Nadra Dahdah, Craft Talk

Nadra is one of our newest members.  She has a husband and 2 children.  She and her husband came to the US in 1979 from Nazareth, in northern Israel.  This is a small town where most of the people are related to each other.  She still has family members there, but moved after finishing high school there because she wanted to see more of the world and further her education (a joint decision with her future husband).  She was told that flying to Los Angeles was cheaper than taking a taxi from Nablus to Tel Aviv (probably fewer checkpoints also).

She went to El Camino College and Long Beach State, and began working for Flying Tiger Airlines.  With 2 small children, she decided to look for work not requiring so much travel away from her family, so she left the airline to work for RE/MAX after going to real estate school.

She talked about her first experiences in Southern California doing what she had heard so much about before coming here, such as going to Disneyland for the first time, and shopping in Los Angeles.  She and some friends took a bus to central Los Angeles, but after 45 minutes in city traffic and getting only as far as Compton, they decided to give up and return home.

Her hobbies include music, entertaining and cooking, and she wants to learn how to dance.  She donates to Children’s Hospital through her company.  She enjoys working for charity, especially helping to buy a dialysis machine for a hospital in a small town where kidney disease patients had no local source of specialized care.  She has also hosted children for international exchange, one from Switzerland and 2 from China.