A place to sleep when get off the plane

In Aliyah Rishon, everything was centered around having a job in Haifa - where we would live, the house we would buy, where our kids went to school, etc. Now, we weren't tied down to a particular community, we just needed to find something in the next 7 weeks. We also weren't interested in finding the "perfect" community - just a place to sleep. We focused our search on 2 communities where we had friends on the ground to scout out places for us. One was Hashmonaim, and Modi'in by extension, where the incomparable Lisa (and the more comparable, Nafi) live. The other was Bet Shemesh, where Leezy's in-laws lived. We ended up narrowing the search to Modi'in. Much as we would love to live near the Balsam clan, Hashmonaim was pretty difficult to get into, real-estatewise, much like the classes with the easy teachers in Stern. There were very few rental opportunities, and nothing to email home about. In addition, it would be difficult to live there without a car, which we would not have in Aliyah Bet, due to the fact that there was no guarantee of job. Bet Shemesh also had the problem of being a little less easy to commute from. Modi'in had the amenities of the city, plus a train that would go to wherever Donny would end up working. In the end, we almost signed a lease on one apartment in Givat C in Modi''n, but it fell through at the last second. Lisa saved the day - someone she knew from Chicago had an apartment in a new complex called Dimri Towers and he was looking to rent it out. It was brand new and across the street from the train and the mall, important for us foot-bound people.