Nitsah's Birth Story, or How to Get Your Way When Dealing with Israelis

First, a promise: I won't talk about mucus plugs, dilation, or enemas in this post.

Ok, maybe a little bit about dilation. But I'll really try to spare you what my husband calls the "gory details." (Though, for the record, the enema was AWESOME.)

I actually want to tell parts of my birth story on this blog to make a bigger point... how you can get Israelis to do exactly what you want. I'd heard so many birth stories from olim that centered around frustration with the hospital telling them what to do, like this horrific story about breastfeeding twins in an Israeli hospital from the amazing blog A Mother in Israel. I'd heard of people spending their birth on gurneys in hospital hallways, being yelled at by midwives, or having their babies disappear after birth for hours at a time.

But I got pretty much the natural birth and recovery I wanted, and I think this was partly due to good luck, but also partly thanks to my well-honed Israeli Wrangling Techniques. Yes, I freely admit that behind my big, innocent, I'm-an-olah-chadasha eyes lies a canny manipulator of sabras. (I have a bad feeling that this won't help me deal with my own little baby Israeli... I think she's already on to me.) Seriously, my Israeli-born husband lets me do the talking when we need to negotiate with someone or deal with particularly tough bureaucracy.

Israeli Wrangling Technique (IWT) #1: Don't ask "sheelot kitbag." Every oleh should be familiar with the concept of a kitbag question. The origin of the phrase goes like this: a group of tzahal soldiers are sold to run ten kilometers. One of them asks if they should carry their bags of gear with them as they run. Cue groans from all his fellow soldiers. If you ask, the answer is always yes! In dealing with Israelis, pick and choose the information that you share and the questions that you ask. Do ask questions about alternatives that Israelis might not bring up themselves.

When I arrived at Rambam hospital at 4 AM on Friday morning, we were told that a) I wasn't dilated at all, b) that they were very full and had no bed for me, and c) that I wasn't allowed to go home because my water had already broken. Rather than spend the next 24 hours in the Rambam hallway, I asked if I could go to a different hospital... and (here's the don't-ask-she'elot-kitbag part) didn't ask if I needed to get to that other hospital right away. They found that there were open beds in Carmel hospital, and let me go. I thought about going home anyway, but instead we went out for breakfast, walked around the block a few times, and finally checked in at Carmel about three hours later. I think I might have scared the cafe owner when I slumped over on his counter in the middle of a contraction, but it was all good. We also never asked if we were allowed to leave the birthing ward during all 20 hours of my labor in Carmel hospital... we just snuck out through a side door to walk the stairs. It is very, very often better not to ask. It is also very, very confusing to random janitors when they encounter massively pregnant women in the middle of contractions walking DOWN the stairs away from the birthing ward, but they deal with it.

En route to Carmel... very slowly.

IWT #2: Be persistent, and don't stop at "no." My husband might call this personal trait of mine "stubbornness" or perhaps "bull-headedness," but I prefer to think of myself as sweetly persistent. Rather like a kindly pit bull. So when the midwife at Carmel told me it was against their policy to let me stay in my own clothes during labor, I didn't rush to change into the hospital gown she offered. Instead, I explained that I was a lot more comfortable in my own dress, and yes, I knew it could get ruined, and was there any way I could do so? Nobody ever bothered me about what I was wearing again. In my experience, a "no" doesn't usually turn into a "yes"... it just fades away if you ignore it. Though wearing a gorgeous open-backed hospital gown might have made those stairway trips a little more interesting...

IWT #3: Smile and nod... then get a second opinion. This one I actually learned from my husband, and it's the best way to deal with Israelis who insist on giving you unwanted advice. This piece of advice also basically sums up the way I survived my pregnancy (and very literally, how Nitsah survived the pregnancy... but that's a story for another day).

Basically any time Nitsah cried when she was in the hospital, a helpful nurse would suggest that I didn't have enough milk... despite the fact that Nitsah was churning out dirty diapers faster than the hisardut.  I spoke to my doula (who doubles as a lactation consultant), read my crazy but crazy-useful La Leche League guide to the "womanly" art of breastfeeding, and kept similac bottles far away from my baby. Three weeks later, Nitsah has depleted our life savings in newborn-size diapers and is rocking serious thunder thighs. We're so proud!

IWT #4: Remember that you control your actions. I think too many Americans will go along with what Israelis tell them to do and try to argue after the fact. But if you've already paid the arnona bill that you think is inaccurate, you're probably not going to get your money back. Instead, remember that very few people can actually force you to do anything.

This was a factor over and over in Nitsah's birth, from when doctors tried to get me to lie still on my back or screw an electrode into Nitsah's scalp while I was pushing so they could monitor me more effectively (no, thank you-- so long as I could see my baby's heartbeat from time to time, I was going to take the position that was most comfortable to me) to when my husband insisted on holding Nitsah as she got her first shots and changing her first diaper, despite the fact that Carmel's official policy is that all family members have to stay at the doorway of the infant ward. Unfortunately, now my husband will never let me forget that he showed me how to change a diaper... a fact that I feel should be outweighed by relative percentages of diaper changes post-hospital. :)

You can't control other people's actions, but you can always try... part way through my stay in Carmel, I was surprised when nurses suddenly switched from barging through my door and flipping on fluorescent lights to tapping gently and waiting for me to answer. Then I realized that my husband had taped this sign to my door:

Translation: Please knock and wait for an answer before entering! Please don't turn on lights. Thank you!

The sign stayed up until the next morning, when a hospital worker felt it interfered with her serious task of taking my lunch order, but it had a nice run.

IWT #5: Don't take it personally. When an Israeli yells at you, he's probably not even angry... he's just being emphatic. Smile, stay cool, and respond as if the Israeli had just called you "motek" or "chamudah" instead... which he probably will do in his next sentence. And ok, sometimes the Israeli IS mad at you, as when the doctor who tried to convince us to do internal monitoring stormed out of the room as my baby was crowning, but that's ok... he ended up leaving me in the care of an awesome midwife, so it was win-win.

Most important of all... IWT #6: Don't be confrontational. This is the biggest way in which I think Americans misread their interactions with Israelis. Americans tend to get very frustrated and aggressive when they think Israelis aren't behaving properly. But dealing with Israelis is Judo, not Karate-- you don't get what you want by striking your opponent straight on but by using his weight against him. So instead of being confrontational, agree with the person you're talking to as much as possible. Smile sadly. Thank them up and down for their help, and explain that you understand why this is so difficult for them. Then, use the magic words that the Israeli cantor at my parents' synagogue taught me before I made aliyah: "az ma anachnu yecholim la'asot?" So, what can we do? By "we," you mean yourself and the Israeli you're dealing with-- you've redefined your enemy as whatever-is-keeping-you-from-getting-what-you-want. By this point, you have confused the Israeli so much that he thinks he was on your side to begin with, and he'll help you work your way through the bureaucracy until you get your way and probably grant you special protectzia for the rest of your time together and invite you to his mother's house for Rosh HaShana.

