Theatre

Yesterday Dima and I finally ventured out to our first cultural activity since coming to Israel, it only took us 10 months! We went to the theatre, www.gesher-theatre.co.il to see The Kreutzer Sonata, it’s an adaptation Leo Tolstoy’s novella by the same name. It was lovely.


It had a fantastic actor in the title role, the only role – the whole thing was a monologue! I am told he is a famous Israeli actor by the name of Moshe Ivgy, he was captivating. I have never been more awed by a person’s memory than I was last night, an hour and a half of just him talking/acting. The staging of the play was really well done, I was very much impressed. But the best part was that there were subtitles! It turns out that it is a relatively normal practice in Israeli theatres to have subtitles for performances. I personally like this very much. Granted they were in Russian so I had to really concentrate on the reading, but having resigned myself in advance, to complete incomprehension (since I knew the play would be in Hebrew and sadly my Hebrew skills are still nowhere close to CULTURE level, but I have almost reached children’s tv programming level) this was a welcome surprise. One thing is for sure, if I have not mentioned this before, moving to Israel is doing wanders for my Russian language skills.

Today I decided that it was time for my “yearly” health check-up. I say “yearly” only figuratively since I have not had one in many years. That is not to say that I have not been to a doctor in that long... kidney stones anyone? Unfortunately, it turns out that a check-up includes blood tests, no wander I have not had one in so long.

The blood tests are not administered in your doctor’s office, the way it works here is that you are sent to, what I would call, a Blood-test giving factory. It’s a department dedicated entirely to administering blood-tests, so all the people who have been condemned to various blood-tests come here. After some prerequisite bureaucracy (its Israel after all), your number gets called and you go into a room full of about 15 nurses all taking blood from their victims.

In the past, when I have had tests done in US in a private room, I usually concentrated on anti-smoking/drugs/unsafe-sex posters that are inescapably in every doctor’s office. But here I was surrounded by other poor souls going through the same thing (the ones I saw looked almost as unhappy as I felt), so I could not focus on anything around me besides the NEEDLES, everywhere I looked there they were. I finally had to close my eyes with my hand and concentrate on that, there was a little bit of whining as well (I can’t help myself). I imagine I looked like a 3 year old. Now, you may think that I am over dramatizing and making a big deal out of nothing, but if you know me (and you should if you are reading this) you should know how horribly afraid of needles I am, its virtually a phobia.

On the bright side since all these nurses do, day in and day out, is take blood, inevitably they have to get proficient in it. Mine was very good, no endlessly searching for veins or false starts (hate those) when they don’t stick the needle in properly and then have to start all over. Overall it was better than it could have been and quite efficient, even with the bureaucracy.

Happy Chanukah! I was looking forward to the play so much I almost missed it.

Past Month and Half (Part 2 of 2)

So there are 2 interesting events that took place in recent past worth mentioning:

1 – An Open-House weekend took place a few weeks ago in Tel Aviv. This is an annual event that showcases interesting interior design or architecture, basically anything having to do with design. For a weekend people open up their own condos/houses/offices to the public. Mostly its interior decorators showing off their work (either in their own houses or in their clients'). Of course, for those interested in design or voyarism this is a great opportunity. I was excited for both reasons.

I got a map of all the open houses, figured out the perfect route and schedule and set out on my way. Well… it did not turn out as planned. As it happens, there are a lot, and when I say a lot, I mean HOARDS, of people with the same idea. Upon seeing the first house with a huge line out front I figured let’s skip this one and come back to it later (when it dies down); for the next house I stood in line for 45 minutes under the blazing sun, dying of dehydration, but I made it through! The house was underwhelming.  Don’t get me wrong it would have been perfectly nice, but for 45 minutes in sweltering heat! Not worth it. At this point I was still determined to see what I could.

