Whaoo! Deb and Frank Visit (A Post "Written" [Mainly] in Pictures)

So glad that my one-and-only sister, Deb, and her amazing husband, Frank, came to visit this week! We packed a LOT into a short visit; they were here for 2.5 days while on their way to Italy to see Frank's family.

They had a grand walking tour of our town (at least as much as we've been able to figure out in the three months we've been here....); we walked all the way to the top and then down past our house to the very, very bottom.

We stopped at many parks.....

Scooped up Chana for the afternoon and went out to eat

But, unfortunately, not for gluten-free falafel (found out the place is moving and expanding, not closed permanently.  Whew)

Explored the Old City wandering the beautiful streets

and visiting the Kotel

It felt nice and safe.  There was plenty of extra security there but very few people visiting.  It's a very difficult time for the merchants in the Old City.  I hear they're really having trouble earning a living with so few tourists coming through....

We toured an INCREDIBLE stalactite cave that's right nearby (now on the fun-genda for any of you who come visit!)

This is, clearly, *outside* the cave (no photos inside) but I loved how we were up in the clouds

And, in general, just hung out.

Anyone surprised that Deb ended up with the most properties in Monopoly?!  (Although Ilana actually had the most money and won the game.  I went bankrupt and needed to rely on loans from my fellow sweetie-pie players [and kept asking why there was no option like "get a job" or "get a second job"])

 It was really lovely and we miss them already!

(Hint hint to others: Israel is really not so far once you're going to pretty much any place across the Atlantic.  Our guest room is set up and ready for more visitors, so please make your reservation today!)

Hebrew is a "right to left" language

I know most of you know that.  I knew that.  But it's really different to see how this plays out in day-to-day life.

Like here are the hours of one of the local supermarkets:

Did you do a double-take?  I did, when I first saw it ("how can it close before it opens?!")

And this is how papers are stapled here:

When we opened our bank account, I kept giggling when I saw the clerk stapling things in the upper right corner.  Opening a bank account was a very long and involved process with much stapling of papers, so I'm glad I could keep myself amused....

Calendars--man, those will keep us on our toes!  Sunday is in the right hand corner and it all goes right to left.  Or "backwards" as I usually think of it. Check out when Chanukah is on the calendar below.

And, lastly, let's not forget that, often, things will go right to left and then left to right in the same page.  This is usually used when writing "Hinglish" (one must get good at estimating how much space will be needed for the other language's words).  In the example below, in the black rectangle, everything is written right to left.  Except the phone number.  Those are always written left to right :).

Giant Challah Bake

Tonight started the festivities for the Shabbos Project, a worldwide effort to get as many as people as possible to experience one Shabbos (check the link to see if something is happening near you!). Tonight, Penina and I joined my friend from ulpan and two of her daughters, and 1000 other women (!) at a giant challah bake (there may still be time for you to join a challah bake near you--there is a 1000-woman event happening in Boston tonight, too).  It was SUCH a sweet event.  It was Penina's first time "taking challah" and there is a lot of holiness in such a time.  SO proud of her.

 We had a lovely representation from our ulpan and it was so nice that, between neighbors and ulpan folks, it felt like I really knew a few people

Faina, the most amazing ulpan teacher, center, with women from my class on the right (I'm in the back, of course) and three women from the next level on the left side.  

The event was just what it was supposed to be: a mix of old and young (and everything in between), religious and secular (and everything in between), women who were "old hands" and making challah and those who had never done it before (and...well, you get the idea).  It was absolutely beautiful and Penina and I were both very glad we went.

Delightfully, Penina ended up right next to......one of Temima's sisters-in-law who came to meet our aliyah flight!!!! This sister-in-law lives in Beit Shemesh, so it wasn't as crazy as meeting up with, say, the sister from the Galilee who drove several hours to the airport, but, still, there were 1000 women there!

 


Can't wait to taste the finished products tomorrow night!  (btw, we have nicknamed Penina's giant 6-strand challah, "The Challah that Ate New York".  Ilana made hers with cinnamon and raisins to give Chana a wonderful surprise when she comes home this week for Shabbos.  Although there is FABULOUS bakery challah all over the place here, we have only seen plain or sesame, not raisin).

