We haven't been doing that much travelling lately as we've been dealing with illness and the heat. Plus, Alfonso rotates between days, nights and weekends at work. This will be the way of life for the next year -- oh joy! Anyhow, I thought I'd spend time to talk just about our daily lives and the random differences we've encountered.
Alfonso bikes to work about 3-4 times a week. It's ~25 miles one way and takes an hour and a quarter. He's lost quite a bit of weight and his clothes are literally falling off of him. Life at Intel is pretty much the same except the Israelis yell and scream at each other in meetings then go sit and have lunch together as if the previous argument never happened. Very vocal about their opinions but don't take anything personally.
Alejandro misses PBS. They have lots of cartoons in Hebrew but they aren't of the educational variety so I usually don't let him watch. There is a Hebrew version of Sesame Street but still haven't figured out what time it's on. They televise BBC programs for kids. Alejandro watches a children's cooking show where they tell a story and then make some sort of healthy snack that goes along with the story. The snacks usually look like something -- mashed potatoes with a few carrot sticks and olives magically turn into one of Little Bo Peep's lost sheep. Anyhow, along with Alejandro trying to reassemble his food into storybook characters at every meal, he's also started pronouncing different words with a British accent. He throws things into the rubbish bin instead of the trash can. The Hebrew and Spanish mix wasn't confusing enough, so he added another accent just for fun.
The first time we took Dante to the doctor's office, the nurse handed me the thermometer to take his temperature instead of doing it herself. You pay the doctor -- physically hand him the money and he/she writes the receipt. I don't know if they don't trust other people to handle the money or what -- but it's been that way at three different places. I got blood drawn and the nurse didn't wear gloves. Then there are the scheduling, language and insurance issues... (heavy sigh) I'm just hoping no one else gets sick the rest of our stay. While I'm wishing, I also want the moon.
We have been going to two different churches in Tel Aviv and aim to hit the English masses (as opposed to the Arabic, Romanian, Hebrew, Italian, Polish, Russian, French or Spanish masses that are held as well.) For the English mass, the church is filled with Filipinos that arrive on buses so the parking lot is empty. One week, we showed up and the lot was full -- it was an Arabic mass. There are woman that stand at the front of the church and put shawls around the shoulders of females in tank tops or low cut tops before they receive communion. I guess my clothes are modest enough because I haven't gotten covered yet.
Grocery shopping is still a bit tricky. I finally went with an Israeli friend and that helped but it will always be a challenge. They never have the same brands and varieties in stock. It's a crap shoot what you will find at the store. The quality of products isn't the same -- if you look at the foil funny it will tear. You can pay your grocery bill in up to four installments. We were so confused the first few times when they kept asking how many payments we wanted.
Fruits and vegetables are seasonal. When we first came, they were selling strawberries on every corner -- now there's not one to be found. Watermelon season is just about over. Mango season just started and the pomegranates trees are loaded but not quite ready. There is sales tax but it's already included in the ticketed price. The receipt shows how much of the purchase was tax -- usually 15.5%.
Went to some friends for supper and they made the most delicious pizza -- and then topped it with corn, olives and TUNA FISH. Yuck, yuck and double yuck! Israelis eat lots of tuna fish and it comes in a tons of flavors --lemon, garlic, chile and other various oils and spices. The typical beach attire at a non-kosher beach is speedos and string bikinis. Age and/or fitness level doesn't matter. I'm often the only female on the beach with a one piece. There are assigned seats at the movies. The adult movies just tend to have Hebrew subtitles but the kids movies are dubbed in Hebrew (as the kids can't read subtitles I guess.) Luckily, when Alejandro saw Wall-E there wasn't much dialogue. We see lots of little ones at the park with ponytails and barrettes -- that just happen to be boys. Many Jews wait until the boy is three for his first haircut. With how much Dante fusses for a haircut, we may adopt this tradition. Since Alejandro still fusses, we need to find another culture that waits until 12 or 13 to get a haircut. The capacity of our washing machine is maxed out with two bath towels. It takes over 2 and an half hours to wash and another two hours to dry a single load. With the small loads and lengthy process, everyday is laundry day. They wrap a towel around a squidgy with a broom length handle and call it a mop. The light switches for the bathroom are outside of the room. The boys think it's hysterical to turn the lights off when someone is inside. The garbage truck comes three times every week. I'm not sure why. Maybe they think people litter because their trash cans are full. I don't know. They'd be better off paying the garbage men to pick up litter. All the houses have solar water heaters on the roof. You can switch to the electric heater when the solar one runs out of hot water. The police cars always drive with their lights on and use sirens to pull someone over.
I'm sure there are more that I've become so accustomed to already that I forgot to mention. So I guess you will all have to come to visit and check it out yourselves!
Love always,
Debi
Our baby boy is two! We had a small party with four other American families on Friday. It was mellow but very nice -- games of ring around the rosies, a cool shark pinata from our friends/neighbors, presents (most of which came from the States in Carl and Em's suitcases), and a decadent chocolate cake also from the friends/neighbors. (I did make the lasagnas and rest of the food-- I'm not a complete failure as a mother.)
Right before bedtime on his birthday, he tripped and hit the bottom step splitting his bottom lip all the way through. Off to urgent care for super glue -- happy birthday little guy!