I moved on to the next place… same thing, and the next place.. same thing. I decided that I would go to the the #1 place on my list and wait it out. Again, I was not the only one with that brilliant idea. The line was by far the longest. I stood in line for about ....1.5 hours after which the organizers came out and said that it would close in 20 min and if you were in line behind a certain cut-off person you were not going to make it, but you were welcome to wait and see. I was behind that cut-off! I was completely disheartened and boiling hot, so I finally gave up :)

I have pics of this on Facebook, there are other pics in there as well, but if  you see one with loads of people that’s probably a line to one of the houses. Here is the link:


http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=179525&id=661621936&l=6046238311

2 – There is a silent rave (party) that takes place at a café that is around the corner from my house. I have seen it a few times now, its completely bizarre! They set up a DJ station in the middle of the street, at the café, and give out wireless headphones to anyone who wants them, a large crowd gathers and people dance around to the music that only they can hear. They get a little rowdy but its not bad. Its super funny to watch because all you can see is the crowd swaying, some sing along which is even funnier. I have never seen this before anywhere. The pics of this are in the above link.

Other than this I don’t have anything interesting to report. I still go to school everyday, although I seem to have hit a wall of sorts. There is just too much information, we are learning in 5 months what usually people take years to learn, either that or I am dumb or not studying enough, either way it’s a bit discouraging.

Past Month and Half (Part 1 of 2)

Let’s start form most recent events (that are worth mentioning) and work my way back:

One of the benefits of living in Israel (as opposed to US), is that Europe is just a short flight away with almost no time difference. I took advantage of this opportunity last weekend and joined Dima in Geneva.

It is a very beautiful, classy, smallish European city. It was a pleasure to walk and look around, which is pretty much all we did the whole time, with some breaks for food and Museums. It’s a very very expensive place and I think one way they try to make up for it is: the municipal museums are free (very nice) and public transportation for tourists is free as well (comes in very handy). Its an interesting contrast to Tel Aviv: Geneva is very clean, very looked after, and while its much older, it’s in much better shape. Of course not being involved in any wars for the past at least 400 years helps. One other point of note; everything closes very early, which I have become unused to, we tried to go out for food at 10:30pm, it was very difficult to find any restaurant still serving, here 10:30pm is still prime dinner time.

Here are some pics (and comments) from the trip:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=184954&id=661621936&l=dcb0999de8

Before Geneva, life was as usual. I came back from my whirlwind trip to US. Let me tell you: flying across the world for less than a week is not very smart, because the minute you kind of start getting over the jet-leg you have to fly back and start the process all over again. Of course I got sick as a result, and the fact that I ran around trying to see and spend time with every family member in St Louis, Chicago and Milwaukee did not help.

Eilat and Perta

This past weekend I finally went on a trip that I have been planning since before I moved to Israel. I finally got to go to Petra in Jordan.



The only way to do it from Israel is to go on an organized tourist tour from Eilat, unless of course you know someone in Jordan, which I do not. It’s not the cheapest thing in the world but I was set on seeing Petra, and since you never know when Israeli relations with the countries surrounding it might go sour, I wanted to do it while I still knew I could. Although I am not sure how many Israelis actually go there, everyone that I saw going from Israel to Jordan was a foreign tourist.

So the trip is an all day affair: you meet the tour people at the hotel at about 7am and don't get back to the hotel until about 8pm. The morning is a complete waste of time; we were at the border a little after 7am and did not get on the tour bus on the Jordanian side until 10am. Fist we waited for 1 hour for the border to open, apparently this is done to beat the rush of tourists coming in exactly at opening time, which is 8am. However this strategy only works when there are no aggressive, rude, entitled Russians pushing their way in front of everyone. In the end it did not meter, and they were the last to get their passports, which made me feel really really good :)

Once the border opens there is a mad rush for Israeli customs, once you go though that you wait around some more, for everyone in the group to go get their stamp so that everyone goes together. Then there is a bit of walking through no-man's land (I guess there is a space between the 2 sides, I have never gone from country to country by foot/car, I have always flown, so this was an interesting experience for me) and you enter the Jordanian customs. There, the way it works is really strange; your group's tour guide collects everyone's passports, and he submits them to customs, which means that they never actually check that the passport you give them is actually yours. I don’t think they ever even looked at the picture. Anyway, we waited for about 1 hour for them to finish whatever they were doing, but eventually we got our passports back and were able to finally move on.

We drove though Aqaba; it’s the Jordanian city on the Red sea, basically right next to Eilat, in Israel. And then drove for about 2 hours though Jordan to Petra. From what I saw, the country is much poorer than Israel; however there was a lot of development and construction in Aqaba which was very very nice to see.


