What I'm Reading

OK, first of all, I am not saying I'm proud of this, but it is a fact.  I love reading women's magazines, like Good Housekeeping, Women's Day, even (ok, especially) People magazine - you know what I'm talking about.  I mean, I read other stuff too (for example, books), but I do love me a good dumb magazine.


I am not allowed to look at them before the weekend.  I have rules.  When I lived in Baltimore, by Friday afternoon, I'd have a pile of magazines and catalogs (yes, I even like looking at catalogs) to keep me busy.

For me, it's total relaxation. I would rather read about the problems of rich movie stars than think about my own, and I love reading stories about people who overcome adversity and push through, whether or not it's true.

But - there is one downside to aliyah.  You can't get those magazines here in Israel. Now you feel sorry for me, right?  I can feel you feeling my pain, so thanks.

Sometimes friends/family bring magazines here for us from America and it is like the whole neighborhood celebrates - it's reason for a kiddush, I tell you. "The Leibtags have five issues of Good Housekeeping!  Get the herring!"

When one walks into the home of a friend, and sees one of these magazines in said friend's home, one's eyes focus laser-like on the magazine until said friend agrees to share.

Because, like I said, you can't get those magazines here. Well, that's not completely true.  You can get some magazines, depending on which day/hour/minute you visit the bookstores.

Today I found the following:

• A February issue of People for about $7
• A January issue of Style Watch for about $10
• A February issue of "O" for about $12

Yes, those prices are real.

And, um, I MAY have purchased one.  Or two. Or all of them.

I once purchased an InStyle that cost me almost $20.  But it was for Chag!  Special!


Gotta go.  My neighbors saw me walk in the with the magazines and I have to hide them for a few days.

Hebrew Update / Coping Mechanisms

So Ulpan is long in the past, and I think my Hebrew skills are a little stagnant.  I mean, I work in English, and I don't have that much to do with Israelis who only know Hebrew.  Also, I don't watch Israeli TV (we gave up cable - too expensive).

So, now I rely on my grandchildren, ages 10, 7, 6, 4, and 3.  Bless their little heads, they have taught me more Hebrew than I care to admit and are very patient with me.  Also, when they roll their eyes I don't mind as much, it's kind of cute.  Then again, everything they do is kind of cute.

When I am spending time with Tani, age 6, first grade, we read Hebrew books.

This is how it goes:

• Tani:   Bubby, do you want to read this book to me or do you want me to read it to you?
• Me:    No, no, I can read it!
• Tani:   Are you sure?  You had a hard time last time we did this.
• Me:    Tani, I have to get better, so I'll read and you'll help me.
• Tani (subtly rolling his eyes): OK, Bubby, let's go.

Then I sit there and am good for a few words until I start struggling.  The words are so nicely on the page but trip over each other on their way out of my mouth.  Also, thank goodness for nekudot.

Tani just surpassed my pathetic abilities - he started reading chapter books.  That's it, I'm done.

Then there's Ariella, age 10.  She will lapse into Hebrew in mid-sentence and I lose her.  Her Hebrew is fast and beautiful and I'm just smiling away, completely lost.

Then there's Nadav, age 3.  Nadav has a unique language all his own, a blend of Hebrew and English, such as, "Ima!  The mechonit went tachat ha-couch!" [Trans: Mommy, the car went under the couch]. Nevertheless, there are many times he is in all-Hebrew mode and there I am, only a bit older than he is, lost.

However, I have to say that hearing my own grandkids speak Hebrew like natives is a beautiful thing - it thrills me every time.

I have developed coping mechanisms for my lack of Hebrew expertise:

1. I prepare before I go somewhere - e.g., if I'm going to a store I figure out what I may have to ask for and how I will say it and repeat it to myself over and over in the car on the way there. Then - the words play this little game of musical chairs and they come out of my mouth in the wrong order - see #6 and #7 below.
2. I speak in English with an Israeli accent.  I'm VERY good at this.  If I don't know a word, I say it in Israeli -sounding English and they almost always understand me.  You just gotta roll those R's and lighten up on those L's and you're good to go.
3. I avoid speaking Hebrew.  This is my best option!  Buy meat from the frozen meat section, packaged cheese - anything you can do to avoid speaking to someone behind a counter.
4. I realized that I enjoy hearing Hebrew.  It's a beautiful, lyrical language and I enjoy trying to figure out what people are saying - well, some of the time, when they are not speaking directly to me.
5. I smile!  I take cues from the people who are talking to me!  When they smile, I smile!  When they laugh, I laugh!
6. I got used to making mistakes.  Enough said.
7. I got used to being embarrassed - like when someone is speaking to me really fast and I have NO IDEA what they are saying, and I'm employing mechanism #5 above and then I realize they are waiting because they just asked me something.  And I have to say my favorite word, "Mah?"
8. I embrace my immigrant status.  I just think, well,  I'm an immigrant, and proud of it.  Also, you can always play the "I'm an Olah Chadasha" card but you kinda get tired of that after two years....and a little embarrassed.
9. I keep trying.  No matter what, I have to keep trying.  I say Hebrew sentences to myself, I try to read the newspaper, I speak in Hebrew even when the other person says I can speak in English. 
10. I comfort myself - when I'm by myself in the car, my Hebrew is great!  I mean I am fluent, I find esoteric vocabulary words in the back of my brain and bring them out, my accent is perfect!  Someday that will also happen with real people.  

 So, thanks for listening.  I have to go practice now before I go to the home appliance store.  

The Bathroom, The Oil, and The Air Conditioner

Sounds like a really cool fantasy novel, right?  You are expecting a magical can of oil and an a/c unit with a Disney-type face on it, talking to each other, becoming friends, and sharing a strand of spaghetti.

Well, you go on and keep thinking like that, and in the meantime I shall tell you my tale of woe.

The builder of our development comes by each year (I think for 7 years from the date we moved in) to see what needs to be fixed.  I have covered this in an earlier blog, regaling you with my attempt to write down exactly what the worker told me to write (he is an Arab who I believe can speak but not write Hebrew well, so I was happy to help) and signing it. (I really should find the old blog and link to it here, but I'm too lazy and you really don't care, do you? Just take my word for it).

So one of the things to fix involved a possible leak in one of our bathrooms - there were water stains on the ceiling over the shower and we wanted him to take a look.

He looks and tells us that (you have probable already guessed this), "It is not our problem. You have to get the a/c people here right away."  He also declares that if there is a water leak, somehow the pipe which goes down the wall and under the bathroom is probably clogged up.  He opens up the access hole and pulls out gunk.  

OK, well at least the gunk is out, although I have no idea what that has to do with the leak, and I don't think anyone else really does either.

He has also, by the way, cut open a square of drywall over the shower to access the problem area.  This area will have to be repaired by him, when the a/c guy finishes his work.

By this time I am alternately crying and laughing, hoping that we understood the Hebrew and not at all certain as to what was happening other than we now had a big hole in our shower ceiling.  See, the whole time I'm just saying my favorite phrase, "B'seder!" and hoping for the best.

So he calls the a/c people for us and "enhances" the situation to make it sound desperate and telling them they should come right away.  We giggle, hearing his little white lie and he looks at us like we are nuts - this is just the way people do business, it's not funny.  We stop laughing.

So the a/c guy comes over, spends a lot of time looking, going onto the roof, etc., and declares that it is not water, it's oil.  Huh.  Oil is for some reason dripping out of a pipe over our shower. Huh.  He declares that he will return in one week.  

I am now wondering if his return will mean that he is fixing the leak.  My husband declares that he [a/c guy] knows where the leak is.  I maintain that he said he does not.  I do not know why he is coming back in a week unless he needs equipment, but we decide to wait and see. There was a lot of fast Hebrew talk in there and we might have missed an important sentence or ten.

Today he came back, right on time!  I think he says, "OK, today I am going to replace the access panel [not the ceiling hole] in your bathroom." 

"OK, I say, but....um.....what about the oil leak?

"I told you, I don't know where that is coming from.  When you turn on the a/c again when it gets warm, maybe it will leak again and then we will see." [Note to self - hahaha I was right!]

I say it over again to him in Hebrew to make sure I got it right.  He replies something that sounds like, "שףגלכחש פם'קןרשףךדגלכשףדךגכלשפ'קםןרשףךגלדכשףדךגכח ךדגלכשףךד"  and I nod and say "b'seder."

Then, when he's done, he "Slicha, G'veret"s me and I go see what he has done.  I look up at where the access panel should be covered.  It is not.  Then he shows me that he has created a HUGE hole and new access panel over the shower, so that he can get to the problem easier next time.

