The Bag of Life.....and Meir

Let me tell you about our PAPERS. Ever since we started the aliyah process last May we have had a file of papers that have become extrenely important to us - these includes our original birth certificates, our marriage certificate, our application to immigrate, etc.  We had kept these papers in a very special place in our apartment in Baltimore which we called the BLUE BAG OF LIFE, which was a Seven Mile Market bag that hung in our coat closet.  Every few weeks we'd review it and see what was missing, what we still needed to do, etc.

THEN, since the day we got here we have had more and more papers which we had been told we must keep with us at all times.   Gila gave us a pink Rami Levi bag for this purpose, which was completely fitting since we are now shoppping in Israeli supermarkets (thought I do miss the new 7MM, I gotta say) - so now we have a PINK BAG OF LIFE (hereafter known as PBOL).

OK, so we have shlepped the PBOL to every office we have visited - even taking the papers we didn't think anyone would ask for.  After all, who's to say that the Maccabi office won't want to see the letter about your Jewishness or your birth certificate?  Or the bank - they may want to see that we have a tofes yarok! 

Now to today - frankly, we are traumatized and may need some kind of Maccabi help.  Why?  Because we called the famous driving instructor who Gila used - Meir.  Meir came by and met us in the parking lot of Gila's building.  He asked to see our tofes yarok and.....HE TOOK IT FROM US!  Woe is us, someone took something from our PBOL!  We felt violated.  We're still getting over it.  In exchange he handed us (not a fair trade if you ask me) a small piece of paper that we now have to hand to soemone in the post office and pay a fee for the driving test.

That will be an adventure for another day.  Gila has warned us to do drive-bys of the post office and if there is a line coming out of the door, we should just keep a'drivin.

Also today we got our Israeli credit cards and checks (hebrew word for checks - checkim).  In our zeal we walked out of the bank and tried to use the ATM machine.  DUMB.  Of course the machine ate the card.  Why?  Because the sweet lady at the bank who has really been wonderful and helpful gave us the wrong PINs.  Another thing we did - found a dry cleaner and dropped off clothes.  How.....residential of us.  Did we ever think that a stop at the dry cleaner would make us feel victorious?

Tomorrow we meet with the olim-helper lady in Modiin who speaks English.