Petra was huge, amazing, and totally worth the money. You can see picks and specific commentary on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=173804&id=661621936&l=3a4f85259c


Afterwards we were fed some yummy food and drove back to the border, where yet again we wasted about 1.5 hours total, on both sides, waiting for customs to do their thing. Israel disappointed me on the way back, whereas in the morning they seemed to be much more organized than Jordan, in the evening it was complete chaos.


We spent one day in Eilat over the weekend, it was extremely relaxing which was very much needed. I don’t know how but it was actually chilly and rainy in Eilat the whole day we were there. How it’s possible that it rained in May, in the middle of the desert, practically in Africa (Eilat is right on the border with Egypt, which is in Africa) is beyond me. It actually did not bother me since all I wanted to do was sit around read and relax. Had it been sunny Dima would have made me go swimming and snorkeling which I really had no interest in doing. So the rain turned out to be a great thing.

Pesach, Ulpan and More

Sorry for not posting in a while, no excuses just lazy :).

So let’s see:

There was Pesach, petty big holiday - Israel half stops half slows-down for the entire week. We did not do much for the holiday. Since this is when school is out and many adults get time off of work; everyone goes on vacation, which means that to fly out of here is insanely expensive and to stay in a hotel in Israel is also expensive (and booked), and since we did not plan ahead of time we did nothing. Hung out, chilled, ate! We did prepare the Sader ourselves which was pretty cool. Did a bit of seeing the country but not much more.

There was one hiking trip that went terribly wrong. We went up north to the mountains, for a beautiful hike that started very well, however we did not plan ahead of time (are you seeing a trend here????) and ended up switching to the wrong path midway which took us in a completely wrong direction. So when the hike was finished and we thought we were back at our starting point, near the parking lot, we were actually on a different mountain! I am not joking we actually ended up on the wrong mountain. But of course at this point we had no idea, so we started walking further thinking the car would be close. Over 2 hours later, with no car in sight and with the night upon us, I forced Dima to agree to stop and ask for help (which I ended up doing anyway) and only then did we learn how terribly lost we were. There were 2 options: take the hike the same way back, which was pretty much impossible since it was dark and we would get even more lost or some wild animal would eat us, or somehow go around the mountains which would take all night if we went by foot. In the end I found some nice people who drove us to a relatively close-by gas station, and there we got a cab which drove us, for an hour, to our car. I think I lost about 5 years of my life-span during the time we were lost.

You can see Pesach pics with commentary on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=168557&id=661621936&l=e7decc662a

Couple of Days ago it was Yom HaShoah (Day of Remembrance), it was pretty intense. First off, unlike other holidays when inevitably some places (restaurants, stores) stay open, on the eve on Yom HaShoah EVERYTHING closes! If you did not have food at home, too bad... starve, cause NOTHING is open. We did not realize this and decided to go out to eat, it was a sad sad experience. Most channels on TV are turned off, the 5% -10% of channels that did not get turned off, broadcast only Holocaust related programs. On the day of, at 10am sharp there is a siren that goes off in the streets everywhere in the country and people stand in memory of the murdered. If you are working you stop, if you are driving you stop, if you are exercising you stop, everyone and everything stops. Very moving…

After Pesach I started the Ulpan (Gordon). Its actually very nice, the teacher is very good, the students seem cool, and it feels good to have something to do, although I could stand to have it start a little later; 5 days a week at 8:15am! What’s wrong with 10am???? But the best part is that I might actually be able to communicate with people around me soon! Also meeting new people is a nice bonus. I don’t know what the demographics of students in other Ulpans in Israel are (I would imagine a little different than this one) but here everyone is from all over: Russia, US, Europe (everywhere in EU although mostly France), South America. Overall everyone is pretty young - mid 20's to mid 30's with a few exceptions, mostly single, if married then more married women than men, and very few with kids.

So far I like it, although when the work starts piling up and I start getting behind I am sure I will change my tune.

I think now you are up to date.

Israeli Fashion

I have been making some observations about Israeli fashion. Here are some of the impassions that I have so far (if you are not interested in fashion stuff don’t read on):


Overall -    The look here is very relaxed, which most of the time is nice, however…. I have been shocked at what I have seen people wear to work, not that it’s horrible, it’s just that it would be considered completely inappropriate in the States. For example, the girl/woman that was working with me to open my account at the bank wore what in US would only be tolerated as weekend day-wear to hang out in, may be go to the grocery store or the gym. This was not an isolated experience, she dressed like that every time I came to the bank, and there are other examples. Most of the people I see just dress really relaxed, lots of jeans.

