Unwrapping

We have spent the alst two days unwrapping. I am not making this up.  We have unwrapped furniture, china, lamps, sheets, clothes, linens - you name it, it was wrapped in Baltimore and unwrapped in Modiin.  We even had a little action figure who has become a family joke (don't ask), and he was double/triple/quadruple wrapped as well. 

But "wrapping" just doesn't describe how this packing was done.  If the ship our lift was on had been through a hurricane, earthquake, and volcano I am certain that everything would have arrived safely.  We are stymied by how the packers labeled things - a box with three books and a tray was labeled "hallway accessories."  And a box with candlesticks was labeled "china."  I mean, candlesticks are the same in any culture, right?  But it's the layers upon layers of paper that astound us - we have taken out about 15 bags of paper so far.  Save what forests?

And although I know you are all relieved that we discovered what was in the sewing machine box, thus far we have not found our Shabbos dishes - not that we plan to spend Shabbos there yet.

You see, as of today we have no electricity and there are no...um...plumbing fixtures.  Let's just leave it at that.  We HOPE to get electricity tomorrow.  Which would be good because, believe it or not it is freezing cold in that apartment.

I know, I know, it's Israel, how cold can it be?  Well, try staying in an unheated apartment in Israel once the sun goes down and you'll find out.  It's bone chilling.  Probably because everything is constructed with concrete and stone.  Now that is great in the summer when you want to preserve the cool inside, but terrible for winter if your heat is not working yet.  Yesterday it took my hands and feet two hours to come back to normal temperature after a day of unpacking.

So we head over to our new place every morning with a gleam in our eyes and hope in our hearts, ready for a day of unpacking.  We arrive around 9 and it feels just fine in there.  "It's not cold," we say, "what were we thinking yesterday?"  Then, after about 1 or 2 pm the you notice you keep rubbing your hands together and putting your hand over your nose to warm it up.  Then you start dreaming of getting under about 15 blankets in your bed, then you realize you are shivering.  Then it's time to go home.

But every day brings a new adventure.  Today Bern went to the city office to show them our contract and our Teudat Oleh (new immigrant document) so that they charge us only ten gazillion and not a hundred gazillion shekel for our arnona (property tax) and - they were closed. Of course!  It was after 1 pm.  So he called me and asked me to write down the office hours as he read them to me so we'd have it for posterity.

So here's the schedule:
Wednesday - electricity
Thursday - plumbing
Friday - car shopping!

"Service"

Living in Israel and having to deal with contractors, repairmen, salesmen, etc., one learns quickly that "service" has quite a different meaning here than in the US.

You're sort of on your own.  Here are some examples of what they say and what they mean:

"I'll call you when it's ready" = I will not call you when it's ready.  You call me and if I'm around I may tell you if it's ready or not.

"I'll be there at 1:00 pm on Monday" = "I'll be there when I get there.  It may be 9:00 am.  It may be the next day. Or the next week."

And you are not, as in the US, in the position to complain to the Better Business Bureau - they don't have one here.  And even if they did (they may, frankly I didn't research that last statement), not only would the company not care what you said, but no one else would care either. So, you just shake your head or laugh and move on. 

ON THE OTHER HAND, some things are really nice:

You can pay in installments, without interest, for quite a long period of time.  Everyone understands that money is tight and getting paid in installments is better than not getting paid at all.

Everything is tied to your bank account - so you really can't buy what you can't afford because it's going to come out of your own money right away.  Smart.

Medical care - for all the inconvenience of the lab not being in the same building as the doctor, I could check my strep test results online.  And all of one's medical records are online nationally.

And ON THE OTHER OTHER HAND, some things are awesome, like:

The shofar-like "alarm" that you hear in some cities when Shabbos starts - I absolutely love that. 

Living on a street named Sarah Imeinu, which is parallel to a street named Rachel Imeinu. Cooler than other streets we've lived on: Garrison, Summerson, Gardenwick....not to mention West 111th and Bennett Avenue.....

Going to a government office building and noticing that they all have mezuzos on their doors.

This week we are trying to get our apartment in order - it's dusty and a bit dirty, and our stuff is piled on top of the dust and dirt, and we won't have electricity for a few days, but it's ours.  We sat on our couch today and looked out at the most awesome view and could not really fathom that this is our home. 

The Driving Test

First of all since I know many of you stayed home from work today so you could find out what happened on our driving test, I'm going to put you out of your misery and tell you that......hahahahaha, you have to read all the way to the bottom to find out and no cheating!

We spent the morning worrying and fretting - and also practice-driving.  We looked at yield signs, stop signs, walkway signs, left turns, right turns, until we felt a bit more confident.  Then it was time to mosey on over to our apartment and try to make some sense out of the mass of boxes.

We made progress and met our new neighbors, a lovely couple with 3 high school kids.  They came over to introduce themselves and between their mangled English and my mangled Hebrew we understood each other. The husband had given us a couple of celebratory chocolate candies yesterday when he got his keys.  Anyone who celebrates with chocolate is my kind of guy.

