Gila Passes Her Driving Test

Did you see the title? Gila PASSED!

... and for the Roses there was joy and jubilation, delight and gladness. (Yaakov is still jumping.)

Your prayers worked!!!

1 Billion poofahs to: Madam President Shira, Laurie, Momz, Yael and LISA.

Your Prayers Needed

Although I am known (or not known at all) as the "silent partner" in aliyahbyaccident, I can be silent no more. Today, Gila needs your help!

Gila will be taking her driving test for a second (and final!) time tomorrow ("Friday") morning at 9:00 AM.

In the greatest poofah giveaway in the history of the world, I hereby announce that I will award 1 Billion (Billion! Unbelievable!) poofahs to each loyal reader who posts their good luck wishes to Gila on her driving test.

More unmentionables

Ok, there is something that has been on my mind for a while, and we will discuss it here. Again, those of you who are of delicate constitution may want to skip this paragraph. We will call it "Peeing in the Park." This occurs when children, usually little boys, decide to use the neighborhood park as their personal toilet. I'm not talking about once in a desperate while. I'm talking ALL THE TIME. This week, I was at the park on two separate days, and I saw no fewer than 4 children going to the bathroom on the grass, sand, pebbles, what have you. They don't even bother going to a corner or hiding at all. Nope, just right there, out in the open. I was starting to feel bad for invading their personal space. Now, I do understand those moments when your kid just has to go and there's no bathroom around for miles, and what are you going to do? But you can alleviate most of those incidents by heeding to the old adage, "Go before you leave." These families seem to do the opposite:
"Once upon a time, there was a family. They were sitting in their apartment, playing Monopoly. Suddenly, little Katzav said, 'I need to go!'
'Quick!" said his mother, gathering the sweatshirts, "Hold it in until we can get to the park!"

Anyway, moving on to things not toilet-related, since I know that we have spent a lot of time on that the past few days...First of all, I would like to respond to Sbad's comment and note that I will go out with you any time for some Fefsi. I think it would be pun! Ha ha.

So there are new people in Dimri. We got an email about it a few days ago. When I first saw the email, I thought, "Well, good luck to them. Dimri sure isn't the place to be if you want a warm, caring, community kind of feel." Then, a thought began to bubble up inside of me. Maybe, just maybe, I could be the warm, caring, community-minded sort of person! Could I do it? Could I be that friendly person? As it turns out, the answer is, "Yes." Today, I called them up, and since they only arrived two weeks ago they were all home in the middle of the day. Ariella and I stopped by on our way to her chug. We brought cookies and cupcakes. Alright, not as useful as a chicken dinner, but it was something. I felt bad I didn't know they were here earlier because they only got their stove and oven today and so did not have a working kitchen for two weeks. Anyway, we schmoozed for a while. They have a 3 year old son and a 10 month old daughter. Their son was ecstatic to talk to someone who spoke English. All in all they seemed like nice, fun, normal people who we might try to be friends with. See, fellow residents? It's not so hard to be friendly!

Today Ariella drew a picture. In the picture was a little boy, like Yaakov, who was two and a half. He had hair. There was also a girl, five years old, like Ariella. She had a ponytail sticking up. And there was a taller person representing Mommy. See the problem? Daddy, who happened to come home "early" tonight (and when I say "early" I mean just in time to rile them up before bed so they're crazy and crying when it's bedtime) saw the picture. "Where's Daddy?" he asked in surprise. "Daddy's not in the picture because Daddy's at work," Ariella answered. Absolutely textbook. Well, it'll be something for the psychiatrist's couch in twenty-some years.