The old access panel is still uncovered.  I ask him to please cover it.  He does, but he is not happy about it.  Seriously, do you mean he didn't see the access panel cover sitting there the whole time???

So yay - now we have two access panels in our bathroom ceiling.  

"Yoo hoo, Architectural Digest?  Could you maybe come back another time?"

But we do have a lovely new access panel now in our bathroom.  Really, it's gorgeous you should come and take a look.  It's white and plastic and everything.  

I'll bet plumbers and HVAC guys everywhere will come to gawk.

So, I give up.  The oil can drip.  Just please don't make me talk to these people anymore.

Please.

Another Milestone - Self Check Out

I know you are all going to be very proud of me.

Today I used the self checkout at Supersol.  Or, as they call it here, Shoofersal, because they use a פ in the name and....oh, never mind.

Why, you ask?  Why because they had exactly 1 cashier open and the line was way too long for an impatient person like me.  I have things to do!  People to see!  Places to go!

So I marched myself over to the self checkout, which is located right next to the Customer Service (hahahahaha!  wait, I'm picking myself up off the floor) office.

All of the instructions are in Hebrew.

Here is what I THINK I did right.

Put in my identity number so that I could get the requisite discounts.

Here is what I KNOW I did wrong:
- Scanned the mini yogurts wrong: they come 4 to a pack, but had come un-attached in the cart - not sure, but I think they asked me how many I was getting.  I said one because I think they meant how many packages.  So I either got 3 free or paid for 1 extra.  One of those.

- Called my onions potatoes.  Put the onions on the scale thingy - pushed the "yirakot" button (yay me), chose potatoes.  Afterwards realized it was onions.  Didn't want to explain this to the Customer Service (hahahahaha!) person, so just kept going.

- Forgot the word for tomatoes.  Yes, yes, I know that's really dumb.  I mean tomatoes are almost like the national vegetable here, but at the moment of tension and anxiety the word just slipped my mind.  And I had to choose a word by putting in the first letter!  EEEEEK.  So I just chose onions again.

-Paid for my bag of almonds twice, or not at all.  Not really sure what I did here, but  if you think I was going to check my receipt and argue with Customer Service (hahahahaha!), you haven't  been reading my blogs very carefully.

Well, at least I walked out with groceries.  And I paid for some, all, or twice as many of them.

An Evening in Hebrew

One great thing about making aliyah is connecting with friends who you haven't seen / socialized with in years - lots of our friends have made aliyah over the years and of course we've sort of lost touch.  Maybe we'd see them when we'd come for a visit, but to be honest when you've come to visit with your kids and grandkids any millisecond spent away from them seems like a colossal loss.

So now we are starting (yes, we've been here two years and yes, we are just starting, so deal with it) to re-connect.

Bern, through various odd circumstances, found two of his old friends from YU - one was his dorm counselor there, who'd been here for many years, and one just made aliyah 6 months ago.

We were invited to dinner at the home of the new olim in Jerusalem.  I was expecting a lovely dinner with conversation, in English, about aliyah, our kids, grandkids, etc.  WRONG.

When the second couple arrived, our hostess greeted her in Hebrew.  Uh oh.  Wait - is she Israeli?

Yes, she was Israeli.  And guess what - the language of the evening was Hebrew.  I mean it's only polite that when one person is Israeli, the rest of the guests speak in Hebrew.  So I greeted her as well and my head started pounding.

And then the unthinkable happened - the Israeli wife and I found ourselves in the living room by ourselves. NO!  Now I have to speak in Hebrew!  HELP!  SOS!  Well, help did not arrive, so speak I did.

I actually was OK.  At one point, Hebrew words were flowing out of what I think was my mouth and the woman didn't give me looks like, "Oh my God, she's been here two years and she still speaks like a 2 year old"  At least I didn't think so, because she asked me questions and I answered them, so I believe what we were doing was considered having a conversation in Hebrew.

We were there for 3 hours, and spoke Hebrew the whole time.  I even waxed eloquent at one point about how we love having Friday as a "get ready for Shabbat" day instead of a work day and how that makes Shabbat an entirely different experience than outside of Israel.

At one point I could not think of how to say a phrase in Hebrew, so I just said it in English and Israeli wife nodded.

Wait a minute.  You understand English?

But, no matter, I'm sure she was more comfortable trying to figure out what the heck I was trying to say in my broken Ulpan Hebrew, than trying to understand my English.

