The Vagaries of Blogger.com

Sometimes, when I hit "publish" on a blog post, the post appears an hour or two later.  Sometimes, that same "publish" doesn't get around to happening until a *day* later.  This is what seems to have happened on Friday, when I published my post with the video about recycling .  Concerned it would send out on Shabbos, instead of putting into the "automatically publish" queue, I officially scheduled it to be published an hour from when I wrote it, which would be about 10:30 Friday morning.  I was not happy Saturday night to see that it finally published.....smack in the middle of Shabbos.  So in case any of you were concerned, it's just a Blogger thing.  You (and I) wouldn't understand!  (And if anyone DOES understand, please contact me!)

How to Recycle in Israel (& a View of Our Neighborhood)

My sister and I had fun making this video while she was here.  As you can see, it takes a little effort to be a good environmentalist here (although the flip side is that there are plastic and bottle recycling bins on many, many street corners, so it's easier here to recycle if you're just, say, walking down the street with a water bottle you've finished).

Auntie and Uncle Guest Post

This is our 4th visit to Ramat Beit Shemesh since Ellen, Shalom Shachne and the girls made Aliyah.  Each visit has been 1 year apart so it makes it very easy to make comparisons.  For our first visit, they had only been in Israel for 2 months.  They were very excited but still getting used to how things worked.  Ellen regaled us with stories of mistakes made while shopping and her struggles with learning Hebrew.  Ilana was already playing with the neighborhood kids.  Penina was complaining that she hated school.  We reminded her that she said the same thing while she was living in Malden--after all, she was almost 13!

When we went out onto their balcony, we looked at the hill across the street and saw a few cranes.  They explained that a new development was being built on the hill.

By our next visit, as they began their 2nd year, you could see a change.  Shalom Shachne and Ellen looked so much more relaxed than they had while living in Malden.  We could see that this is where they were meant to live.  Ilana and Penina were branching out with more after-school activities and had settled in to learning in a solely Hebrew environment. 

As I look out their balcony today, the development across the street has been finished but the cranes have moved over and are starting on another new development.  As they start their 4th year here, their personal development is mirroring the new houses across the street. I marvel when I listen to Ellen on the phone or at a store as she rattles off what she needs in Hebrew.  Both girls are getting wonderful reports from their teachers.

We had fun watching Ilana and Shalom Shachne at their horseback riding lessons.  Penina's business, PhotographyByPenina.com, is taking off.  Ellen is doing some amazing things (I'll leave it to her to update you in a future post)

May they continue to change and grow in such wonderful ways!

Cleaning Help

Here's a little pre-Shabbos tidbit:

Cleaning help here is paid by the hour.  Of course, cleaning help in the US is paid by the hour as well, but here it's a totally different thing.  Here, the cleaner says, "I have x amount of hours available for you.  What would you like me to do?", which is quite a change from, "I have looked at your house and estimate it will take me x hours to clean and here is what the total will cost"!

We have cleaning help two hours a week, which is enough time for the floors to be cleaned (can't believe how good they look and feel after she's done), two bathrooms done, the front stairs and main mirpeset/balcony (unless we have guests and then she cleans the third floor guest room and bathroom instead of the outside spaces).

Just another little tidbit of "things are very different here"!

Blessings

We've been getting blessings from the oddest place lately--our front door!  I bought a doormat that says "Come in Peace" when you enter

and "Go in Peace" when you leave:

Here it is in all its glory.  I looove it (never thought I'd say that about *doormat*, of all things)!

Election Update: It Was a Real Nail-Biter!

So now we've learned what happens in a close race here!  The Mayoral race was a real nail-biter.  Waking up the next morning, we found out that Mr. Incumbent was ahead by 100 votes.  100 votes!  Those of you who feel like your vote means nothing might want to consider moving to Israel. 

By the end of that day's counting, Mr. Incumbent was ahead by 250 votes and the race was so close that the secondary ballots needed to be counted.  These are ballots from disabled people who could not get to one of the handicapped-accessible voting sites, soldiers in the army, and prison inmates (!) (Google told me that, in the US, only Maine and Vermont allow inmates to vote while incarcerated).   It was interesting to hear how these groups of people voted: on the outside of each voting envelope, the voter wrote his/her name and national identity number.  After the votes were delivered back here, the identity information was recorded at the polling places.  The voting slips were then taken out of the envelopes, mixed up and then counted.

And when that was done, Ms. Challenger found out that she had won by over 500 votes!  Woohoo!

Frankly, why anyone wants a job in politics is beyond me, but being Mayor of this city, which has a population about a diverse as I can imagine there being, seems like a particular challenge.  b'eH Ms. Challenger, erm, I mean "Ms. Mayor" will do a great job and be able to implement the vast majority of her expansive platform.  Welcome aboard, Ms. Mayor!

Voting!

Municipal elections are held every five years, so this is our first election season experience here.  Local election day has recently been declared a national holiday (national elections have been days off for a while) with schools and businesses closed, and those that are open (i.e. malls, as this seems poised to be a huge shopping day) having to pay their workers double their regular salary.  Everyone else gets a paid day off. I'm interested to see what voter turnout is like here!

Today we voted for Mayor and City Council.  Since we're not horribly displeased with Mr. 2-Term Incumbent, we're in a win-win situation (although I do think things will be improved if Ms. Challenger wins).

Voting here, in "Start Up Nation" is surprisingly low-tech.  In fact, I couldn't believe that nothing seems to have substantially changed since the voting scene in the 1960s classic movie Salach Shabati, where he enters the voting booth and does a "some of these-some of those", stuffing his envelope with tons of ballots for all the parties that tried their hardest with promises of favors and outright bribes to get his vote (not that anyone tried to bribe us, but a STUNNING amount of improvements to the city have come about in the last few months, leading to a frequent comment of "Wouldn't it be great if it was always election season?!").

We voted at one of the local kindergartens and checked in with our teudat zehut national identity card.  I didn't quite understand the "intake" process, as one person checked our card against her roster and then announced our number out loud and SEVEN other people working the polls checked us off of their lists.  I have no idea what it meant, as she was the only person checking people in and there was only one voting booth....).  We were given one envelope for each race being held and then entered a voting booth, which was a child-height table with a cardboard enclosure, like from a science fair.  In the booth there was a selection of paper ballots representing each group running for City Council (one does not vote for individuals for City Council, rather for a particular political party who has put your supported candidate(s) on its slate.  In our case, a slight dilemma as a woman from our neighborhood [who hosted us our first Shabbos here] was running on one party, and someone we're friendly with from ulpan was running on another party.  Both parties supported our choice for Mayor.  What to do, what to do....).  Ballots are little paper rectangles with one or two big letters standing for the Party's name and the full name written beneath.

 

We learned that it's very important when voting to check that no hanky panky has been done to your ballot, because if the ballot you choose
is bent
or wrinkled
or has anything written on the front or back (even a scribble)
or you put more than two in a ballot envelope
......your vote is invalidated.

I did experience a brief moment of panic when staring at the TON of ballots for the different parties running for City Council.  As there was only one voting booth, I wanted to make sure I didn't hold up the line...There were about 16 different parties running, and I could see how hard it would be for someone with little Hebrew (although I'm not sure it justifies the "tip" below, which was sent out in an innocuous-looking pamphlet called, "Your Guide to Easy Voting" [which perhaps should have been more aptly-called "Your Guide to Easy Voting for Our Party and No Other"]:

After exiting the booth, we deposited our envelope in a big cardboard box (just like in the US, but way more low-tech), took our Identity Cards back and woohoo--we had our first experience participating in Israeli democracy!