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.