Men -      One thing I noticed is that they dress more colorfully than in the States, which is a good thing until you start getting in to the Ed Hardy territory. (HATE Ed Hardy!!!) But I haven’t really seen that here, so good for them. I also don’t think most men here know what a suit or a tie are. From what I understand men in general don’t like either of those things too much, so I guess men in Israel should be happy about their ignorance in that respect.

Women –

      Cloths – as in US leggings are very popular, which goes along with the relaxed, comfortable look quite nicely. Otherwise the usual casual look prevails. Going to a wedding tomorrow so I will have more fun observations, however I have been to one here before and all I can say is that more than one person (both men and women) was wearing jeans or a jean skirt/dress thing, or a jean onesie – it was not cool... at all.

     Shoes - they are all about the boot, this is a chunky boot, a cross between a regular boot and a cowboy boot. It also seems that the shorter leg height (on the boot) is much more popular than the higher length. There are not a lot of heels, and the few heels there are, are on the shorter and thicker side. Overall the shoes are much more chunky than what I have become used to. Chunky in an artsy-craftsy way not chunky in a polished way. The only time I have seen elegant , high heels was at night when we went out to a clubby area, otherwise Israelis like to stay low to the ground in sturdy shoes.

Honestly I am a bit perplexed about the shoe/fashion thing. Israelites are much more influenced by European fashion than by US fashion (there are much more European labels here than US ones). From what I know the European look is much more elegant and polished than the US look. So what gives? Why the chunky and super duper casual???


I understand that it’s a cultural thing that influences the casualness, but still….

1 Month Anniversary and more

Last Wednesday the 17th of March marked 1 full month since we came to Israel. We celebrated this momentous occasion by going out to a restaurant. Except we did not plan ahead of time (we like to be spontaneous) so we ended up walking around for almost 2 hours looking for just the right place. We do this sometimes and what usually ends up happening is:

a.  We get excited to find the perfect place
b. Start looking for it with the best intentions
c. I start getting hungrier and hungrier
d. Dima gets very picky, and even though we pass many places none of them seem to fit Dima's criteria for the night
e. I get very cranky from the hunger
f.  Dima can't pick a place because the "perfect place" does not exist
g. I start feeling like I am about to pass out
h. Dima gives up because I am pretty moody by this point
i. I pick the first place I see just so I can get some food in my empty growling stomach
j. We eat whatever the restaurant has, which usually is not what either of us would have wanted, sometimes.... we are pleasantly surprised
k. We never learn from past mistakes and inevitably repeat the cycle

This was that kind of an experience, however, thankfully we were pleasantly surprised this time. Well at least I was. We ended up going to a type of restaurant I have wanted to go to ever since we got here. Its a place where you order yummy, succulent skewers of meat and with them come unlimited varieties of salads. I love the whole concept. I ended up very happy with the whole thing... I mean how can one not be happy with fresh delicious meat and salads?!

Later last week, for our weekly adventure, we went to an Israeli Army museum, which was basically a large outside space full of tanks (it used to be the British Mandate's fort/prison or something). Basically Dima's idea of heaven. Mine... not so much, but it was very nice outside so i made the best of it.

Here is a link to the pics from that trip:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=163831&id=661621936&l=808a5ec61a

Enjoy!

Pointless trip - Har Masor

Last Saturday Dima and I decided to go on another trip down to the desert. We wanted to go hiking and found a perfect spot, even though it was far away, it was scenic, adventurous and with enough climbing and crawling thrown in to make it fun and worth our time to make the drive down.


The trip took us over 3 hours, about 30 minutes of which were spent driving 6 miles down a treacherous dirt road in a car that was never meant to go off of a paved highway.


The most ridiculous part came when we arrived at our destination, which by the way looked very promising and beautiful, and saw about 20 men sitting around at the base of the trail. Now I am not sure what they were doing there, some looked like they were smoking hookahs others… god knows… All I know is that there was over 20 of them, they were either Arab or Beduin, and that I was full-on freaked out. I realize that most likely these were very nice friendly people however, neither Dima or I had any idea what we were dealing with, and there would be very little chance we could communicate given our knowledge of Hebrew and Arabic and their knowledge of English or Russian. So without ever stepping out of the car we turned around and drove back.