Typically, you spend 48 hours in Israeli hospitals after giving birth. But Nitsah was born in the middle of the night on Saturday, and after we spent almost two full days in the hospital recovery ward, my husband, Nitsah and I were DONE-- we didn't want to wait until morning on Tuesday to go home. My husband asked whether we could go home early, but a nurse told him no.  I went back and asked the nurse to explain the situation, as if that I didn't really understand what my husband had told me. I thanked her up and down for asking the doctor (even though I suspected she hadn't), explaining (apologetically, not angrily) that we were really tired and had been there almost 48 hours already, and I just thought I would sleep much better in my own bed. I thanked her again for trying so hard to help us, and asked her what we could do now? Is there anything I could do to help her convince the doctor to let us go early? She didn't give me an answer on the spot, but ten minutes later a nurse arrived at my room saying that the doctor could do a check-up on Nitsah to release her now. A few hours later my husband and baby were crashed together on the couch at home. :)

Before anyone asks, no, we don't fall asleep with her like this. But it's pretty darn cute when she falls asleep on her daddy's chest.

 What strategies do you find useful when it comes to Israeli-wrangling? What are your Israeli birth stories?

How to signal like an Israeli driver...

Don't try these techniques when you are a Hyundai Getz going up against a semi-trailer.

"What??" you're saying, as you read the post title. Israelis don't signal while driving! After all, as I shared in my guide to driving like an Israeli, "Everyone Else on the Road is an Idiot," there's no point in sharing information like, say, the intention to shift lanes with drivers who are too stupid to understand.

But Israelis do have their own form of non-verbal communication while driving. To pass as an Israeli, master these techniques.

1. The Ex-Post-Facto Turn Signal. 

Signaling before turning or making a lane shift would be giving away information (and might result in the person you're trying to cut off speeding up so you can't cut them off). But Israelis do know that signaling while changing lanes is mandatory. The simple solution? Signal after you change lanes. Barur. 

2. The Nu-Pay-Attention Honk.

I come from a small, friendly American city in which someone at an intersection will only honk at you if you forget to turn left in front of them (cutting them off) after the light turns green. If people in my home town do honk in traffic, they're seriously upset-- blaring the horn is one step away from jumping out of your SUV and bashing in an offending driver's window with a baseball bat.

In Israel, on the other hand, honking (like shouting) is just another form of social interaction. Situations in which honking is expected include:

• Another driver seems to be pondering the idea of pulling out of a driveway or parking lot anywhere in the vicinity of your moving vehicle. Because they are idiots, you assume that they will pull into your car unless you honk.
• Another driver does not appear to have his feet poised above the gas pedal the moment the light flashes yellow (which happens before the light turns green here, in a little NASCAR "start yer engines" moment). If said driver hesitates for more than a millisecond or, G-d forbid, actually waits for the light to turn green, HONK. 
• You see someone you know.
• You see people standing on a street corner holding signs.
• You feel happy and you know it.

3. The Hey-Get-Out-of-My-Way Headlight Flash.

If the driver in front of you is going too slowly (i.e., only 10 kilometers over the speed limit), you should flash your lights urgently into their rear view mirror until they pull over or shift lanes. (You, obviously, are in too much of a hurry to be bothered to lane shift.) My husband and I were recently driving along a country road in northern Israel and a car started flashing his brights at us from about 100 meters back. This is the most annoying behavior of the Israeli driver, and you have my permission to block this car in and drive as slowly as possible instead of pulling over.

By the way, something good to know: Israeli traffic police drive with their blue-and-white lights flashing. This does NOT mean that you need to pull over. They'll put on their siren if you do. On the other hand, if American traffic police drive behind you with their lights flashing, you DO need to pull over. My husband learned this the hard way when he came to the US in his teens. Luckily the cop liked Israel.

4. The How-You-Doin' Intersection Stare.

Ok, this is one of those things I'll never really feel comfortable doing, but apparently when Israelis stop at a traffic light, it's considered polite behavior to turn and stare at the people in the car next to you. I learned this when I watched an Israeli morning show segment about body language b'chul (abroad), and the Israeli host was shocked to learn that in certain parts of the world complete strangers will get mad if you scrutinize them while waiting for the light to turn yellow, er, green.


5. The Tut-Tut-Tut Finger Shake.

The driving version of the Instructional Finger (which I discussed in my guide to Israeli body language), this is the gesture you make when someone does something foolish or misguided (like attempting to cut you off) while driving. Like a wise grandmother from a children's story, put a pained expression on your face and shake your finger sadly at the offending driver. Alternately, raise your hand in the air with your palm towards your face. Both of these are more effective than actually, say, giving another driver the finger, because these gestures indicate an extra level of parental disappointment at another driver's failings. And we all know how effective Jewish Guilt can be.


6. The No-Really-I'm-Cutting-You-Off Nose Nudge.

This maneuver (familiar to anyone who has attempted to drive in New York City) indicates your seriousness about actually cutting off the driver in the next lane. If you nudge the front end of your car into the other driver's lane, some of the time he'll brake to let you in. Most the time he'll swerve around you. Once I saw this result in the Slowest Accident Ever: we were driving in rush-hour traffic through Kiryat Ata when a Hareidi guy tried to nose-nudge his way in front of a young female soldier, who wasn't having any of it. She nose-nudged him back, blaring on her horn. Over the next ten minutes, they each jerked forward inch by inch, screaming at each other (and not the friendly kind of Israeli yelling), until finally-- at about the speed of a dandelion growing in a nature documentary-- they collided into each other and dented their cars. Am I a bad person if that made my day?

Then, of course, there's the art of communicating on a cell phone while driving like an Israeli, but I'll save that for another day. (Here's a sneak preview: it involves lots of hand gesturing.)

Anything you would add to this list?

The remarkable inconsistency of Israeli telephone numbers

Maybe I've just been thinking about phone numbers lately after, er, my own cell phone spent a night in the toilet (I have a new one now) but this is also one of those little things that struck me a lot after I moved to Israel.

In the US, telephone numbers have a very, very set format: (XXX) XXX-XXXX. This format is so rigid that US phone number forms can't handle an Israeli number. (In general, Americans seem confused by the concept of life outside the US.) When you tell someone your number in the US, you always pause after the first three digits and then say the final four. If my number were 123-4567, for example, I'd never dream of telling someone it was "twelve thirty-four five sixty seven."

In Israel, on the other hand, the number of digits in a phone number is in a state of basic flux. Most area codes are only one digit long, because, let's face it, we're pretty unlikely to ever need more than 9 major area codes in a country that could fit comfortably inside New Jersey. On the other hand, cell phones (somewhat inexplicably) come with their own two-digit area codes. In addition, certain phone providers come with two-digit area codes-- we originally got our phone number through HOT cable, so our home phone area code is "77" even though most landlines in our area start with "4." (When you dial area codes from within Israel, you always add a "0" at the start of the number.)

In theory, though, most phone numbers after the area code are seven digits long. (I say "in theory" because I'm pretty sure I've seen numbers of other lengths... eh, yiyeh beseder.) Israelis, though, never got the memo about three digits followed by four. I've seen numbers written like this: XXXXXXX, like this: XX-XX-XX-X, like this: XX-XXXXX, and in basically every other combination of clumps of letters. This really confused me at first, because Israelis WILL say their number as "twelve thirty-four five sixty seven," a possibility that boggled my American mind.

So anyway, if you need to ask your friend's telefone nayad (cell phone) number, be prepared. Oh, and if I had your telephone number, um... give me a call. Most of the numbers in my phone sank into the depths of our asla.

