Getting Good With the Cardboard

Cardboard is my new favorite building material: here are our bookshelves

We have a bunch of them--all a set (good thing the recycling bin outside the shoe store was full of matching green boxes, because I'd hate my fancy book cases to not match....)

I also made a utensil holder from a 2 liter water bottle

Donating Blood in Israel

Three times a year the Beit Shemesh Blood Drive is held.  I signed up to volunteer while we were still in the US.  I was assigned to either "take blood pressures or give out drinks and snacks".  Fine with me--I can handle either (they said they would provide me with a stethoscope if I ended up taking bp's, since mine is on our lift).  This amazing woman who ran it told me she started it in 1998 and has organized 46 blood drives since then!  HERO!  (And the computer programmer guy who, for many, many years has volunteered to drive people to/from the blood drive [and was so experienced at doing it that, while he was driving me and some others, a call came in and, when he heard the man's name, he asked, "you live on .......street, right?"]--HERO!).

In the end, it was pretty quiet when I was there, so they didn't really need me to volunteer in any way except to give blood.  I specifically didn't give blood before we left so that I would be able to donate at the Blood Drive (seemed like a nice way to give back to our new community).

Donating here was really an interesting experience.  First off, the entire form was in Hebrew, but, before I panicked, I saw that they had a laminated copy of an English translation.  Whew.  Then off to pre-donation clearance ("have you ever had Mad Cow disease?").  I had to stop the woman and tell her (in Hebrew, per my ulpan teacher) that I was a new immigrant and I don't know much Hebrew yet and did she speak English?  Between her moderate English and my moderate Hebrew (she was better than me!), we got through the whole form.  She was so delighted that I was an olah chadashah.  It's really sweet how people here really get a kick out of new immigrants (unlike, say, many other places in the world.....).   Off to another booth for a finger stick: "Ooh," said the nurse, "13.6!  That's GREAT".  Me, "Wow!  That IS great!  Must be because I've eaten so much more meat since we moved here".  Her: "NO!  It's Israel!  It is such a good country--it is good for you!  You get blessings being here."  Everyone was beyond sweet and showered me with blessings for a good New Year and a good absorption (there it is again!).  There were five stations to get through the donation process, and, when each person sent me on her way she told the next one I was a new immigrant.  When the person checking me in saw the date on my teudat zehut she did a double-take and said, "You really ARE a new immigrant".

Then I received a booklet with the date stamped inside and they told me I was now eligible for "Blood Insurance".  Basically, if a person needs blood in Israel, they are required to find family/friends to donate blood in their name, so the blood supply does not get depleted, and, especially, so the supply is there if soldiers need it.  I found the details quite interesting: http://www.shemesh.co.il/bd/BloodDriveAllAboutBloodInsurance.html.  By doing a proactive donation, I ensured that my family can receive as much blood as they need (hopefully none!) for the next year.  Quite different than getting a t-shirt and a coffee mug like at Children's (always my favorite place to donate), but really a sensible plan.

Fun fact: Magen David Adom in Israel, who staffs the blood drive, is known as "MADA" here. I keep walking by their various ambulances, which all contain the names of donors on the side, and I fully expect that, one day, I will see a name or community I know.

The Library

We are very big library users, so, of course, we were delighted that the library here has a small English language section.  The challenge is that the whole system works differently here: we had to pay a yearly membership fee based on how many books we wanted to take out each time.  And "50" was not a choice....The most was 10 books out at a time, so I got that (cost about $45 for the year, which is comparable, if not a lot less, than what we pay in library fines back in the US).

I went this morning, as the library is conveniently located in the same community center where we adults take ulpan.  It has been veeery quiet this afternoon as the kids read some old favorites as well as a few new things I picked up.  Seeing the small number of books (and hearing from someone that her daughter donated the entire collection of "Babysitter's Club" books that are there) made me wish that I had put on our lift at least some of the many, many boxes of books we got rid of.  I did consider it before we left, but, not being sure if our stuff would even fit on the lift without taking things to donate, I chose not to do more than think about it.