3 HOURS of driving through the desert were pretty much completely wasted. And there was no time for us to go to a different place since it was already pretty late in the day. So we ended up randomly pulling off the dirt road as we were driving back and just running around and checking out our surroundings. One thing I did not mention is that the dirt road that leads to this hiking trail goes through a training zone for the Israeli Army, to be specific its where they do their target practice for rockets and whatever else. So it was fun checking out the left-over’s of the rockets, or the targets, or whatever else we found. In general it was pretty cool running around a real life desert. But of course it would have been nice to have done the hike we came to do (and the view from the top was supposed to be amazing).

You can see pics form the trip in the below link:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=161957&id=661621936&l=f2e6a5f690

The rest of our weekend was very similar to the experience described above. On Friday we tried to go to the new IKEA in Rishon, it’s the second one in Israel, the one in Netania has been there for 2 years. It was a mad house, with a line for cars to get in and another one for people to get in after they have stood in the line for the cars. We drove around and drove back home. Mind you this was after we spent good 45 min driving around looking for it.


After we went on our trip to the desert we decided to try to go to IKEA again. This time it was even worse!!! The line was all the way from the highway. We drove away then too. I don’t understand why the insane lines, its not like IKEA is completely new to the country, its been here for years, it’s just a new location. Ehh whatever we went to the other location that’s farther way, and I hope will not have to go back to for a long long time :)

Trip to Me'arat Keshet (Arch) & Akko City

This past weekend after having explored a bit of the desert prior weekend, Dima and I decided to move on to greener pastures. Which in Israel can only mean one thing - we went north.

It’s amazing how tiny this country is. We drove about 20 minutes out east and spent the rest of the way going north along the West Bank border. The separation barrier wall, the one that stirred up all that controversy in 2006 when it was started, ran along the highway we were on at some points, so I actually saw it, its sad that is has to be there. At one point the distance between the border and the coast is about a 10min car ride. Anyway that was a tangent, back to our trip.

The place we went to was right below the border with Lebanon, I would say we were 5 minutes away from Lebanon. Too bad we could not go there, would be cool to check out Beirut. The entire trip from Tel Aviv took us about 1.5 hours.

So Me'arat Keshet is an old cave that has caved in (for a lack of a better word :), up in the mountains. Its very scenic and a great hiking area. Side-note the entire area looked a lot like Milos, a Greek island we went to last summer/fall. We climbed around there for a while and then drove a little southward to a city called Akko.

It’s a very old city that has been continuously populated since 16 BC, can you believe that?? It’s over 3600 years old. The old city that still stands there now was built by the crusaders and others (at least that is what I understood). It seems the crusaders were responsible for the tunnels and a citadel (which was used by the British mandate as a prison). From my understanding some of the construction there dates back to 12th century. Its fascinating to see people still living there.

Well that’s that for the trip. We are now itching closer to finishing up project "Make this place a home". You know a lot of it is just cleaning up, furnishing, fully unpacking everything and stocking up on food.

Here is a link to the Facebook album from this trip:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=160117&id=661621936&l=8e34da512f

Retraction to my first post!

I have a retraction - people in Israel do have dryers! My statement was based on 2 specific observations:


1 - Last summer I spent a week in Israel staying with Dima in his shack. I spent a good deal of time doing his laundry during that week of precious vacation time, and all I had at my disposal was a washer, no dryer in sight.
2 - When walking around checking out Israel I noticed that many windows and balconies have cloths-lines with stuff drying on them.


For whatever reason it did not occur to me that the living conditions in a shack (in a small town) and random observations (I air dried some of my cloths in the States because the dryer would ruin them) might only reflect a part of the whole story.

Well... upon further investigation, i.e. asking 1 person, I found out that some people do, in fact, own dryers. I am not going to estimate the percentage here, however this is a wonderful discovery.

I no longer have to feel guilty and spoiled about desperately wanting to buy a dryer! Which I will do as soon as possible for the following reasons:
1 - When your towels air dry, they come out feeling like dry, crinkly, cardboardy hay, instead of the fluffy, wonderful blankets of warm comfort you want to wrap around yourself after a nice hot shower.
2 - Air drying takes way too long.
3 - Also I have been told that cloths need to be ironed after air drying since they automatically come out wrinkled?!?!