Btw, some useful Israeli phone etiquette:

To answer the phone, say "allo." If you don't pronounce the "h," "allo" is transformed into Hebrish. Nobody (that I know, at least) outside of a formal office says "shalom" when they pick up or hang up their phones. If the person on the other end of the line asks you who is speaking, do not answer the question. This would be Giving Away Information. Instead, play a game of Israeli phone etiquette chicken in both you and the person on the other end of the line ask who is speaking, eventually negotiating release of first names (never last names!) and reasons for calling. The proper way to say goodbye is "yallah bye," followed by more conversation, followed by insistence that you really have to go, followed by a little gossip, and finally closed with a resounding "yallah bye."

Oh, and all of the paragraph above is basically useless, because Israelis communicate primarily through text messaging-- "ess-em-ess-im"-- anyway.


Was anyone else surprised by Israeli phone etiquette? What did I miss? 

Things *NOT* to do if you want to seem Israeli

Here's a list of things I've noticed Americans doing that they (ok, we) tend to think makes us look Israeli... but that actually make us look like fresh-off-the-Nefesh-b-Nefesh-flight olim, or worse: here-for-a-year-on-a-gap-year-program Americans.

Disclaimer: these are great things to do if you want to seem Israeli when you're in America. Just not in Israel.

1. Wear wrap-around pants. 

 Yes, these pants are comfy, cool and only cost about 15 shekels in the shuk. But unless you're either A) cleaning your house with bleach on a Friday morning or B) Idan Raichel, don't wear these pants in Israel anytime someone else can see you.

2. Call the New Israeli Shekel a "shek." 

This seems to be slang popular among the Jerusalem English-speaking crowd, but I've never heard it from Israelis. The formal term for the shekel is "shach," short for "shekel chadash," which could be the source of this bit of Anglo slang, but "shach" is only used by newscaster-types. Say it with me, folks: they're called are sh'kalim.

2. Wear tzahal clothing when you aren't in the army.

Source: http://www.ioffer.com/si/military+hebrew

Yes, I'll admit that I went on Birthright when I was 18 and bought the requisite army shirt. (Hey, it matches my eyes!) But in Israel, wearing army clothing means you're actually serving in the army. In fact, Israelis get so sick of wearing army clothes while they actually serve in the army that you would be hard-pressed to find any olive green in an Israeli wardrobe. So save that tzahal shirt as a gift for your friends back in the US.  In fact, wearing basically any shirt with Hebrew writing on it, in Israel, is a decent indication that you aren't Israeli (unless that shirt has a cut-out neck and says "madrich"-- counselor-- on it somewhere).

4. Wear a kippa when you aren't orthodox.

My parents are very active members of a reform congregation in the US, but dress my ex-hippie dad up in the right clothing and he could pass as a chasid. I have literally never seen his chin. When they came to visit me in Israel last year, my dad decided to celebrate being in the Jewish state by wearing a kippa (yarmulke) all the time. Problem is, like a tzahal uniform, a kippa has a specific meaning in Israel. At the very least, it means that you are either on your way to a synagogue or shomer shabbat and shomer kashrut, so for my dad to wear a kippa while touring the country on shabbat... confusing.

5. Say "shalom!" to strangers.

My husband and I were recently in a national park when a couple walked past us, smiled brightly, and said "shalom aleichem!" We were not at all surprised when they turned out to be German Christian tourists... we would have been shocked had they turned out to be native-born Israelis.  On the other hand, feel free to strike up a conversation with any shop owner, bus driver, or waiter that you see, and say "shabbat shalom" anytime to say goodbye to any Israeli you meet any time past Thursday morning. By Israeli standards, anyone you actually interact with for more than 30 seconds is no longer a stranger, so it's fine to greet them/share your life story.

6. Be loud, angry and combative.

"What??" you're saying. "Israelis are loud, angry and combative!" But here's the thing: Israelis are loud and combative, but they aren't usually angry. To Israelis, being loud and combative is all part of normal social interaction, and it's usually followed up with "shabbat shalom" and "tell Moshe I say hi." When Americans are loud and combative, on the other hand, we get angry, and we tend to leave in a huff with red faces and resolutions to never buy sandals in Israel again. As I said in another post, Americans are ruder (by Israeli standards) than we realize. If you want to seem Israeli, a better bet is to attempt to connect personally with whoever you meet. Being loud and combative is a higher level of Israeli-ness that we usually can't pull off.

I feel like there's more I should add to this list. Have you ever seen people on the street and just KNOWN they're not native Israelis? How did you know?

Then again, we American olim ALWAYS seem Israeli in America and American in Israel, so maybe we should just embrace it...

Ode to my First Israeli Apartment

To my first Israeli apartment:

First, I'm sorry that we're leaving you in April. Well, ok, that's not exactly true, but trust me-- it's not you, it's us. We wanted to buy our own place, have one more room, and live on a quieter street, but we really appreciate you having been there for us throughout these first two years in Israel.

You've been taking a lot of abuse lately. Strangers have been walking over your mismatched tiled floors and criticizing little things like the way your 70s-era wood paneling is peeling off the walls or the paint on the bathroom ceiling is chipped. They laugh at your .5 room (the dining area) and complain about the car alarm going off outside your tinted, patterned windows. They also don't seem too impressed by the doorways that have been turned into shelving units and don't see the beauty in the fact that our cats can crawl through the bottom of the shelving units to go from room to room.

These low orange velvet chairs actually came with our furnished apartment. 

Our cats loved them. As scratching posts. And wrestling arenas.

But hey, at least you put yourself out there. It's not your fault that your owner thinks you are worth hundreds more shekels a month than we currently pay and that the arnona taxes are high here. Yes, you suffer daily rejection, and yes, you are quite possibly wet between the walls, and yes, the bed that you came with creaks like it is undergoing torture whenever anyone breathes, but... what was I talking about again? Oh, yes, you suffered rejection daily while our landlord was trying to rent you out, but we're still proud of you, and there are things I'll never forget about our first apartment in Israel. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

1. You made 70s style Isra-fab. From your brassy, curvy ceiling lights to the naked Grecians silkscreened on our bathroom tiles to the plastic wood paneling on the kitchen cabinets, you truly showcase the one time in your life when anyone living in this apartment did "shiputzim" (renovations-- and a fabulous word). 

2. The views from your windows were always interesting. Our cats will miss staring at birds, bats, and autobusim outside our window, and we'll miss watching them stare down at us in shock and concern when they see us approaching from the street. Every community parade in our town (as well as a lot of traffic) passed right below our front windows, including the traffic safety parade last Purim and the veterans parade on VE day. All the loud traffic passing outside your window only made the stillness during the siren on Yom HaShoah and YomHaZikaron more stunning. And the view outside your back window proves that Israel really does have seasons! Really! Take a look:

During July (when a branch fell off because of the drought):

In early December, when the grass started to come back:

Today (spring-- note the flowering trees!):

So yellowing grass isn't quite as pretty as yellow fall leaves, but it's still nice to watch time pass. Also, aren't those metal "soragim" (bars) kind of beautiful?

3. You have a different tile floor in every room, which helped us decide if we want to do any shiputzim of our own! (For the record, the dark brown tile in the shower room hides cat hairs much better than the light white tile in the toilet room.)

4. You taught me all about how to turn on a dude (er, not a guy... a water heater), how to close my trisim in a sandstorm, and how to flip the switch on the circuit board of our house each time you objected to the idea of me running the kumkum (electric teapot) and the stove at the same time.

I'll also miss your huge kitchen and the high ceilings in your living room. I'll miss having a random little closet to put the litter boxes into. I'll miss the time we looked at the uneven tile in the bedroom and hypothesized that your previous elderly residents had buried lirot in the sand beneath the tiles. I'll miss living within a block of any kind of store I could ever want, from a guitar store to a petshop, with a bridal store, a health food shop, three yarkans and a super thrown in for good measure.