And...we opened the "sewing machine" box.  In which we found a small sewing kit and a bunch of other miscellaneous stuff.  No idea why the packer dude decided to write that on the box, but I have a sneaking suspicion that he was giggling as he walked out of our apartment that day.

OK, OK, to the driving test.  We drove to meet the tester (behind a gas station where there are trailers for government offices - both gas stations and trailers are a theme here - many restaurants are located next to gas stations).  Our instructor wished us luck.  We had decided that I'd go first so Bern could relax a bit and watch what the tester was asking me to do. 

The tester took me on the exact route that our instructor had and I thought I'd done well.  Then he suddenly said, pull over.  I thought "Oh no!  I've failed!"  but he just wanted Bern to take over.  Bern did very well and made one error, at which point I thought the tester would say, "that's it, you've failed, it's over."  But he didn't, in fact Bern drove at least 5 minutes longer than I did.  Bern is completely convinced he failed and resigned himself to it.  AND he was a little irritated that since I went first - and on the exact route that our instructor took us on, and HE went on a  different route, maybe he should have gone first!

So we get back to the gas station place and get out and our instructor Meir says he'll call us with the results.

We do some food and cleaning-supply shopping and wait for the call.  We are nervous wrecks.  A lot rides on this.  The phone rings about an hour later and it is Meir.  "Mazal tov!" he says, "you BOTH passed."  We are utterly amazed.  He said the tester noted the one mistake but let Bern drive longer to make sure he didn't make the mistake again.

So yes, folks, in 3 weeks we have done MOST of the stuff we need to.  NEXT we buy a car!  That should be fun too!

Our Stuff Arrives - Inlcuding Our Sewing Machine

Well, like good Israelis we were at our new apartment for the 9:00 arrival of our container.  Which arrived at 11:00.

But not to worry - we are very patient.  It was very comforting to once again see the yellow bashed up container that we last saw on November 29 in Baltimore.  Wow, all our stuff has arrived. It made it through the summer in the warehouse and at the port in Baltimore and across the ocean and at the port in Ashdod and now it's here. 

The mover guys were great - between their Russian and Hebrew and my English and broken Hebrew we made ourselves understood.  I owe a lot to an app I got for my phone which translates what you speak into it (or type into it, but speaking is way cooler).  I found out the Hebrew translation for truck, sofa (it's "sofa"), bookcase, and many other things.  I also realized that if you want something placed "here" you use "po" not "kan."  I also explained how our foam mattress topper goes on top of our foam mattress - they were stymied by that one - they kept looking at each other like, "How much foam does one person need?"

After about 4 hours everything was in the apartment (I mean these guys had to walk everything up two flights of stairs, including a VERY heavy couch, an oven, and a piano), and then they began unwrapping the big stuff, putting things together, etc.  By 5:00 we were done.

It was very comforting to see OUR things in OUR home. Even though it is currently MOSTLY a museum of paper and boxes and tape, some of our stuff did get unwrapped.  I almost wept when I saw my piano which has really been through a lot (mostly neglect from me and the piano tuner).

Oh, and the "sewing machine."  Well, when the nice men packed up our stuff in Baltimore, we were not watching their every move, so one box got packed and labeled "sewing machine."  Now, that's great if we had a sewing machine but we do not.  I am not a sewing person. I will not regale you with my tale of 7th grade Sudbrook Junior High Home Ecnomics class when we had to use a sewing machine to make our own clothes and - are you ready for this one - wear them to school!  Let's just say I would be the last person you'd expect to own more than a random needle and a couple of spools of thread.

When we went to the port, Port Lady interrogated us about said sewing machine which is considered an electrical appliance for which we'd have to be charged customs.  We swore up and down that we don't own a sewing machine, and she was skeptical but in the end she believed us.

So today here comes the box labeled "sewing machine."  But it's under a box which is under a box which is under a box.  When we get to it we'll solve the mystery.

Over the past two days we have also made arrangements for phone, homeowner's insurance, and electricity. 

Tomorow, however (cue the doom and gloom music) is the DRIVING TEST.  Very nervous about that.  We'll let you know what happens.

Document 4

Well, folks, today we have the keys to our apartment.  Here's how it went - yesterday the builder guy said we'd "probably" have the keys today.  At this point we were planning to have our stuff delivered tomorrow, Wednesday.

Today we played phone tag with the builder guy until we finally heard that the papers went through (it is literally called "Tofes Arba" - Document 4) and that we were to meet at the apartment to have the final walkthrough and sign the papers, and....get the keys! 

We were jolly and happy until we realized that even though we could bring our "stuff" into the apartment, there would be no electricity until sometime next week. So our stuff could live there but we couldn't. Well, I hope our stuff is happy. It'll probably be partying without us bothering it by sleeping and sitting on it. And I'm sure it'll be very happy to be out of the container which most of it has been living in since sometime in July.

Then we called back the port people who'd been hounding us all day: "Listen, we need to know if we're delivering tomorrow!  If you wait too long you can't have your things and you'll have to pay millions of shekel!"  So we called them and said ok, you can come tomorrow. And they say, "Well, it may be too late - we'll call you back." 

I think I've become the poster girl for "shpilkes."