Now I don’t know about this yet since I was only able to do one wash (of towels) before the water pipe connector thingy broke and I was left yet again without a functioning washing machine.

I might have to come back to the States to do my laundry like a dirty collage kid coming home for a break.

New Year/Country New Me

Hello everybody,

Have not posted in a  while, have been trying to get the internet connection situation in check... still working on that. However while its still working i am going to put up a quick new post. Its going to be a bummer if it breaks right in the middle of me writing this.

So the pic you see above is from the very first dinner I "cooked" in Israel, which took place earlier this week. You see the thing is that our stove is out of gas and to get the gas hooked up is a big hoopla that I am not going to go into here but to say the least we have had to go out a lot to eat which, if you know me, was great news.

Ok on to more important things. It was my B-day couple of days ago and to celebrate all the new things in my life I decided to make a little change in my appearance. It somehow got in to my head that I must go blond, however all the hairdressers that I approached with this told me that its a horrible idea. They did it in a nice, straight forward Israeli way that made me feel stupid but grateful. In the end I settled for some highlights and a nice chop to the length.

All in all... I am starting to get sick of new me....nehh.... just kidding, its all good :)

Day Trip - Shivta Park

Today we decided to take a day trip in order to break up the monotony of working on the apartment.

Tel Aviv is smack in the center of the country and we decided to go down south to the desert. While it seemed that we were in a completely different hemisphere, we actually just went about 1.5 hrs south. For perspective - we were almost half way to Elat, which is the very tip (border) of the country on the south. There are many hiking and sight-seeing trips one can take around this tiny country; the one we settled on today was a trip to Shivta National Park. It’s an ancient city, which was settled in 1st century B.C. by the Romans, and abandoned in 9th century B.C.; it’s an archeological site now, its nice ruins to walk around in for a while :).

The interesting thing that happened on the way was: it actually rained as we were driving in the desert... I thought that was really cool.

Also its been raining for about 3 days here, which is considered the best thing ever since it rains so rarely, with Israel being situated mostly in the desert and all. So everyone is super excited. So as we were driving and getting close to the site, we saw a bunch of cars puling over on the side of a bridge and people getting out and taking picks. We of course did the same. It turns out people were taking picks of the water that had gathered in a stream below. It was pretty un-climactic, however I guess when you consider where we were it becomes kind of cool. But funny still so we took a pick as well :)

Here is the link to the entire album from that trip:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=159450&id=661621936&l=58b3a158ce

Week in, none the wiser

Hello,

My new update:

I have signed up for school which does not start till April, which means that for the next month I will largely be a bum, not sure how I feel about that: Guilty I guess, bored a little - in anticipation of being bored. I have grand plans to look for something exciting to do but who knows what the reality will be.

We have managed to paint another room, now we just have the small spaces left to paint (kitchen, hallways etc). Ohh and of course we have to fix all the mistakes we have made and the doors which are in terrible shape. All in all still a lot to do. The big question is will our landlord approve? We did not ask him before doing all this stuff so i hope he does not flip. At the moment I am choosing not to think about it.

Now on to the exiting developments: we have purchased a TV and a washing machine. The way it works here is that if you want a fridge, stove, or a washing machine (no one has dryers, you dry your stuff the old fashioned way: air-dry) you have to bring them with you from apartment to apartment (even if you are renting), nothing comes with the home/rental. So for the first time in my life I purchased a washing machine, which was a very interesting experience. Besides the fact that you have to bargain for the price of everything, which gets really annoying when you are not used to it, people try to swindle you left and right. For example you can purchase one thing and then something completely different will get delivered, or they will outright lie, at least that is what we think happened to us. Now we are not 100% on this but we are pretty sure that when we were promised a full HD TV, what we were actually given was an old crappy model that was not even HD Ready. At this point we went to a chain and bought there, a bit more expensive but a piece of mind.. or so we hope :)

Another reason I love America: Everything is HUGE, you may not realize this now but comparatively speaking.. huge. I was in shock when I was looking at these washing machines. From the outside they look normal but then you look inside to where the cloths go they are teeny-tiny. My aunt tried to reassure me that I was crazy and that she used a 5 kilo machine (that's how much fits inside per wash, about 10 lbs) her whole life, with a family of 5 (including 2 growing boys), and since I only have to wash for 2 I should be fine with a 3 kilo (6 lbs) machine. My response to this was: Listen lady I am sure that it was great, but when you are used to a machine that fits the entire apartment inside, going to a 3 kilo machine... well... you might as well just wash it all by hand.