Our landlord finally came down in his asking price and found a nice mother with three kids (!) to move into this one apartment. The new people seem to appreciate you more than we did-- the mother looked at that gold chandelier in the living room and thought it was ya-fe-fi-yah. The two eight-year-old boys in our building seem excited about playing with the two eight-year-old girls who are moving in. But don't forget us, ok? You were a very significant 100 meters during my first two years in Israel, and I know we'll never forget you.

Now, excuse me while I go pack.

P.S. Yep, we're moving in just over a week!! Wahoo! Blog posts might be pretty infrequent as we move, though I have some ideas I'm kicking around. The thing I'm most worried about: canceling HOT cable... any suggestions about how to keep HOT from taking any more of our money?

How to Wait in Line Like an Israeli

Contrary to popular opinion, Israelis do wait in line.  We do have, shall we say, a different line-waiting etiquette, as my sister discovered when she returned to NYC after a year in Israel, shoved her way onto a bus (elbows flying)... then realized that all the other passengers were staring at her from the pavement where they stood in a polite queue.  So here's a guide to how to wait in line like an Israeli.

1. Ask "mi ha'aharon"? (Who's the last?) When you come to a meat counter or post office line in Israel, ask who is last in line. It often won't be the person who is actually standing in front of you-- it may be the person off in the corner getting stamps out of a vending machine or feeding a baby. This is probably why a lot of Americans get really upset when they wait in line, because they think Israelis are cutting in front of them when, really, Israelis simply have a more casual attitude about what "standing in line" actually means. 

2. If you need to step out of line, remind the person in front of you where your spot is. This was a little odd to me at first. For example, if I were in a grocery store check-out line in the US and realized I had to grab one thing off a nearby shelf, I would ask the person behind me in line if they could save my space-- the reason being that they're the person who would be disrupted when I came back. But for the exact same reason, Israelis rely on the person in front of them to save their spots. After all, why would the person behind you ever give your spot back?? That would be being a freyer! The person in front of you, on the other hand, will defend you if the person behind you complains, and Israelis do have a strongly-ingrained sense of line-standing ethics.

3. Stand really close to the person in front of you. Honestly, I'm not even sure if Israelis do this... my sense of personal space has shifted since coming here so that now I feel no compunction about nudging my shopping card actually into someone else when I try to make it down a narrow aisle in the Super. (Israelis look at me like I'm crazy if I apologize for something like that!) So the fact that Israelis don't actually touch each other in line or (mostly) breathe on each others' necks seems like plenty of space for me. But if you're an American from one of the northeastern regions, you may need to take a few steps forward. If you leave too much space in front of you, you aren't asserting your spot in line and someone may cut. (Watch out for spots in which you might think you're waiting in one line for multiple cash registers-- your body language has to be assertive for people not to cut in front of you then!)

4. Let someone else cut in front of you if you decide to, and be ready to wait for a while. Israelis are generally pretty rushed and stressed out, but for some reason they have a more relaxed attitude towards line-waiting than most Americans. If you come to a supermarket line with just a few items, Israelis with lots of items in their carts will almost always allow you to cut in front of them. Cashiers will wait for five minutes while you go back to get the third bag of shnitzel that will round out your 2 + 1 free deal. The bank teller will make four phone calls about the missing card for the guy in front of you before she looks for your checkbook. Any you know what? I actually think this is kind of nice. I like that when my time comes, the cashier will give me her full attention and let me take the time I need. So what if I wait a few extra minutes in the process. (Or, ok, a few extra hours back when we were applying for our mortgage... waiting in lines in banks is basically an all-day affair.) And definitely, complain loudly if you feel someone is taking advantage of a situation.

5. In some spots (bus stops, train stations, traffic circles, mortgage brokerages) there is no clearly-defined line, so instead you need to push your way to the front. This is where marpekim, elbows, are essential. Push your way up there!

Did I leave anything out? What have you while waiting experienced in Israeli lines?

Have exact change

 

My actual hands, and my actual change. As captured by my web cam, as I couldn't find my camera. Also, I think I need to moisturize. 

This is probably not one of my weightier posts, but it just might make a difference on your next trip to the shuk or even the super. If you want to be Israeli, plan on having exact change.

This is not because vendors run out of change. This is because vendors (from cashiers to department stores) see themselves as professional authorities, and it is their job to make sure that you don't disturb the balance of agurot to shekels in their change drawers. So what if this inconveniences you, the customer. In Israel, the sales person is always right!

Here's an example: today I went to Eden, which is essentially the Israeli Whole Foods. My total purchases came out to something like 90.23, and I paid with a 100 shekel bill. The checkout girl took my money-- something she might not have done if I had tried to pay with a 200 shekel bill. Then I would have heard the classic question, ein lach kesef katan? Don't you have smaller money (i.e. smaller denominations of money)? It's sometimes actually difficult to get rid of a 200 shekel bill... don't even think of using it to buy a 14 shekel felofel serving!

Back in the US, this is where our transaction would have stopped. The checkout girl would have entered in the money I gave her into the cash register and dutifully returned to me a five-shekel coin,  two two-shekel coins, one one-shekel coin, one half-shekel coin, and three ten-agurah coins. (There are technically 100 agurot to a shekel, but they abolished the one agurah coin a while ago, so the smallest denomination in our money is 10 agurot. This means that the price of my wasabi beans and organic pitot gets rounded to the nearest 10 agurot, which always makes me feel special when I get a three-agura discount.) And, ok, technically a checkout girl in the US would not give me my change in shekels, but you get my point. American checkout people believe the customer and the computer are always right, so they don't like to do any hard math of their own.

Instead, the checkout girl looked at my money, looked at the total, and asked me if I had 20 agurot. I fished in my purse, found 20 agurot, and received back one ten shekel coin.

This is a really small example, but I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me in Israel. I'm always getting asked if I have fifty agurot, kesef katan, or smaller bills. Israelis will stand at their cash registers for 10 minutes while you find and solicit exact change from your spouse in the next store rather than give you a lot of extra change.

By the way, if you really don't have exact change, just tell the checkout person that and act really apologetic. They will take pity on you and dip into their stores of change in dire emergencies. Unless you're trying to buy falofel with a 200-shekel bill... then you might starve. What do you think they are, in the business of accepting and returning money from customers? Oh. Well.... still. You'll starve.

Have you noticed the Israeli mania for exact change? Has anyone ever actually refused to take your money because you couldn't pay in kesef katan?

The Art of Shopping at a Yarkan

The yarkan where I shop-- click to see a larger version and read the prices :)

In many random ways, Israel is "greener" than the US-- for example, we heat our water using solar panels in the summer and generally drive fuel-efficient cars. But one of the biggest ways in which we're green comes is found in the little shops whose name sounds like the word "green" ("yarok"): we get almost all of our fruits and veggies locally, while the US flies unripe produce in from, say, Chile so that everyone can eat tasteless tomatoes ALL YEAR ROUND! Score! This means a few things:

1. If you want to get a peach or a slice of watermelon in February, you're out of luck. (According to the owner of my yarkan, the one veggie that comes from overseas-- and therefore is available out of season-- is the white garlic from China, which isn't nearly as flavorful as the purple garlic from Israel.)

2. Our fruits and vegetables actually have taste. I honestly thought cucumbers tasted like water (sometimes bitter water) before I came to Israel. Think again!