Crockpots, Coffee, and Underwear

On Monday, I decided that one hour of ulpan was just enough for me! So I left early and decided to go to Kiryat Sefer to do some shopping. In addition to my hunt for baking soda - WHICH, by the way, I FOUND on Monday at Supersol and even though I have approximately 2 metric tons of baking soda from Lisa, I had to buy one from Supersol because it brought closure to my month-long hunt - I have also been searching for crock pot bags. You'd think, in this country of Jews, crock pot bags for cholent would not be so difficult to find. However, if you thought that, you'd be wrong. I figured I would return to Kiryat Sefer, the scene of the crime where I actually purchased the crock pot. Surely they will have the elusive bags! I dragged Lisa with me, because I did not want to violate my own personal commandment: "Thou shalt not travel to Kiryat Sefer unaided." However, the paper goods store there did not have the bags, and neither did the big supermarket. (And when I say big, I mean it. Not just that the store is big, but everything sold there is meant for very large families. You can't buy a package of toilet paper there with less than 48 rolls.) However, disappointed as I was in my crock pot bag search, I did find the good sponges that I love so much that Supersol just doesn't carry. So it wasn't a total loss. I got sponges. Plus, some underwear.


Underwear, you say? Yes, indeed, because on the way to KS I got a phone call from Ariella's gan that she had a little accident and needed a fresh pair. Lisa and I raced back from KS to gan, where I found Ariella happily playing in the sand, and not, as I imagined, huddled in a chair in the corner, cold and wet and crying. She looked at me quizzically and said, "Why are you here?" I gave her the undies, asked her what happened - she missed, ma la'asot? - and then went back to join Lisa in the car. Since we had an hour to kill, we of course went out for coffee. And some cheesecake. Sponges, undies, and coffee - a killer combination.


A P.S. to the toilet story. For those of you who don't like these mildly inappropriate tales, please skip this paragraph and move on. But you'll be sorry... Anyway, Ariella has told me before that the girls' toilet in gan is missing the seat. So she has to sit on the rim. I figured that might have been a factor in her accident, since there is a lot of coordination involved in using these toilets. Today I asked the assistant ganenet what the story was with the toilet. I figured I could just go to Home Center, buy the toilet seat, and install it myself if that would help. However, the ganenet insisted that everything was b'seder. She said it was deliberate that the toilet was missing the seat - apparently it is like that in many, if not all, ganim. She said the reason is for sanitation - the plastic toilet seat is more conducive to germs and harder to clean, and without the seat the toilets are more sanitary. She said the bathrooms are cleaned twice a day and the kids are big and don't need toilet seats. At this point I thought maybe she misunderstood me and thought I was referring to those training seats you put on the toilet for little kids. Either way, she was emphatic that the bathrooms were in pristine condition and there was no problem with them. If any of you loyal readers have heard anything about the Seatless Toilet Special for Ganim, please let me know.


Today I got a lot of exercise. This is because I was carless. This is very hard for someone like me who is used to a car. (Read: spoiled.) Last time I was carless, they took it for a test and returned it two hours later. Today, it was due for "tipul" (maintenance). I figured they could pick it up from me during ulpan, and return it before I needed to leave ulpan. This time, though, they needed it for the entire day, to take it into Yerushalayim (Jerusalem, J-lem, etc.) So they came to meet me in Buchman (the neighborhood where my ulpan is, about a 40-minute walk from Dimri), took my car, and did NOT, as Donny had promised, give me one to use in the meantime. So there I was, stuck in Buchman, without a car. Luckily I got a ride home with someone, so I had just enough to come home, do some laundry - whoops, can't do laundry, they've shut off the water - and walk to Ariella's gan to pick her up. We walked back with Aiden, stopped at a park, stopped for ice cream, and got home just in time to get the stroller and go back out to pick up Yaakov. Phew! That sure was a lot of walking! Better have a very large bowl or plate or helping of something very unhealthy to make up for that!

In ulpan today we read a little article about Abraham Lincoln. Israel doesn't know what to do with silent letters, such as the "L" (the second one) in Lincoln. So they pronounce it "Lin-ko-lin." Israel, this is not acceptable. Learn the correct way to say his name! We don't go around calling your former prime minister "Menachem Be-GIN" because "that's how we would say it in English." No! We defer to your pronounciation and call him "BAY-gin." I hereby call on the Hebrew language to formally recognize silent letters and stop with this "Lin-ko-lin" and "sal-mon" silliness.