We proceeded to purchase the largest machine option they had which was 7 kilos (about 15 lbs). Just for comparison; now I cant be sure since I never bought a machine before but a normal machine in the States probably fits about 30 lbs.

My next adventure is getting a cell-phone plan which I started today and plan to complete tomorrow. I will let you know how it goes but should be fun since this too is a bargaining exercise.

After living here for a while I think I will be able to go back to the states and become a negotiator :)

First Impressions

Hello everyone,

Ok let me tell you a little bit about my first few days here (let's see today is the 5th).

Came in early in morning of the 17th Wednesday - the processing for immigrants (there was a total of 61 of us on the flight) at the airport was quite short and fast, which was surprising since I thought it was going to take forever. The only snag was that they lost our pictures so we were the last to be called after everyone else was escorted out, (this reminded me a bit of when we immigrated to US and they lost/misplaced our documents and it was a big pain in the butt that lasted 3 days, except that sucked much much more), and they had to take pics on the spot which means I look super tired in our official documents, as we just came off of a 10hr flight. Anywho then we promptly came home and passed out pretty much right away.

Thank god Dima already rented us an apartment in the middle of Tel Aviv - by Israeli or more specifically Tel Aviv standards ( Tel Aviv is the NYC of Israel with real estate prices to match) its pretty nice, by US standards.... its ok :). The hood is nice though.

So we slept on and off the entire day and night and managed somehow to wake up at 11am the next day - jet lag is a PAIN.

Thursday the 18th - so now I was able to take full stock of our living arrangement and decided that something needed to be done... and this is how our little renovation project came about. By the way having to shower while holding the shower head is a big pain in the ass, just an FYI, unless you have experienced it, in which case you know.

As i am reading this I am beginning to realize how spoiled I am ..... man.. I love America!

So now along with having to buy everything for the apt (although Dima already got a couch and a bed, and some kitchen stuff) we also needed a whole lot of paint and all the other supplies. By the way our outlets suck which means that until they get fixed charging my computer is a problem which is why I have not been on line much, along with being quite busy.

Ok so that's pretty much all that we had time to do on Thursday. Ohh and I started getting sick pretty much the minute we landed so by Thursday I was feeling pretty ill; coughing, stuffed up, head throbbing.

Friday the 19th - painted the entire day and since some of the walls were in pretty bad shape it turned out to be a bigger project than expected. And of course whatever it is that I had, got pretty bad, and I felt like dying - even had a fever and chills ( i don't remember the last time I had a fever). Anywho, this is all we did the entire day, with me taking napping breaks :). The day ended with 2 rooms painted and us dirty and exhausted.

Saturday the 20th - we rested a bit and finally got to walk around and relax and even went to the beach, its been unseasonably warm here, like 80 everyday, its pretty crazy coming from sub zero temperatures! Then we did a bunch of shopping for the apt and finished off the 2 rooms we started before.

An interesting thing here is that: Saturday night here, is like Sun night in the States (the 2 days off are Friday and Saturday) so you would think that on Saturday night, before the work week, people would want to stay home and chill but its actually the biggest shopping time of the week, stores stay open super late and EVERYONE goes shopping for everything (IKEA was like a mad house..literally, we had to stand in line to get in), also most stores don't even open till about 7pm, after shabbat. Its pretty much the opposite of the States, where everything shuts down early on Sunday. While this makes sense its still weird to see, at least to me.

Ok thats all I have, its really boring I know, but its whats happening.

Sunday 21th - We are going to continue to make this place more livable for a while still... the plan for tonight is to paint yet another room... But in the end it will be worth it to have a place to want to come home to. Today i am going to go to school to find out when the Hebrew classes start... soo not looking forward to it, but it will be nice to not feel like a mute idiot anymore, which I do pretty much all the time when I am out of the house. Even though most people speak at least a bit of English or Russian, I feel bad asking them to switch. Menus are a whole other issue; when there is no English menu which is happening more than i thought it would.

Ohh and I feel much much better now, I think this cold or whatever is pretty much over (hope Dima does not get it).

Thats it for now.