Tangentia

It's happened. I came down with the Aliyah Cold. Apparently, it's very common for new olim to get sick a lot the first year. I guess it's new germs, stress, constantly being tired from running around and sleeping on borrowed mattresses. Morey got sick the second week here and stayed sick for two weeks. Which is very unusual for him - with his metabolism, he goes through a cold in 24 hours. Now I've got what he had. Blargh. The worst part is, we don't even have our couch yet, so I have nothing to curl up on.

Speaking of furniture, we bought a new dining room table.

Click on the picture for a larger image

It's beautiful, expands to seat 10 - 12, and was more than we should have spent.

However, we've spent the last few years talking about how we would love to host people for Shabbat, but we were never close enough to anyone and didn't have a big enough table.

We had 7 people for 2nd Seder this year, and were very cramped. But we had so much fun, it didn't matter at the time. So we figured that since the table wasn't strictly for our enjoyment but for the mitzvah of hachnasat orchim (welcoming of guests), it was worth the extra money. We just won't get as nice a bed.

Speaking of beds, we need to buy mattresses too. A friend drove us into Jerusalem last week and dropped us off near the tachana mercazit (central bus station aka CBS) so we could hop a bus into the neighbourhood of Talpiot. Talpiot has lots of stores and malls and is great for getting furniture. Talptiot is also home of the "big" mall, Kanyon Hadar. Morey and I nearly fell over laughing when we saw the "big" mall. It's one floor, with about 30 stores, including food stalls. In Israeli terms, it is a fairly big mall. By North American standards, it qualifies as a shopping centre.

Anyway, here's where my lousy bus karma came into play. We knew we could take the 5 or the 21 buses. We passed a 5 stop, but it said "tachana mercazit" which confused us. We were walking to the tachana, which was about a block away. Did the 5 end at the tachana? We decided to keep walking to the CBS. After waiting a few minutes, a 21 came up. Morey went to confirm with the driver that he went into the "industrial" area of Talpiot, not the residential area, and he said no, we needed the 74.

Oh.

After waiting 25 minutes for a 74, the driver of the 74 told us we needed the 21, that he doesn't go anywhere near the stores.

Oh.

We then waited for ever for another 21. (Of course, after waiting 25 minutes for the 74, 3 more showed up in the space of 10 minutes.) We were at the tachana well over an hour by the time the next 21 finally came. Then, we were stuck in the construction on Jaffa Street, so it took nearly an hour to get to Talpiot. That didn't leave us with much time, but we did get to explore Kanyon Hadar, and go to 3 different mattress stores, which left us just as confused as when we started. We weren't able to catch a ride back to Modi'in with our friend, but it seemed like G-d wanted to make up for our horrid trips to Talpiot, and when we decided to go home and left the last mattress store, we were right at a bus stop with a 21 bus sitting at the stop. Which got us to the CBS 5 minutes before the bus to Modi'in left. That was perfect.

So we still don't have a mattress, and don't have the foggiest idea what to get, but at least we have a less foggy idea of what's out there, and how much this might cost us. Suggestions welcome.