Shout Outs and Updates

First of all, a shout out to Abba "Sabba" Rose who is dogged in his pursuit of recipes using citric acid. He emailed me today that he recently used citric acid in the preparation of hummus ("chummus" in Hebrew). I hope it came out well - think of us when you dine on your citric-acid-infused delicacy.

Another shout out to Dahlia "Dahls" Rosenblatt Gardin, who I had no idea was a loyal reader until she made a comment regarding the blog on my Facebook page. Welcome to the blog, Dahls! Dahlia and I go waaaaaayyyy back, to the days of side ponytails and New Kids on the Block, and even further back to the days of those ridiculous t-shirt clips and "Jem and the Holograms" (does anyone remember that?) and even further back to things that are so far back I can't even remember them anymore. Anyway, there's nothing like Facebook and blogging to reunite friends.

A final shout-out to Leezy "Bensky" my mate down in Australia. G'day, Leezy! In response to your question, you have a year to drive on your foreign license before they throw you in Driving Prison (where everyone in front of you is going 20 miles an hour and all you have to listen to is "Hello, Everybody" from the Music Together CD over and over and over). So you have a year to procrastinate, but if you want to buy a car, you need an Israeli license. In other words, if I wanted to buy a car? I could TOTALLY do that. Why? Because I PASSED MY DRIVING TEST!!!!!

The other exciting part about PASSING MY DRIVING TEST is that our "klitah" (absorption) is basically complete. Friday night, we whipped out the Nefesh b'Nefesh post-aliyah poster, which has about thirteen different items of things you must do upon arrival. We are happy to report that, aside from the small, teensy detail of being able to speak Hebrew, we have done all of them! Bank account? Check. Gan? Check. Arnona? Check. DRIVER'S LICENSES? Double check that, baby. So that's it. We've been absorbed.

Today, Ariella was the one home sick. She wasn't really sick, but she had a bad cold so I let her stay home. We went to the doctor, but no diseased stick for us, thank goodness. (And in case you were wondering, Yaakov does not, in fact, have strep). She actually had the same rash on her face that she had two weeks after we got here, but the doctor this time said it was nothing and just keep it moisturized. So we stayed home and played and were pretty bored, to be honest, and we are looking forward to going back to gan tomorrow. Lisa and Michali came over for a little visit, but otherwise Ariella and I had to entertain each other. I think it's good to have these days once in a while because then she's sooo excited to get back to gan!

In another example of our absorption, Yaakov declared that the hamburgers tonight were very "ta'im."

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