Israeli 101

I think I’m going through a second phase of jet lag. This is weird; I had planned for today to be “set up the apartment as much as possible” day - empty the suitcases, put away our clothing, empty our rubbermaid bins and fnd temporary places for all that stuff, do some laundry (without a washing machine or detergent). But I could not sleep last night - after 3 nights of sleeping like the dead - and today I feel like Wile E Coyote after being run over by a steamroller. I did manage to empty the suitcases, but then I had to sit down before I fell down. Wooof.

Anyway, back to the aliyah story…

Things they don’t tell you when you make aliyah:
You won’t be able to read your apartment lease
You won’t be able to read all the forms you are signing at the bank. I could have agreed to do a fan dance at the batchelor party of the branch manager; I would have no idea.
You won’t be able to read your cellphone contract (see above)
You won’t be able to read the labels on your food.

I’ve been grocery shopping 3 times now and I’m still flipping over products to read ingredients. haha.

Kelli and Jeremy are absolutely spoiling us and man, is it going to hurt when they finally kick us out of the nest. They even took us out to dinner last night. Although, I guess since their friend Jay drove us, he technically took us. J & K paid.

Tomorrow we are off to Jerusalem to pick up our Teudat Zehut. When you arrive, you get a Teudat Oleh, which is kind of like your card showing you will be getting an Israeli ID. Your Teudat Zehut is your ID. You are nothing in this country without your T“Z. Even if you have a number, like we do. And of course, being a family, they gave us one Teudat Oleh with both our information in it. Morey is off in Jerusalem today, so he has the T“O, which means, for the moment, I don’t really exist.

Oh, and we had our first real Israeli blow-off. Our landlord was supposed to come by last night around 5pm. We had gone grocery shopping at a shopping centre outside of town, with lots of great shops that we wanted to explore. But no time! We didn’t even have time to do a real grocery shop - we raced in and out of the store to catch the bus (the busses here only run every half hour. Bril.) to get home in time to meet our landlord. Since we were so late gettng in from the airport when we arrived, we missed our original meeting with him (he understood), and didn’t want to miss this one.

When we got off the bus, it was just 5pm, so we called him to let him know we were only 5 minutes away. After talking to him the whole rest of the way, we come to find out - he’s still in Efrat. 45 minutes away.

Lesson learned: before rushing away from anywhere because you have to meet someone, call that person to confirm. I’d have shower curtains and garbage cans right now if we had called from the shopping centre.

I’m sure this is only the first of many lessons to come…