But they called back and confirmed - delivery tomorrow at 9 am.  And then we informed them, with great nervousness, "Um, the elevator is not working yet."  I was waiting for the Angry Port Lady to respond with screams and threats.  But she said, no problem, as long as it's no more than 2 flights it's fine.  Whew!

So tomorrow is delivery day and Thursday is driving test day.  Is it Shabbos yet? Please?

The Driving Lesson

Today Meir the Driving Teacher picked us up for our one and only driving lesson.  Our test is on Thursday.

Now I've been driving for approximately 41 years or so (stop doing the math in your heads - I'm 57) so it was a little weird to be in a car with a driving instructor again. 

Meir is a very nice man and was great about teaching us what the signs mean, how, when you make a left onto a one way road you have to turn into the left hand lane and THEN signal to go to the right hand lane (you'll get a headache figuring that one out in your head)

But there are a couple of things that were kind of amusing.  First if all, every once in a while, he would grab the steering wheel and turn it in the direction he wanted me to drive.  Now I don't know about you but I am not a fan of having the steering wheel jerked out of my hand while I'm trying to control a moving vehicle. 

Secondly, he kept telling us to show down.  He's right, the driving tester will probably be watching our speed very carefully but after 4 decades of driving I know how to control a car at say, 5 miles over the speed limit.  I felt like I was 15 again when he said, "Slow down, it's not a race." 

Then, he kept comparing US driving regulations to Israeli ones.  Um, in case you can't guess the Israelis came out as winners every time.  "HA!," he said, "in Israel we have stop signs at all of the traffic lights in case the traffic light is out.  You don't have that in the US do you?  Of course not, becasue if a traffic light goes out in America, it magically gets fixed immediately!  We don't have such money here to do that."  

And he was very proud (rightly so, I might add - the US could learn a thing or two) about the Israeli traffic circles, which seem to be on every other corner.  He kept admiring them and asking us if America has such things.

He also wanted to know about the Jewish communities in Baltimore and Philadelphia - as a dati man, he was interested in the religious communities and how many people lived in them.  He also thought the Liberty Bell was in Baltimore, but hey, he was teaching someone who can only barely get from one neighborhood in Modiin to another without getting hopelessly lost, so I can't fault him there.

In the end, he taught us well and now we only have to pass the test.  Hahahaha!  ONLY is the wrong word.  From what I've heard about the testers, they can be extremely tough.  We plan to do a lot of driving around the area in the next two days to prepare for our test.  Wish us luck.

On the apartment front, apparently the bank has yet to issue some release which the builder than takes to Jerusalem (I'm sure by the very slowest road possible - better yet, maybe the regulation is that he has to walk it there - backwards) and does something with it and THEN, ONLY THEN we MIGHT get our keys.  Right now we have told the port to deliver our stuff on Wednesday, but we'll see if that happens.

In the meantime we are living with our kids and it is not easy on anyone.  We love them and they love us, but no one needs to have live-in guests for going on 3 weeks.  But I have to say that they have been more than gracious, and we love them for it.  And we do get to hug grandchildren any time we want.

One side benefit is that Nadav, our youngest grandson, who is about 20 months old, no longer runs away screaming when he sees us.  He has gotten used to us hanging around, he probably figures that we are fixtures now since for some reason we took his room away from him and are not giving it back, and has even allowed us to play with him.  When we do move, he'll probably walk around looking for us.

"Baruch Hashem"

Today we were at the bank - again.  Here is our brief history of banking:

1. We open a bank account and receive instructions about accessing our account online.
2. We attempt to access our account online.  It works!  Of course it's all in Hebrew, but we figure out with some help.
3. We return to the bank to deposit dollars into our account - we are charged a fee for this.
4. We attempt to go online and change dollars to shekel.  We fail.
5.  We return to the bank for help - oh, you sillies, they say, just because you gave us cash US dollars doesn't mean we automatically let you access that - you have to wait 3 days.  We leave.
6. The nice bank lady calls us and says, Oh since you wanted so much to transfer your dollars to shekel, I did it for you even though you can't do it yet.  Hmmmm we think, we actually didn't want to transfer ALL of those dollars but the lady was so nice we said thank you.
7. We go to pick up our credit cards and checks (this took almost 2 weeks)
8. We try to use our ATM card right outside the bank and the ATM machine eats our card.
9. Another nice lady in the bank yanks the card out of the mouth of the ATM after a bit of a struggle.
10. We fix the ATM card problem.
11. We try to transfer dollars from our US bank account to our Israeli one.  Failure even though we have all of the necessary codes.
12. Leezy gives us a work around for the transfer and we do it and it works!
13.  A week later (see, we know now that we have to wait) we try to transfer dollars to shekel.  We fail.
14. Which brings us to today - we return to the bank and our failure stumps even the nice bank lady.
She says she'll keep trying and call us with an answer.
15. She calls us!  the answer?  You can't transfer money on a Sunday. Whoa.

And as to the title of this blog - here's another Israel moment that I loved - the totally nonreligious bank lady was asked by a customer how she was and she answered, "Baruch Hashem." 

Somehow that made me feel great.