Shabbat in Ho-Sha-Ya

First of all, for those of you who were wondering, Ariella's first experience of being Ima Shel Shabbat was a rousing success. She was soooo excited after gan about how she got to hand out the siddurim and give out her cookies. Plus, of course, wearing the Shabbat crown. Meanwhile, Yaakov is corrupting the youth of Israel one by one. On the Fridays that he has gan, they make challah. Ofira, the ganenet, told us that the first time they did this, Yaakov announced: CHA-lah! Now, all the kids call it CHA-lah instead of cha-LAH. Just bringing a little bit of America to Israel...


Anyway, we then got in the car and drove to Hoshaya. And drove. And drove. Hoshaya is beautiful, but very far away, even from itself. We eventually arrived and Sharon and I had a joyful reunion. (History lesson: The Sariels were in Riverdale for 2 years and Sharon and I taught 3rd grade together at SAR while they were there.) Donny went out for a quick tour of Moreshet, a neighboring community, before Shabbat. Friday night the kids and their bag of candy went to shul with Donny, and Yaakov took great pleasure in running wildly through the streets. He sure does like to run in streets, that boy.

[For those of you who would like a Sariel update: Sharon took off last year to be home with her baby. Now she is teaching first grade at a school in a nearby yishuv. Eli is teaching in a bunch of places and working on finishing his PhD. The kids are in 3rd grade, 1st grade, and gan, plus the baby. Eli makes an effort to talk to the kids in English so they won't forget it. They understand English pretty well. Sharon and I reverted back to our old standby - she spoke in Hebrew and I spoke in English. They are currently renting out what amounts to someone's attic in Hoshaya and looking eventually to move to a different community up north into a bigger space.]

Friday night Yaakov ate his weight in meatballs, we caught up with the Sariels, and then went back to the apartment we were sleeping at. A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door, and in walked some long-lost Leibtag cousins. They spell their last name a little differently: A-S-H-K-E-N-A-Z-I, because Ashkenazi is, in fact, their actual last name. We were trying to figure out the family connection; apparently there was some remarriage a few generations ago and the Ashkenazis are step-cousins. The husband, who is the one who's related to us, remembers going to Akron for a Leibtag bar mitzvah many years ago. The husband and wife and their kids lived on a kibbutz for 20 years and then moved to Hoshaya. It is always fun to meet olim and hear their stories, and it is also fun to meet long-lost cousins, so this was double fun.

Shabbat morning, Donny davened at the 7:30 minyan and then we took the kids to a park for a while. It was really beautiful there, and the Hoshayans use the "small stone" motif for their parks instead of sand, and the kids enjoyed putting the stones on the slide and then sliding down. The Sariels had another family of olim for dessert, and another family for seudah shlishit, so we really got to talk to different people and hear their impressions of Hoshaya.
Bottom line: Hoshaya is gorgeous (have we mentioned that?) It has a really nice community feel, plus the streets are closed on Shabbat. But, it is very far away - it is still an hour to Haifa, but by car fighting traffic instead of on the train asleep. We got a taste of this traffic on motzei Shabbat:
The city planners decided to install traffic lights in the middle of what is basically a highway. So twice we were stuck in traffic for 20 minutes because of traffic lights. Not pleasant. Also, Hoshaya has little to no amenities, in terms of doctors, supermarkets, etc. And there are very few English-speakers there. Donny has suggested we stop checking out communities because every time we go for Shabbat, we decide it's very nice, but no thanks.

Yesterday, I returned to Supersol to retrieve my credit card papers before they could start charging me fees. Apparently, and I'm sure this does not come as a surprise, they charge ridiculous fees just for the privilege of having a credit card. So I got my papers back and left quickly. Then, I went in search of a dry-cleaners. Luckily there is one not so far away, in Kaiser. I made it there without incident, but when it was time to go back, I looked at the map and decided the easiest way was to simply turn around and go back the way I came. I do this often. I don't like trying new routes. The streets are very windy and turny in Kaiser, and I was afraid if I decided to try something "new" I would end up completely lost and having to click my heels three times and wait for a nice old man in a hot-air balloon.