Good Shabbos!

Adventures in Iced Coffee

Conversation in Hebrew:

Me: "One regular iced coffee please".  I am delighted that I finally understand what "regular" and "light" mean in terms of premade slushie iced coffee (there are sometimes two machines and one will make coffee using skim milk.  If I'm splurging on a coffee, I'm going full fat!)

Worker at ice cream store: "10 or 15?"

Me: "umm, no" (wondering where this simple conversation has gone so terribly wrong as I try to calculate if I have enough money for 10 or 15 coffees and how I would get them home.  Then I wonder what we would DO with 15 coffees, there being only 4 of us at home....).  "No, just one please"

Worker (trying hard not to giggle.  He did a [reasonably] good job): "Do you want the 10 shekel size or the 15 shekel size" and he held up cups to illustrate his point :)

We have had one full month of ulpan (lots of time off for the Holidays).  It's clearly helping, but not fast enough!

Note for all Grandmothers on this list: she did not drink both of them.  But it makes for a funny photo :)

Geshem!

Your private ulpan Hebrew lesson starts now.  See, you already know the word for rain.  Very good!

On Shemini Atzeret/Simchas Torah, we began saying the prayer for rain.  The next day was overcast but dry ("it was so everyone could take down their sukkah" said Shalom Shachne).  The *next* day: TONS of rain.  It was great!  Also very amusing to see the very big differences in how people dressed.  Some were in their usual short sleeves and some people were wearing winter coats and boots!  Penina quite delighted to wear her new "Hunters" (aka fancy rain boots that she saved up her $ to buy before we moved).  Too bad that it started raining during the night for the first time.  Sheva (doing great in her new job and enjoying Chicago, thank you for asking!) said that, when she was here, people danced in the street when it first rained!!!

Zelda, another student in ulpan (and who sat a few rows in front of us on the Aliyah plane) said, "Look what we can do when we all put our minds to it.  Now all we need to do is just daven for Moshiach!".

Sukkos Fun in Israel

The holiday of Sukkot is all-out, crazy, over-the-top fun here in Israel.  The kids have off of school (and we have off of ulpan) for over 1.5 weeks.  On the intermediate days of chol hamoed people go on trips and outings.  Since many adults don't work during chol hamoed these tend to be full-family trips, meaning that places are VERY crowded (it's a small country, but, still, when you think of the vast majority of even a small country on vacation at the same time, you can see how places get busy).

We started off at the nearby Biblical Museum of Natural History.  Thank you Elisha and Annabelle for the strong recommendation to go there--all of us had a great time.  I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:

They had a very interesting and large shofar collection.  Shalom Shachne, of course, had to try them all :)

How could this not be the last picture of our trip?!

Sukkot-a-Palooza

Things have really been happening around here!  We're still up to our eyeballs in packing boxes, but there's hope on the horizon.  Our big accomplishment was getting Chana's full-size bed up to the third

floor after the movers gave up b/c of its size and left it on the second floor on moving day (her floor has a rather small doorway with quite a tight turn going into it).  Which was fine until Chana actually came home for the weekend and was hoping to sleep on something other than an air mattress....  My amazing husband borrowed a LOT of rope and he made a pulley from the third floor balcony to the second floor balcony.  Chana pushed and he and I pulled and, hoorah, she now has her bed :)

The city (country, I should say) has been really excited for the holiday of Sukkot.  The mercaz was on absolute overdrive, with an entire open air marketplace set up before the holiday and tons of vendors hawking their holiday-related wares:

Etrogim (crazy expensive, although much less so here than in the US)

Plastic fruit is always in style for decorating the sukkah :)

It was MOBBED in the mercaz

The Jewish version of "how do I get this thing home?!"

When we sold our Boston house to the B's, we switched Sukkahs with them, as our large wooden one was made for that back yard and would never fit on the small porches found in Israel.  So their (former) Sukkah is up on our mirpeset and we only hope that Ariella B, who is coming along with the rest of last year's BY graduating class for Shabbos this week (hooray!) doesn't feel overwhelmed by the sheer weirdness of sitting in *her* family's sukkah on *our* mirpeset!