Blog/August 2007/August 17th

Augst 17th 2007

Our third shabbat is almost here. This past shabbat we met a few new people, including a "meter maid" who reminded me of the comedian Yakov Smirnoff. This week we'll be staying in Haifa at my friend Yohai's place, since we need to be in Haifa on Sunday to meet the customs agents regarding our shipment. B"H, we should have our stuff sometime next week... more later.

We've had a very busy week, and finally seem to have got a handle on all our paperwork. I don't yet have medical insurance, but am attempting to arrange private insurance (note for any Israelis who want to come back home: you *must* talk with bituach leumi and arrange your accounts at least six months before you come back!). For those of you keeping score, we have been to the "misrad hapnim: 4 times; misrad haklita: 2 times; bituach leumi: 5 times; the bank: 2 times). And no, there is no phrase for "customer service" in Hebrew. The ladies of the house do now have medical insurance, B"H.

I am supposed to get a decision on the interview I had last week, this coming week. In the meantime I'm slowly getting things set up. We now have a printer/fax machine (so if you want to send us a fax, call us first and we can make it happen).

In more entertaining news, we had scheduled a technician to come out and fix our air conditioning this Wednesday. We waited and waited, and finally I called the company to see where the technician was. It turned out our landlady had canceled the appointment, because she "thought it was fixed". So I had an opportunity to test out my ability to ream someone in Hebrew. But B"H, the company called to let me know the technician could come this morning (and he is here right now, fixing it). ((it seems to be fixed, thank you!))

The nice people I mentioned last time went on vacation out of town this week, so they handed me the keys to their car and told me to do whatever I needed to do. Unbelievable! But alas - the car is a bit quirky. As I went to open the door yesterday, the key broke (I barely touched it) but fortunately, it broke outside the lock. So I ran to a locksmith, who was able to make a new key which almost works correctly. Now the car is slightly more quirky. Actually, the car was parked outside the City Hall building, where I was meeting the Deputy Mayor of the city. Now I have a friend in the gov't :)

We've been here now for a bit more than two weeks. The people living below us have been here for over a month now. They had the key to the mail box (there is one PO box for each house), but in all this time they had not yet figured out where the PO box was. So the other day, I went to them and took the key, found the mailbox, and got the mail. Imagine my surprise - I was shocked, shocked! - to discover the mail was so tightly packed in the box it was hard to get out. It turns out there was a love letter from the Israeli Electric company, stating that if we (e.g. the residents of the house) didn't pay the electric bill within 6 days, the power to the house would be cut off. Apparently, the previous tenants ran up a rather substantial bill and didn't pay it. As of last night it still hadn't been paid. Our landlord claims it's being taken care of, though I have my doubts.

Sarah has found some girls roughly her age with whom she has something in common , and with whom she gets along. So last night she was at their place having a get-together. They even live close-by. I'm sure once school starts (next Thursday, for her) she will make many more friends and we'll probably not see much of her. Her sister is scheduled to arrive this coming Monday, we're all anxious to see her and we wish her a safe and comfortable journey.

One small thing that takes getting used to is the incredible and confusing variety of kosher foods. The confusing part is that there are various "hechsherim" (kosher certifying authorities) and they do have different standards. It's mind-boggling to go into a regular supermarket where the question to be asked is "which hechsher do I rely on?" rather than "is it even kosher?". I would like to sign off this week, wishing all of you should have that as your biggest problem.