So we have finally finished our first week in Israel. Why did it take this long to start this blog? As with most things during our first week here, I don't want to talk about it.
Here's some catch-up on the past week:
- we found our first scorpion. It was on our stairs, just hanging out. If I was a real tough guy, I would have just killed it myself. Naturally I just called the snake and scorpion catcher in Ramat Beit Shemesh at 10pm to come over and catch it for me - best 125 shekel I ever spent! Luckily he made me feel ok for being scared to do it myself (though it was a small baby scorpion, turns out) by telling me you should never kill a scorpion by yourself, no matter how small it is (though this is the guy who gets paid to do this) and he did a small tour of the house to look for weak spots where scorpions and snakes could get in, luckily only found a few. He then kept us enthralled (and up all night) with his stories of people finding snakes and scorpions (80% of which in the area that are venomous, according to him) in the craziest of places.
- am officially in the minus! This is a common Israeli financial situation where people have spent more money than they have in the bank, kind of like a bank acting as a credit card. So when I opened up my account, I put in 7 shekel to make it official. Then I ordered checks. In america when you order checks you get enough for your grandchildren to use. In Israel ordering checks means you get a packet of 25 checks, so after giving post-dated checks for the rent and school, I would need to order more checks, which cost 9 shekels, taken out of your account, so I am at minus 2 shekels in my account. I am speechless at how well this system seems to work for everyone.
- my son is starting to learn hebrew - asked today what comes after esrim v'nine
- all our stuff is in a metal container which we hope to get soon, with the mashiach. So I hear you ask, how does a 21st century family live for 10 days without major appliances? Good question. We rented a fridge from someone who was recommended to us, when I told him we didn't need a freezer, just a fridge, he got all excited and said "ok, great, I have something" I really wish I had a 6th sense about these things. About an hour later two big guys brought over a fridge that you would find in a makolet to sell cold drinks from (it even had a design of fruit on the top panel). Ok, figured, this is all part of the experience, so paid him and started using it. The next day we noticed that there was a serious drip on the inside of the fridge that was getting water all over the floor (and ruined half a pie of pizza in the process) so when I called the guy up and said "I didn't complain when you brought a makolet fridge to my house, but now there's water dripping in it!" to which he replied "of course there's water dripping in it, you don't think I know that?!?" typical Israeli response. Apparently in Israel it's ok to have water get all over your floor and you just wipe it up, as our bathroom shower doesn't have any doors or even a rod to hang a curtain. You basically take a shower, get the floor soaked, and then mop it all up.
- when we came into the house, we discovered that it hadn't been fixed up from the previous tenants, so the foreman agreed to send some arab workers over to fix it up. Being as it was 150 degrees that day, I offered one of them a drink of water, and he said he couldn't because of Ramadan - RAMADAN!!! who thinks about these things in America? I hope I didn't throw Jewish-Arab relations back 1o years with that one.