To shop for vegetables like an Israeli, go to the shuk or shop at any one of your neighborhood yarkans... we have at least three within two blocks of our apartment. (The word "yarkan" probably comes from the word for vegetables, "yerakot.")

Here are some tips for shopping at a yarkan like a native:

• Everything is always on sale. In the Yarkan where I shop, all prices are written on scraps of cardboard boxes, and about half of the prices are accompanied by the word מבצע-- SALE! So, er, don't trust the signs. (Closely related is the idea that everything is seedless. Don't believe everything your yarkan guy says.) Instead...
• Know what's a good price. A typical price for basics like tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, oranges, eggplant or potatoes is 2.99 shekels a kilo, which even with the weak dollar is equivalent to about 35 cents a pound. I've bought tomatoes at the yarkan for as little as 99 agurot a kilo, which is about 11 cents a pound. (Don't forget-- first divide by 3.8 or so for the exchange rate into dollars, then divide by 2.2 to convert kilos to pounds!) A good price for, say, persimmons, kiwi fruit, pears, apricots or avocados is about 6 shekels a kilo (equivalent to about 70 cents a pound). I buy about three canvas bags full of fruits and veggies every week and usually spend about 50-70 shekels.
• Don't always buy the cheapest tomatoes. The fruits and veggies sitting out front on a really good sale sometimes have sat there for a while. Unless you plan to eat the tomatoes right away, you might want to splurge on the slightly more expensive tomatoes that are sitting inside in the shade.
• Onions and celery grow in dirt. You may need to wash them when you get home. Live with it. Sometimes shopping at a yarkan takes you, er, a little closer to the earth than shopping in an American grocery store does. That's because American veggies get power washed and quite possibly didn't stay in the ground long enough to get dirty.
• Don't squeeze the peaches. Sometimes the owners of the yarkan get a little, shall we say, possessive? It's only natural. After all, they own the yarkan and essentially own all the fruits and veggies on their shelves. Which means that a hypothetical brand-new olah trying to shop for peaches during one of her first days in Israel might get yelled at for pinching peaches before she chooses to buy them. At which point, hypothetically, she might get offended and shop at a different yarkan for a few months until she stops thinking like an American and realizes that her thumb print just might not belong on someone else's peach.
• Save bags by putting all the veggies at one price together in one bag. The owner of my yarkan weighs veggies and types in their prices by hand-- no code stickers (or stickers of any kind, actually) on my fruit. So he doesn't care if I mix my tomatoes and potatoes so long as they're all the same price. Even so, you'll end up with a ton of the little colored yarkan sakiot nylon, but you do what you can.
• Bring cash. Again, the yarkan isn't big on careful record keeping or fancy money transactions. It doesn't contain any kind of bar-code scanner and it certainly doesn't accept credit cards.
• Ask the owner what weird-looking fruit and veggies are. He will laugh at you for not knowing the identity of the giant sooty radish, but you'll get over it. Then do a web search when you get home to figure out how to eat the food. Did you know that the yummiest way to eat a ripe persimmon is to cut off the top and scoop out the insides like pudding? 
• Let the owner pick out your watermelon half. He prides himself on getting you the sweetest piece, and he'll cut it open for you on the spot. Israelis rarely seem to buy a whole watermelon. 
• Never buy your veggies in the supermarket (or, in Hebrew, the "Sooper").  The vegetables there are overpriced, unripe (and possibly rotten), flavorless, and generally fairly equivalent to what you might get in the US. 

Have you shopped in a yarkan? What are your favorite Israeli fruits and vegetables?

*Correction: people tell me that a "yarkan" is technically the person selling the veggies, not the store. So for the record, I've never actually been, er, "in" our local yarkan. 

Don't Call Between Two and Four

 Our adopted street kitten Pixel (back when he was little and cute) demonstrating appropriate Israeli behavior between 2-4

In the US, I knew it was rude to call someone's home before, oh, 8:30 AM or after 9:30 PM. But in Israel, there's an extra layer to this rule: don't call between 2 and 4 PM. This is reserved as siesta time in Israel, perhaps because in the days before air conditioning it was too hot to do anything but nap at this time. In fact, lots of stores and offices in Israel are open from 10:00 to 1:00 and then again from 4:00 to 7:00... the middle of the day is reserved for lunch (the biggest meal of the day in Israel) and sleep.

Me, I don't nap. I can sleep in in the morning as late as my schedule lets me, but I can't lie down and sleep in the middle of the day. But whether you nap or not, remember: don't call any Israeli friend between two and four! When I forget and violate this rule, I'm often greeted by groggy, irritated Israeli voices. On the other hand, this is a good way to learn some new words.

P.S. Happy Chanukah! The menorahs are out in full force in Israel... :)

Grocery shopping like an Israeli

There are a lot of differences between Israeli and American grocery stores, as I learned on my very first day in Israel. I was strolling down the street, feeling all cool and Israeli, and I decided to look around the inside of our local Machsane-Lahav.

By the way, basically half of the big stores in Israel these days is calls Machsan-something. Machsan means "warehouse" (or storage room, as in the machsans on the ground floor of most apartment buildings) and I guess it indicates "cheap" and "big" to the Israeli consumer. I bought our fridge in Machsane-Chashmal (Electrical Warehouse), I passed a lamp store called Machsan-Teorah (Lighting Warehouse) last night, a butcher shop might be Machsan-Basar, etc. Machsane-Lahav means "Flame Warehouse"... I'm really not sure where that one comes from.

Anyway, on my first day in Israel, I strolled into the grocery store (known as a super in Hebrew--pronounced "soo-pear" and short for "supermarket," I guess). A guy standing at the door tried to get my attention as I waltzed in, but I had heard Israeli men tend to be aggressive. Was I going to be the clueless American who made eye contact and encouraged Israeli pickup artists? Not me! I was Israeli! Cool as a melafafon, I strolled towards the bread section, only to see the guy coming after me and shouting... and he had a gun.

Turns out he was the security guard at the door who was supposed to check my purse before I entered. Oops. And for the record, having pretty decent Hebrew when you arrive backfires when you need to convince a security guard that you are a fresh-off-the-plane olah who didn't know any better.

These are some other fun things you should know about shopping in an Israeli super:

• Be nice to the security guys. If they get to know you, they'll let you go in without being searched. Also, they can watch your little-old-lady-wheeled-cart (post about that later) or your bags of veggies from the yarkan (post about that later too) or your stroller at the door while you go shopping.
• The grocery store (unless it's a non-kosher basar-lavan-selling chain like Tiv-Taam) will close early on Fridays and be closed all day on Shabbat and holidays.
  
• If you have just one or two items, Israelis almost always let you cut in front of them in line if you ask.
• The check-out lady might not say "thank you" or "have a nice day," but she will tell you that you have only bought one bottle of olive oil when you get a better price for buying two, and she'll wait for you to go get another bottle. She will also attempt to sell you a range of products from dark chocolate to hand lotion that she has sitting on her checkout counter. She will also do this for all of the people ahead of you in line, which means you should be prepared to wait for a while to check out.
  