Later in the afternoon, I took the kids for flu shots. It was actually easier than I thought. We got to the Maccabi building at 3:50, because they reopen at 4:00. We were the only ones there. At about 4:05 I knocked on the "flu vaccine" door. A nice lady answered, but got very distressed when she saw I did not have the correct "pinkas." (Remember that word?? One of my all-time favorites!) Anyway, at tipat chalav, where they do well-check ups and all the other vaccines, you get a "pinkas chisunim" - a booklet of all the vaccinations. I only had the vaccine sheet from America. Luckily, she was able to decipher it and told me I should get it transferred to the PINKAS next time I go to tipat chalav. I agreed that I should definitely get the correct PINKAS! Because there's nothing like a good PINKAS! She gave the kids shots, it was all over in about 5 minutes, and then, to reward the kids for their Bravery and Honorable Conduct in the Face of Adversity, I took them to Big Apple Pizza. They each had a slice, some chocolate milk, and then played for a while. (The pizza store has a big outside play area with cars and a seesaw, etc.) I think they would say it was worth the shot.

I apologize to everyone, especially Sharon Sturm, for not having posted earlier.

Credit Cards

First, I would like to publicly apologize to DADZ for making fun (in a loving way, of course) of him in yesterday's post. True, Dadz is not so technologically-savvy, but neither am I, to tell the truth (Dadz and I are still trying to figure out how light bulbs work) so I really should have more consideration for the poor man. Anyway, it's not like I told the story of how he didn't know how to rewind a movie "without having to watch the whole thing backwards" and because no one was at home to help him he called me in my dorm at Stern. I mean, that would have been REALLY embarrassing! I have also refrained from discussing his unique, one-of-a-kind (thank God for that) style choices. Anyway, I digress. Dadz said he is considering throwing the Gila Rose Suitcase of Goodies overboard. So I am issuing this public apology in the hopes that I will still get my stuff in two weeks.
Digression: For those of you loyal readers, you may be wondering what, indeed Momz and Dadz could possibly be bringing for us. After all, you say, "Didn't Gila spend the ENTIRE month of August shopping for clothes and such, basically signing over her remaining paychecks from SAR to Children's Place and Target?" And the short answer, is "Yes, I did." However, as the famous saying goes in Hebrew, "Tovim Hashnayim min ha'echad." No, wait, wrong saying. Anyway, the bottom line is that somehow, there are still more things I need. Books for Ariella. Sweatpants. Puzzles. I don't even remember what else - we'll find out in 2 weeks!!

So today, I signed up for a credit card by accident. Now, there are a lot of things you can do by accident. Spill a cup of milk. Run a stop sign (yes, that's how I failed my driving test). Make aliyah. However, certain things in life need premeditation. Like, you don't just buy a house by accident. You don't get married by accident. And generally, you don't sign up for credit cards by accident. But this is my story. I was in Shufersal, and the lady checking me out started yammering to me in Hebrew. Usually all they ask is for your Supersol card and if you want to pay "ragil" or "tashlumim." (I still don't really understand the difference but I always say "ragil"). So she starts talking about something, which I gathered was the Supersol credit card. I politely declined. However, she must have reared in the Israeli Lady Pharmacist school of customer service, and she would not take no for an answer. Before I knew it, some other lady had taken my credit card and teudat zehut and I was answering questions and signing things. I kept trying to decline but they wouldn't let me. Finally, when she started asking what day I wanted the deductions taken from my bank account, I said, "I really want to ask my husband." Played the poor dumb wife card and proud of it. She said that I should come back to the customer service desk next week and BE SURE not to FORGET to come back! I said of course and then left with Ariella and our packages before I accidentally bought a house or something.

Ariella and I started our English chug together this week. The famous Morah Rita from SAR gave us lots of good ideas to help Ariella progress, in her English. As part of her lesson, Ariella wrote and illustrated a story. I will relate the story here, followed by a translation:
"The that wet to the sprnct. This gi had tlvtopgrd. HHTHHTHTH."
[The girl that went to the supermarket. No idea what that second sentence is. Hot hot hot hot hot!!! (Because there was a hot towel.)]
She is enjoying the chug very much.

