerusalem right right I am I am in Jerusalem now that's that's uh I would imagine that's a pretty highly touristic location to live a lot of tourism there right yeah there is and actually at the moment it's uh it's really being caught back so we went to the Dead Sea last week and there was like you know virtually no tourists so it is I mean Jerusalem is what Israel you know it's in dispute basically because the Palestinians want East Jerusalem and it's it's a let's say politically contentious issue but it's Israel's claimed capital or what Israel asserts as its capital um and but despite that fact it's not really where all the jobs essentially you know 90% of the private sector jobs would really be in Tel Aviv in that area so it's actually Jerusalem's actually a poor city uh believe it or not because there's just so many ultra religious Jews here who are typically in you know let's say not the higher socioeconomic classes there is Arab Palestinians that are also relatively poor in East Jerusalem so Jerusalem's actually a weird because you're you're right it is a it is of course a tourist hotspot but it's a strange mix between being the capital and not really feeling like when you go to Tel Aviv you get much more of a feeling of skyscrapers and development and Jerusalem is kind of a by comparison still a bit of a dusty dusty town what's the population there roughly Jerusalem Jerusalem is almost 1 million people it's like 900,000 approximately okay and Tel Aviv Tel Aviv you've caught you've caught me off guard I think about 1.2 and the sorry Tel Aviv's actually less I think I believe it's 900,000 but when you take the Tel Aviv extends up and down the coast they call it in Hebrew the Merkaz which means the center so when you take the kind of cities next to it it actually exceeds Jerusalem so it's that's that's really the population center the country is around Tel Aviv well what is your take on the political situation there I know that's gotta be something you deal with on a day-to-day basis or do you yeah I do and that's another thing so I'm I'm constantly evolving in my approach to let's say mental wellness and how to what to what to stop looking at on Twitter and what to look at on Twitter so this week actually I said Twitter Twitter is is not a good place for me I don't find Twitter I don't find Twitter very enjoyable so I say that because I was tweeting a lot about the various goings on yeah there's I mean there's at the moment there's a lot of protests against the government actually but I don't really see likely that anything's going to come of those I mean yeah that it is a very political place I'm not very optimistic about it the Tuesday process has been going nowhere for a very long time the US administration the Trump administration has rolled out what they call the deal of the century and that's trying to you know basically in my opinion I think a lot of people would feel the same thing give the Palestinians a bad deal and then Israel before the actually during the pandemic was talking about annexation move of the Jordan Valley so there is a lot of stuff going on I don't really I don't really see much of it as being in a positive direction so yes it's a politically charged place Israel is drifting further to the right further more nationalistic as time goes on it seems to me but as I said at the moment there are there is a protest movement happening and a lot of social unrest so it'll be interesting to see what happens as a result of that if if anything well Netanyahu he has got real elected did he he did he there was a stalemate for like a year and ultimately they formed a unity government but the government doesn't seem to you kind of get the impression they don't they don't like each other very much the parties that came together in it so there is a lot of speculation that will collapse pretty soon how about the just the safety issues is it create danger for you in Jerusalem to have all that going on around you so yeah I mean Jerusalem is where you'll have more attacks so that's what I would think yeah right right I was here for a wave of knife attacks actually but overall Israel is actually quite safe I mean it you know it sounds a bit suspicious maybe but the statistics for a crime are actually very low so you don't have much crime here you do of course have nationalistically motivated attacks taking place but it hasn't really had a major impact on my on my experience living here but then again I haven't been here through a major war so easy to easy to say I guess what are your future plans Daniel you're gonna stay there you think you maybe I know I'm not leaving in Costa Rica what are you what are you gonna do you're gonna stick around or not I think it's very right I think I think it's stressful so I from when I came here I took the approach of our I remember like deleting my my Facebook and LinkedIn and starting from scratch in Hebrew to my idea was that this was like a permanent move and to integrate to the maximum possible extent and I've just come to think and appreciate over time that I think that kind of thinking is stressful I know it's different for different people but at the moment I'm undecided and you know I like to be open about it I