• Buy-one-get-one-free in Hebrew is denoted in simple math: 1+1 (echad ploos echad). Buy two get one free is 2+1 (shteim ploos echad) and is WRITTEN as 1+2... Hebrew goes right to left, remember? (Thanks for a commenter for reminding me of this!)
• You probably need to bag your own groceries and you probably need to ask the checkout lady to throw some bags up on the checkout counter for you.
• When you buy more than, say, 200 shekels of groceries, you will be asked "kama tashlumim," which means "how many payments?" If you want to pay everything at once, you can say "echad" or "ragil" (normal). A rumor circulates among olim that the way to ask to pay everything at once is to say "makah" (hit), but when an Argentinian told me this in the checkout line once, the checkout lady said she'd never heard it before.
  
• On your receipt when you pay with a credit card will be two lines. The top is for your signature, and the bottom is for your phone number. To be really Israeli, don't write your phone number in this space unless the checkout lady insists. This would be giving away information. I've barely ever written my phone number on a receipt, despite the fact that every receipt contains a spot for it.
  

I think I'll devote a whole post some time to the differences between food packaging in Israel and the US. What general super shopping-tips did I miss? Have you had any adventures in Israeli grocery shopping?

A Quick and Easy Guide to Living in Celsius

When I first arrived in Israel, I had a very hard time gleaning anything meaningful from the weather report. Was I supposed to wear a coat in 20 degree weather?? What did it mean that the weekend would get up to 35?

I'm not alone. I once saw approximately this dialogue on Martha Stewart's TV show:

GUEST: It was very hot in Abu Dhabi. The temperature was about 37 degrees Celsius.
MARTHA: What is that in Fahrenheit?
GUEST: I think about 70 degrees.
MARTHA: Oh, that's not that hot.

(37 degrees Celsius is actually 98 degrees Fahrenheit.)

Yes, there are formulas to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit, but these usually involve complicated formulas and knowledge of the number of times a grasshopper's wings beat per second. What I really need to know is this: should I wear a coat?

So here's my handy-dandy guide to living in Celsius.

If the temperature is in the 40s: It's HOT. Going outside is actually dangerous. The ocean will feel like a hot bath. Even in the shade, sweat will stream down your body. Close all of the trisim, turn on the air conditioning and drink lots of water. Any food you consume should be cold. (Farhrenheit equivalent: 100 and above. It actually got to this temperature in Haifa just a few weeks ago.)

If the temperature in the 30s: It's hot, but not HOT. You can probably go outside with proper precautions. Wear shorts and sleeveless shirts or light cotton clothing. It's too hot to wear full-length jeans or socks. You can probably handle a warm falofel so long as it's accompanied by a cold drink... although be warned, ice does not come standard in Israeli soft drinks. This weather is typical of the entire summer in Israel, except when it gets HOT, and is perfect for a game of matkot on the beach and a dip in the Mediterranean. (Rough Fahrenheit equivalent: the 90s.) Note: the upper 30s are HOT. If temp is 37 or above, follow guidelines for the 40s.

If the temperature is in the 20s: This is known as "mezeg avir naim"-- pleasant weather. It is warm but not sweltering. This weather (typical for October-November in Israel) is perfect for strolling around outside in jeans, a short-sleeved shirt, and sandals. You don't need a jacket but you probably don't need air conditioning. Kick out the grill and mangal some meat! Keep a light blanket near your bed, but you might not need it. (Rough Fahrenheit equivalent: the 70s.)

If the temperature is in 10s: This weather is cool, but not cold. You will probably want a blanket at night and a light jacket if you go outside. You might even want to wear socks, and you will probably appreciate hot soup for dinner. (Rough Fahrenheit equivalent: the 50s.) This temperature is typical of the Israeli winter.

If the temperature is in the 0s: This is what Israelis consider cold (and Americans where I come from consider normal fall weather). Wear a fairly warm jacket and warm shoes. Israelis turn on their heaters and bundle up in hats and scarves in weather like this. Because your house will still not be very good at heating up and staying warm, sleep with a thick feather blanket at night. (Rough Fahrenheit equivalent: the 30s.)

If the temperature is below 0: Israelis consider temperatures below zero almost too cold to bear. They will avoid going outside and will sit around huddled under blankets at home. They may or may not own mittens and so will be cold and grumpy when they emerge into the freezing air. If you own a warm winter coat, wear it. At least, this is what I guess happens-- it never got below zero last year in the Krayot. (Rough Fahrenheit equivalent: 32 degrees and below.)

Get One Car Ahead

The car on the right in the picture above is not signaling-- don't worry. It's breaking as it figures out how to cut in front of the pickup flying the giant Israeli flag.

If you are an Israeli driver, remember: it is crucially important that you get One Car Ahead. You must reach the light before the car in front of you so that, as you both sit waiting for the same light to turn green, you can feel smug knowing that you are One Car Ahead. If you reach a roundabout, it is crucially important that you cut off the person about to enter it by entering first. If a lane is about to end (usually around a bend and without warning-- this is Israel, after all, and little things like advance notice of lanes ending are for goyim), it is crucial that you get IN FRONT of the car in the other lane rather than behind it.

There are two reasons why getting One Car Ahead is so crucial:

1. You are always in a hurry.
2. You are always late.

This actually mystified the Argentinians in my ulpan class; they came from a culture of manana, but Argentinians are late when they go places because they aren't in a hurry. Israelis are late when they go places because they are. If an Israeli just spends a little more time getting things done (and organizing combinot) before leaving home, he will surely get rich. Every Israeli, remember, is an expert on just about everything, which makes their time more valuable than yours.

Getting One Car Ahead is also closely related to the principle that every other driver on the road is an idiot. If another driver weaves in and out of traffic without using his turn signal, he is clearly an idiot because he is obviously not paying attention. You, on the other hand, don't need to signal because the other drivers are obviously not paying attention and therefore wouldn't notice if you did. Also, every other driver on the road is an idiot, so if they're all driving slowly, it's because they can't drive... not because, say, cows are wandering into Rt. 4 during the middle of rush hour. (We actually saw this happen. They were happily grazing on the median strip by the Lev HaMifratz mall.)

The other day I saw a car full of chassidic men, long payot and all, swerve between cars along the Derech Akko-Haifa. My theory is that they were on the way to a wedding in Nahariya, because they rolled down their window to ask me for directions before careening off.

OY.

There's no pork in Israel...

...just a bunch of euphemisms: "basar lavan" (white meat), "basar acher" (other meat), etc.

Most grocery stores in Israel are kosher. At our local Machsane Lahav, I don't need to look for hekshers to know that all the meat is kosher and the margarine parve. This grocery store also closes every Shabbat, which means that if we run out of milk on Saturday, we have to wait until Sunday to buy more. This is one thing I love about Israel; keeping kosher in the US took real effort, but here it's effortless.

Eating treyf, on the other hand, takes effort. It might even involve a trip to the chain store Tiv Ta'am, set far back from the road-- and open on Shabbat. Tiv Ta'am specializes in imported goods and all those nonkosher meats that Israelis see as delicacies. (The difficulty of buying pork raises its value... many Israelis love ordering pig or shrimp when they travel abroad.) But even at Tiv Ta'am, delicate euphemisms prevail in place of the word "chazir," pig/pork. In the picture above, you can see pig parts at Tiv Ta'am ranging from tongues to hearts. Sorry, did I say "pig" parts? I mean "white"... "white tongue," "white heart," "white tail"...

I'll stick with the other other white meat. (As in, chicken. My husband felt I should specify. This is a no treyf zone!)

Can I use the bathroom... er... toilet room... er... WC?