Maybe next summer when we come back to the US, I'll bring back an empty ToteATon and everyone who has kids' books to donate can give them to me (assuming they are paperback and don't equal more than the 50 lbs I can take in a checked bag)?!

Let's Review: The Past Few Days

EZG: No real theme here, just miscellany from the past few days:

--Thursday, Ilana tried out an after-school dance class.  She LOVED it and I had to smile when I came in at the end and they were dancing to one of the girls' favorite songs: Shaindel Antelis singing "A Sister's Love".  She can't wait for this week's class ;)

--On Shabbos we went down the street for Friday night dinner.  The P's made aliyah last year from NJ and have older children as well as a 6 y/o and a daughter in 10th grade.  When they came last year, she was the only new immigrant in the 9th grade.....Makes me so grateful that there are 4 olim in Penina's class

--Shabbos day we went to our old homeschooling friends, the Werners .  Eight of their ten children were home for the weekend, and we got to meet the totally adorable Yirmi, their youngest.  It was quite a far walk and we got pretty lost (too bad it was Shabbos and I couldn't take a photo of our shoes *covered* with dust because they live in a part with construction going on.  It was funny to see four pairs of black shoes with so much white on them).  Nice to reconnect with them and hear the neat paths each of their kids is on.

Good Shabbos From Our Tidy Home

Just a quick post because our dinner hosts start early-early Shabbos (their shul davens at 5:30 and candle-lighting isn't until 7!).....

Things here are going so well.  No ulpan today.  As much as I love it, it is very hard work concentrating so long and I have been frustrated that I haven't been able to get the house together.  Thankfully, today was the day for getting the house as in-shape as it will likely be without dressers, a china cupboard, etc.  I was able to borrow lots of boxes from our neighbors (the ones who made aliyah just a few weeks before us) and they are our pseudo-dressers.

Ilana's room.  We brought the polka dot stickers with us

Penina's room.  If you couldn't tell by all the shoes.  

Penina and I met on her way home from school and went shopping for Shabbos lamps.  It will make such a nice improvement in our house to have these again.

Penina came home on her own because she wanted to do some shopping.  Sweetie pie bought me roses :)

Good Shabbos!

The Rest of Us Start School

Today, Ilana started "Kitah Daled" (4th grade).  She and I walked to her school and, yahoo, it only took about 15 minutes and was a pretty easy walk after we got up the 7 (!) flights of stairs between our house and the main street two levels above us (we're going to get in such great shape here!).

The school did such a nice job preparing for the beginning of the year.  The other day, we went to a meeting with all the other new olim in the school.   It was really nice to meet the other parents and kids (especially the two from the Greater Boston area).  Today, they had students waiting at the front gate with "elementary school bling" (like rubber bracelets exhorting the kids to cross the street safely), the loudspeaker was blaring the Yeshiva Boys Choir "V'eahavta" ("love your friend as yourself"), there was a ballon arch, the school was extremely clean, and they had cute decorations in the hallways.  Oh yeah, and the bell that rings when it's time to go in is an instrumental version of "Hamalach Hagoel".  

They also have CROSSING GUARDS at this school--girls who appear to be in 5th or 6th grades who get vests and long sticks with stop signs on the ends.  They even stuck them into the street and stopped traffic for *me* to cross (I hope they don't let the power go to their heads....).  I was already feeling that we had chosen the right school but seeing the crossing guards totally pushed it over the edge for me ;).  Here it is absolutely not unusual at all to see a 5 year-old walking a 3 year-old sibling around and crossing busy streets.  I will give Israeli drivers a nod that, though they drive like total lunatics, they will generally come to a screeching halt if a young child is trying to cross the street.