Yesterday, I had a very pleasant experience at the iriyah and the Maccabi building. If I were to write a story about it, it would go like this:
"There was once a girl named Gila. She had to go pay her arnona (property tax bill) at the iriyah, because the bill came late and she was afraid that with the mail system in Israel, the check would arrive sometime in July. So she went to the iriyah. She waited a total of five minutes. A nice lady took her check and then showed Gila how next time, she could pay over the phone, with a credit card. (How awesome is that, by the way?) Then, Gila went to the Maccabi building to find out how to get flu vaccines for her children, and to get an internet code which would allow her to use the Maccabi website. Everyone was nice and helpful and Gila went home happy." See, boring story, right? But as we have discovered, boring story for you = success for me!

Yesterday our HOT (HAWT in Hebrew) wasn't working. HOT is the company with whom we have telephone and internet. So I was not a happy camper. After being on hold with HOT for half an hour, someone finally got on the phone and confirmed that, indeed, our phone and internet were not working. Nothing like some good, old-fashioned, validation! Apparently there was a problem in the area, and they said it would be fixed all by itself, which, miraculously, it was. The end.

Tomorrow Ariella is Ima Shel Shabbat, and there has not been seen happiness like this in all the days of the world. We bought cookies at Supersol today and she cannot wait to go be Ima tomorrow. She is going to wear her white shirt, because the Ima Shel Shabbat should be pretty. After that, we are headed to Hoshaya for Shabbat. This is another northern community. We are checking it out but also using it as an excuse to stay with our friends, Eli and Sharon (pronounced Shuh-RONE) Sariel. They are Israelis who were in Riverdale for two years. Sharon and I worked together at SAR, and they returned to Israel last summer. We are looking forward to another exciting Shabbat experience.

A Slow Day (thank the good Lord) so I will use this time to talk about dust

Today, as the title indicates, was a slow day. Thank God! I love slow days! All my days should be slow and boring! In the morning, I got to "see" Australian Leezy, thanks to the miracle of Skype, and even got to see my blurry niece and nephew. I don't believe they are blurry in real life, although I can't be totally sure since I've never actually seen them. Skype is truly a wonderful thing. We got to see Aunt Deborah this week as well, and I'm working on Dadz to get Skype at his office. First he has to find the "on" button on his computer, but I am confident that once he does, it'll be a hop, skip and a jump....and a few more hops....another jump...just one more skip....and we'll be ready to find the "in-ter-net." He can even decide whether to use Firefox or Explorer; what's the difference, it's all Google anyway to Dadz. (This refers to an actual quotation from Dadz: "What do you mean, Google is creating their own browser? Don't they have that now? When I open the internet, Google is right there!")

So dust. There is a lot of it here. I refer here to the famous chazal: There were 10 kabins of dust given to the world. 9/10 of those kabins were given to Israel. And 9/10 of THOSE kabins were given to Gila & Donny's apartment. Dirt and dust enters my apartment by the truckload, or should I say Croc-load. Then, it mixes with drips of water - you know, when you do the dishes, the water from your hands drips on the floor, or when kids have wet feet after the bath? That water - and creates what scientists call "mud." The floors fluctuate between "dirty" and "filthy" despite my efforts to sweep and mop ("sponga" in Hebrew). And the brooms are just not aggressive enough against the grains of dirt and dust. I'm starting to think they're actually in cahoots with the dust motes. I mean, you sweep, and the brooms sort of lovingly caress each bit of dust and hold onto them for dear life, so they all stick to the broom and then end up...back on the floor. And Arica "Factor" Saltzman tells me, "You think it's bad now? Just wait till it starts raining! Then it's REALLY bad!" Well, I sure am looking forward to that! It sounds like some kind of fun! However, I do get a great deal of satisfaction from scrubbing the floors before Shabbat, safe in the knowledge that for 3 whole minutes - right after I've mopped, while the kids' feet are safely tucked away in the bath, and Donny's in the corner "fixing" the Vonage ("Can you [crackle crackle crackle] beeeeeeeeeeep....") - my floors will be sparkling clean. Ahhh....breathe in that chemical-based floor cleaner and exhale slowly. It's a beautiful sight.