Not our toilet. (http://nerdapproved.com/bizarre-gadgets/mr-toilet-plush/)

Israelis tend to think it's gross to have a toilet in the same room as a bathtub. I've seen a few houses or apartments with everything in one room, but most Israeli homes contain a toilet room and then a separate room with a bathtub, shower and sink. Nicer homes have a little sink in the toilet room, but in our apartment we have to angle out of the toilet room (attempting not to touch anything in the process) and into the separate bathroom to wash our hands. This is especially fun when a guest happens to actually be taking a shower when I just used the, er, toilet room-- although I guess it's nice I can use the toilet at all when someone else is showering!

All this leads to a little terminology confusion. I'm used to calling it all the bathroom, or the ambatia in Hebrew. But when I ask where the bathroom is at someone else's house, people tend to think I'm looking for a bubble bath. So then I have to figure out what's the word for the room with just a toilet-- restroom? Toilet room? Powder room? Maybe WC, the British word for "water closet," and, incidentally, what they call toilet rooms in French (Veh Seh). In Hebrew, the correct word is shirutim, "services," but I tend to forget this. Once, our drains clogged when we had American guests. I took one of the guests to use the bathroom--er, WC-- in our neighbor's apartment. But when I got there, I completely blanked on the right word, and I ended up asking if the guest could use their "asla," their toilet. A little graphic. I've never quite been able to look the neighbors in the eye since.

So if you want to be Israeli, just remember to ask for the shirutim, not the ambatia. It's also a good idea to remember that the plural of shirut (one of those group taxis) is moniot shirut, not shirutim... I've also gotten weird looks when ask if shirutim come to this bus stop.

Ah, good times. Maybe I should stick to posting about my dirty dishes. :)

Getting an Israeli Mortgage (mashkanta)

Today my husband and I talked to mortgage brokers from two different banks... scarily enough, we're almost at the point where we're ready to move from the renting world to the buying world. (I'm very excited!! Finally I'll get to unleash my home decorating/renovation obsession on a home of my own! I'm thinking Mediterranean style, or maybe Modern Moroccan. Partly because everything I buy seems to be in shades of blue, red, and gold.)

Here are a few things I've learned about the Israeli mortgage process so far:

1. We'll use a LOT of savings. Banks we talked to asked for 25-30% down payment. (This might partly explain why Israel isn't suffering from a mortgage crisis like the US-- I'm pretty sure that a few years back we could have gotten away with 10% or less down payment in the US. In Israel, you can't buy a house unless you can afford it... and you know how to save.)

2. Credit score? What credit score? Whether you are buying or renting an apartment, that magic credit score that is sooo important in the US doesn't exist here. Rather, banks will want to see your salary pay stubs for the past three months and the past 40 transactions in your bank accounts.

3. Aliyah benefits don't really help you buy a house. One thing I've learned over the past few years is that the aliyah benefits (aside from the actual money we get from the government as part of our "sal klita"-- thanks for that one, government!) don't actually help much at our income level. I.e., we could have received a discount on buying a new car... except that new cars in Israel START at about 100,000 shekels and the discount would have only brought it down to about 80,000 shekels. We ended up buying our used Hyudai Getz for much less, without any benefits. Similarly, we would have only received a discount on our fridge had we bought an Israeli-made product, and although we're Zionists, we like saving money and getting a good product more. So for buying a house, our Aliyah benefits could lock in about a 4.5% interest rate... which would be great if the current interest rate here wasn't about 2%.

4. Mortgage ladies talk really really quickly. And they show a fair amount of cleavage. And they write all kinds of figures on paper and use words like "laybor," which has something do to with the exchange rate to dollars. These are things I noticed as my husband actually followed the conversation, and I smiled and nodded. (He filled me in later!) Btw: our mortagage lady at the second bank was wearing platform shoes, tight capri jeans, blue eye shadow, and a tight yellow t-shirt showing the aforementioned cleavage. And she seemed extremely professional and competent. Try to picture that on a high-ranking bank employee in the US...

5. We will have a lot of options in terms of how we pay. A really confusing number of options. Not just in terms of prime vs. fixed interext rates but in terms of whether we pay in dollars or shekels, whether the amount of the loan is fixed in dollars or shekels, etc. A lot of business here is done in dollars, or at least was back when the dollar seemed more stable than the shekel, so all Israelis have these kinds of choices.

6. We can afford an apartment! We'll be able to afford a better place if we wait till this winter, as we originally planned, but we have enough saved to start looking now! (I also feel quite rich, as the mortgage lady looked at my (pitiful by American standards) dollar salary from my Internet teaching job and said, "Wow, that's a lot.") http://www.yad2.co.il/Nadlan/sales.php here I come!!

Any wisdom to share? This is our first time buying property in any country, although I feel I've watched enough property-buying shows on TV to be an expert. ;)

How to Wash Dishes like an Israeli

As promised, here's my no-holds-or-pictures-barred view of how to wash dishes in a water shortage. Read at your own risk!

As Mark pointed out in response to my last post, the best way to save water while washing dishes is to own a dishwasher. However, I don't... as I'm reminded daily when I walk into the kitchen hoping the dishes will have magically washed themselves.

Back in the US, I'd wash dishes with a soapy sponge and a stream of hot water running constantly. To me now, that seems almost like, oh, barbecuing by feeding my grill a constant stream of dollar bills. Here in Israel, I've learned to wash dishes the the minimum of water running. There are some more complicated techniques than this: I've heard of people rotating three bins of water of various degrees of cleanliness, so that they first scrub in water that has been used twice, then rinse in water that has been used once, then rinse in water that was freshly poured that day. Then they throw out the dirtiest bin, shift the other two bins over, and start again the next day. However, this is what I've seen most Israelis do.


STEP 1: Fill a small bowl with warm, soapy water. Our water takes a while to turn warm (our water heater is on the roof), so instead I tend to use hot water from our electric tea kettle. The point of this water is simply to keep your sponge clean and soapy.

STEP 2: Use a sponge and this small amount of warm, sudsy water to soap up all the dishes. (Scrape off any remaining food before you do this step.) Set the soaped dishes on the counter while you're soaping the rest.

STEP 3: Rinse off all your dishes, turning off the stream of water while you put each dish on the drying rack. Bonus points if you can rinse several dishes at once. I usually manage to rinse big clumps of silverware at a time.

STEP 4: Clean off your counter. It gets very soapy.

That's it! Ha, I avoided the Step 2 picture of my dirty dishes. So this post ended up not so graphic after all. (My dirty dishes aren't unusually disgusting-- no mold, I promise-- but still, isn't it gross to see someone else's half-eaten chicken?)

This, btw, is my drying rack:

It slides down (making a sound like fingernails on a chalkboard) as it gets heavier with dishes, and it can be hidden from view behind cabinet doors over my sink. I'm not sure if this is a uniquely Israeli invention, but I know I never saw build-in racks like this in the US, and I've seen them in several apartments here.

Anyone have a different dishwashing technique to share?

Get your Israeli driver's license!!

Getting my Israeli citizenship? Easy. Opening Israeli bank accounts? Piece of cake. Signing up for Israeli health care? Easier than getting a doctor's appointment in the US.

Getting my Israeli drivers license? The most traumatic experience of my aliyah.

This story starts way back in August, when my husband and I bought a used Hyundai Getz. We found it using the Israeli buy/sell website www.yad2.co.il, and to save a few thousand shekels, we bought a manual transmission car. I knew how to drive stick, but my husband didn't, so test driving was all me. I was TERRIFIED to drive on the Israeli streets... I stalled twice when I tried to start the car, then crawled around the block once at about 10 kilometers per hour and finally said, "Great! We'll take it!" Worst test-drive ever, but the car has turned out to be fine... despite the fact that my husband regularly curses the day I convinced him to buy manual. (He's learned, though!)