think before I felt that everybody in my circle of friends was you know 100% positive and not that I'm trying to be 100% negative but yeah it's challenging Israel to live in I've recorded written my own blog about this and you know there is a lot of things living here that you don't necessarily see as visitors the cost of living is probably the biggest issue I encounter here to a big extent it's very expensive and the salaries can sometimes be less than the west that dynamic creates a lot of pressure for people so hard to say I probably right now to be honest with you see more opportunity outside of Israel and it really depends it's kind of strange to have your life not determined but to an extent determined by the political unrest so I'm hoping there will be some change because I see that the government has become quite corrupt and very very much out of touch with the reality of people living here so if there's some optimistic moves it would encourage me to stay for a longer period of time but I I'm not in the process anymore of making indefinite statements again I we don't have children at the moment so it's maybe again easy for me to say but I find that just takes takes off the stress of because sometimes when you are in somewhere like Israel or wherever your expat listeners are located it can be you know if you kind of pack your bags and say that's it if things go wrong there it's it can be it can put you in a stressful stressful position what is your blog my blog is danielrosil.co.al it's quite a it's it's just about a lot of posts about technology and linux which are you know things I'm interested in but there is there's some stuff up there also about Ireland and Israel so danielrosil2ls.com you can actually go to .com and it forwards on to the Israeli website so okay so just danielrosil.com that's easy sure easy to remember and you also do a podcast right or not yes I was I was not I was not going to mention my podcast because I thought that might be that might be a little bit rude but no for sure yeah what is it I've done a I've done a few episodes it's just a passion project so what what I do for my writing is I basically ghost writes so I'm you know writing stuff for technology companies and marketing teams that you know they typically brand themselves so it yeah it's I just started this blog in this podcast as just my own way to actually say you know explain who I am or what I do for the for anyone interested so so your podcast is also danielrosil.com that's yeah there's there's a link to it on the blog or you can just type into google danielrosil podcast and you'll find it on Spotify in all the usual places fantastic and I'll put a link to both in the podcast show notes so sure appreciate I appreciate that absolutely absolutely okay great I always like to ask a closing question we've come to that moment in the interview about how living is an expat I mean the way I view it is I'm kind of on the outside looking in and it's drastically changed my perspective of the world um living as an expat and I just wondered what your views on that how how is your perspective of the world changed being an expat from Ireland living in Israel I love that I love that I love that sentiment Scott so actually that that's pretty much how I'm feeling now so you know I told you about the uh stomach surgery is as kind of a joke about being an Irish man that that isn't drinking alcohol right now but it's uh that is actually kind of you know it it summarizes kind of how I feel right now I don't I've definitely lost a lot of connection to Ireland I still have very fun memories of it at the same time I an outsider looking in describes I think the experience here so there's kind of this feeling or you know people who move here because they're Jewish like me think that it's kind of maybe as a brand that you're automatically welcomed in and I think that to a large extent Israel isn't actually any more welcoming of immigrants than Mexico is of Japanese people there's kind of there's kind of is this feeling of being an outsider no matter how hard you try to learn the language to be friends locals it's a different experience so this is going to sound like the most cliche ridiculous thing you've ever heard but I feel like a citizen of the world right now I feel like yep my I feel like my growth continues linearly so if I were to move back to Ireland or move to Japan I'd like to just keep uh you know either doing what I'm doing or changing things but I wouldn't I would never view my time here as a waste but I don't particularly feel very connected right now to honestly I'd almost say any country I have a strong strong Irish identity still but yeah I kind of I actually kind of am optimistic and that's how actually how I discovered your podcast searching for expat podcast because I just you know decided I wanted to hear from other expats to just start kind of challenging myself of like you know are there other places I haven't thought about so maybe it's Costa Rica we'd love to have you well I'm glad you found my podcast and it's been delightful to interview you and I wish you well in Israel and whatever you plan to do in the future likewise Scott thanks for having me on the show okay bye bye