Now, having said all that, I don't know if, as they were driving home, the Israeli-wife couple was laughing themselves sick over my grammar/botched vocabulary, and saying things like, "Did she say ____?  Please tell me she did not use that word!" But I'll never know, will I?

As for me, I THINK I did ok.  All I know is that I was exhausted by the end of the evening.

I mean, that's a lot of grammar to remember, put in the right context, and get out of one's mouth the right way.

Insurance Week

Suddenly, we're swamped with insurance concerns:

1. Life insurance - do we buy it here?

2. Homeowner's insurance - we have it, we have to renew it - do we shop around?  

3. Health insurance - should we buy one of the supplemental policies?

For all of these questions, we have a friendly insurance agent.

Thing is, we don't quite know how we got him.  See, we got a call that our homeowner's insurance was about to expire and we have to renew it.  OK, sounds reasonable.

Then we got a call from someone who said he wanted to come over and talk to us about our insurance needs.  We THINK his call was connected to the earlier call, but we're not altogether sure.  

He came over and we had a nice, long discussion about various insurance needs.  

Health insurance: He thought we should get supplemental health insurance.  We filled out the forms.  We went to the doctor to get a "health report" which did not (surprise!) involve any kind of physical exam, it was just a piece of paper.  But our doctor did tell us that we were crazy to want supplemental health insurance - so that was interesting.

We now wait to see how much they want to charge us for the supplemental health insurance.

Homeowner's insurance: Then someone called and said he was an appraiser, and needed to come to our house for our homeowner's insurance.

We THINK he's connected to our actual homeowner's insurance agency, which we THINK is the company that sent the other guy.

See, there are sub-companies with different names and...oh, forget it.  I'll just confuse you.

So the appraiser comes by and does his thing a few days ago.

Then the insurance company calls and we have this conversation:

"Our appraiser has to come by."  

"No, he already came!"

"Impossible, he could not have already come"

"But he did, two days ago."

"Impossible."

So then we look at each other - who WAS this guy who came over?  He seemed official enough (not that any Israeli professional wears any kind of uniform aside from jeans and a sweater).  He had all kinds of forms and stuff. When we asked for a business card, he wrote his email address down on a piece of scrap paper. hmmmmm....

Car insurance: Then there's the saga of the car accident...

We were billed for the ambulance.  We were told that our health insurance would cover it.  They do not.  We are told by the health insurance company to take this to the car insurance company.  They insist on us faxing (the faxing here drives me crazy - come on, start-up nation, scan the darn things and email them!) over paperwork.  We do it.  They get it.  They now tell us it is in the hands of someone else.  Bye-bye, 494 shekel.

And...most of the above discussions and transactions took place in Hebrew.  We greatly improved our vocabulary during these conversations.  So there's that.

Tears at the Barber

No, the barber did not decide to cut my husband's hair with a blunt scissors, so calm down.

This is one of those "I love living here so much..." stories.

Here goes -

Two weeks ago we became grandparents again - a little boy born to our kids in Chicago.  Mazel tov!  Why thank you!

Bernie was getting ready to travel to America for the shalom zachar and bris, and decided to get a haircut.  He proudly told his barber (an older Israeli man) about the new baby.  The barber, and his buddies who hang out in the barber shop (none of them are religious, just so you know, because it makes the story even sweeter) were incredibly happy for him and asked, "Are you going to be the sandek?"

"I don't know," he replied.  "Well," they said, "if you are the sandek, you have to come back and give us a bracha!"

For those of you who, like me, never heard this before  - apparently a bracha from the sandek [the person who holds the baby while the bris is performed] is a huge, special thing. They did not teach this at Pikesville Senior High.

Sweet enough to stop there, but there's more.

Bernie returned home yesterday and went to the barber shop today to visit.  They welcomed him warmly and lowered their heads to receive their bracha.  They were so moved, almost to tears, in gratitude that this man came back and gave them a bracha.

As Bernie left, himself almost in tears, they wished him a Shabbat Shalom and Chodesh Tov.

He called me, choked up, "I can't believe we live here."  He couldn't even find the words to express his emotions.

Yup, that kind of thing happens quite often.  Your heart fills up at the little things and you know that what you are feeling you could not feel anywhere else.

We hit our two year aliyahversary this Shabbat.  Still can't believe how blessed we are to be here.