It was Chana's first day at Seminary:

She is holding the "b'ahava" ("with love") package that Penina and Ilana made for her.  I dropped her off at the seminary (the school and the other girls seems very nice) and helped her get unpacked before attempting to come home in our rental car, missing the exit for the highway, and following my crazy GPS that, instead of just having me turn around, sent me "the back way" (I wish I could put ominous music to the phrase "the back way"), which involved driving on a winding, two lane road on the side of a huge cliff.  The scenery was absolutely breath-taking (the nanosecond views of it that I took, that is) and it really wasn't dangerous because there was a guard rail, but I will still not too happy.  The route was so winding that I actually got carsick, which I thought was impossible to have happen to the one driving!

Today was the day for us adults to register for *our* school--ulpan--intensive Hebrew instruction.  We had received an email stating that we should "come at 9.  No need to come early.  There will not be instruction that day".  We arrived at 9:05 and discovered a line out the door.  40 minutes later they told us to get out of the line and come inside to the auditorium for a presentation about ulpan (which took a while to get basic info across because they translated everything from Hebrew into English and French) and then they divided us up into groups by our personal guess of our level (I'm in second level and SS is in 4, which is the highest) and brought us upstairs for instruction ;).  Thankfully, it was just basic testing and didn't take too long (I had a huge to-do list since we had a rental car).  Tomorrow, we start classes from 8:30-12:45 Sunday-Thursday for the next five months.  Can't wait to start speaking better.

In Israel, Getting a Refrigerator Delivered is a Religious Experience (from Shalom Shachne)

Last week, we had our refrigerator delivered.

Unless you have been shlepping huge piles of luggage in the blazing Israeli sun, and then racing around an unfamiliar hot apartment struggling to make everything work, and are constantly thirsty, it's hard to appreciate how hard it is to live without a refrigerator even for a day.  (And of course, you can't store any food, so you have to keep running out to buy things to eat.  And of course, the kids are constantly hungry and thirsty.)

So anyway, the day after we arrived to our apartment, late in the afternoon, our refrigerator arrived. Out of the delivery truck popped two swarthy, secular-looking Israelis, who called me downstairs to to explain the situation.  They were shaking their heads ominously, saying that the refrigerator wasn't going to fit through the apartment door. They asked me for a measuring tape to check.  We took various measurements with my US tape measure and then a centimeter tape that a neighbor loaned us.  The situation looked dire.

When I pointed out that once they took the refrigerator out of the box, and took off the refrigerator doors, that it should probably fit, they still insisted that it was too wide:  there was a pipe in the back of the fridge, the doorway narrowed in a certain section, etc.  However, the lead mover (one was very large and strong, and the other was very thin and wiry) then said, ״הקדוש ברוך הוא יעזור״.  This roughly translates to "G-d will help".

I went in to tell Ellen the bad news, and told her to start saying Tehillim (Psalms), because we really felt like we needed that refrigerator.  (Again, you have to understand the level of exhaustion, and psychological hardships of living with no furniture for so many weeks, and no kitchen, to understand why this was so important to us.)   They removed the refrigerator from the box which improved the situation quite a bit.  Then, while the thin wiry mover whipped out an electric screw-driver to start removing the doors, the husky mover strapped our gas stove to his back (which was being delivered at the same time), and struggled up the stairs.  (I had to give a little assistance to prevent him from pitching forward down the stairs when he turned around to set the stove down at the entrance to the apartment.)

Once the fridge doors were off, I raced back down the stairs to take the measurements again.  Truthfully, it actually wasn't even close to being a tight fit through entrance once the doors were off.  But it still wasn't an easy task getting the large fridge up the narrow staircase.

At last the refrigerator was in place, with the doors back on, with its compressor humming away happily (for us).  As the movers turned to leave, the large one came up to me, to tell me how he really he was shomrei Shabbos, and putting on Tefillin every day, and sending his children to a Bet Sefer (school) to learn Torah.  It is typical here, where the cab drivers routinely bless G-d when you get in the car, that you can't see how religious people are in their hearts.

And even though we didn't really need a miracle to get the refrigerator into the apartment, G-d was still obviously involved from beginning to end.