Flash forward to January. We'd both been comfortably driving all around northern and southern Israel in our little Getz (affectionately named "the Munchkin"). My husband and I were seated in the "Misrad haRishui," our local branch of the Dept. of Transportation, to start the process for my husband's Israeli license. We knew that I could drive in Israel for up to a year after aliyah on my American license, but my husband's license had expired. As we waited for some forms, my husband suggested we check the expiration date on my license. Oops. It had expired in August. We decided not to mention this to the Misrad HaRishui, as there we were with our car parked in the lot outside... and no other way to get home. But after that point, I didn't drive the Munchkin.

Luckily, because my license had expired so recently, I could skip the written test. While this test is the bane of many Israelis' existence, I actually think it's easier for olim. To pass, picture how Israelis drive and then answer the opposite. Sample question:

What should you do when a car cuts you off on the highway?
(A) Honk repeatedly.
(B) Accelerate to pass the car.
(C) Tailgate and flash your lights until the car moves out of your lane.
(D) Reduce speed so that you are following behind at a safe distance.

Israelis would engage in choices (A)-(C), possibly simultaneously, so the correct answer is (D).

I was still required to take lessons with an instructor and then a road test. In March, I finally started my lessons with "Avi," an instructor who talked incessantly on his cell phone while students were driving and whose basic motivational technique involved lecturing when students did something wrong and telling them the secret to good driving was doing exactly what he said. As long as he wasn't actually talking on the cell phone to someone else at the time. In other words, he was very Israeli. In retrospect, I think I would have done better with a different teacher-- I tend to like a softer, dare-I-say "American" touch. (My husband worked very well with Avi, and passed his test on the first try after just a few lessons. Men.) But Avi excelled at working the system, and after pushing me through a few weeks of lessons, he took me down to the Misrad haRishui to argue for a test "chutz mehamisgeret," which would allow me to avoid the waiting period of about a month for a normal test.

Now, let me interrupt this to say that taking a driving test in Israel is not as easy as in the US. For one thing, we must know how to navigate traffic circles (or "roundabouts"), and we must identify the difference between what IS a traffic circle (meaning that whoever enters first has the right of way) and what looks like a traffic circle (meaning that you sometimes have to stop and yield in the middle). To make things extra fun, just before every roundabout and at random spots along the road, we have pedestrian crosswalks, and you can fail your test for not stopping when an old lady nears the edge of the crosswalk as you sail through. Then you have a random spattering of yield signs and stop signs, often with no logic telling you that this should be "yield" and this should be "stop." You also must deal with the Israeli penchant for lanes ending randomly or for the "straight ahead" lane to switch from the left to the right side of the road twenty times in a row. And you regularly come to intersections like this (my own picture):


Oh, and did I mention that because we own a stick shift car, I have to take the TEST on my instructor's stick shift car? And that I can fail the test if I don't shift smoothly enough (or use the clutch too much, or stall, or brake too sharply, or slow down in neutral, etc.) And I HATE driving lessons. I hate the passivity of only turning when the instructor tells you to, I hate trying to relearn skills that are automated, and I hate having every little part of my driving criticized. And it's extra stressful to me to not understand my instructor when he tells me (in Hebrew) to parallel park after the pile of brush in front of the yellow trash can, near the cat. And driving tests are far worse than lessons. I'm good at paper tests... not so good at driving tests when I can't go back to change an answer, and I might accidentally kill someone in the process. Plus, it's way more embarassing and frustrating to fail a driving test after driving for nine years.

To top it all off, I had already driven in Israel for months, so I'd internalized a lot of bad Israeli driving habits-- for the test, I had to learn how to drive not like an Israeli but like a promotional video for road safety.

Finally, getting a license in Israel is EXPENSIVE. Every lesson cost me 80 shekels. The test cost 350, plus a fee of about 100 shekels payable to the government. Plus probably other fees that are slipping my mind right now, like a fee to pay when I actually get my license. (New drivers have to take a minimum of something like 24 lessons, so Israeli parents can do the math-- not everyone gets a license at 17 here!)

My test was April 1st, which I should immediately have seen as a bad omen. I did everything perfectly... except for one little detail. I, er, didn't see a red light.

The examiner slammed on the breaks on his side of the car.

With our thudding halt I realized that I'd failed my first test. Another "chutz mehamisgeret" test was out of the question, so I had to wait... until "achrei haChagim," after the holidays, a catch-phrase signaling that nothing will get done either during the High Holidays in September or the string of holidays starting with Passover in the spring.

After Passover, I called Avi again... and was told to call back after Yom Haatzmaut. After Shavuot, Avi informed me that his car had burnt up. (Really.) Finally, two months after my first test, he called me back with my next test date: June 10. The morning after my sister was supposed to arrive in Israel in the middle of the night. And we were only able to schedule three quick review lessons before that, and after not driving for two months, I needed them. Something about a stick shift reveals every bit of driving discomfort.

Anyway, yesterday I took my second test, attempting every zen relaxation and focus technique possible during the test. I didn't do anything as horribly wrong as I had on my first test, but I also know plenty of people who have failed three or four times for far littler offenses. I took the test at 9 AM, and then I had to wait until 4:15 to find out if I had passed.

Finally, the call came. Avi: "Mazel tov, avart!" I passed. No more thousands of shekels spent, no more trips in my instructor's car. Now I just need to wait for my paper temporary license to arrive, pay a few more fees, and finally... I'll be just another Israeli driver. Unleashed onto the Israeli streets.

"Medusa" is not a Greek monster...

... although they do lurk in the Mediterranean.

(You can see the family resemblance.)

Sorry fewer posts than normal this week. My sister is about to visit, life is busy, and... it just got hot! I'm excited for hot weather, although as sweat poured down me today while I was strenuously sitting in my apartment (ha), I also remembered why I was SO excited for cool in the fall last year. Israeli weather in the spring and fall is absolutely perfect for life in general. Israeli weather in the summer is perfect for the beach! With almost 100% certainty, I can say that it won't rain for the next hundred days... blue skies, sunny weather, and the beach a ten minute drive away.

The only problem with this picture is that "meduzot"-- jelly fish-- also love the warm water of the Mediterranean. I've never actually hit a "medusah" in the water, but even the slight sting of medusah venom in the waves is enough to convince me I never want to get any closer. Surfing friends have welts to prove that they HAVE gotten closer, and it's no fun at all.

So listen to the Israeli life guards if they tell you to stay out of the water on a hot day. Instead, stay home and watch Meduzot the movie-- it's an artsy (i.e., beautiful but confusing and depressing) film that I wasn't crazy about, but many people love.

Happy summer!

3.5 Rooms for your 2.2 Children

The average number of children per Jewish household in Israel is apparently 2.2 , so where are you going to put that extra 1/5 of a child? In your half room, of course!

No, not really. But today I want to post quickly about something that mystified me before I came to Israel-- how Israelis calculate room numbers in apartments.

In the US, our current apartment would be considered a two-bedroom apartment, because... well... it contains two bedrooms. Simple enough. Here, though, it's considered 3.5 rooms. The living room (but not the huge kitchen) counts as our third room, and the little nook in the picture above-- officially a "dining nook" or pinat ochel, but for me it's an office-- as a "half" room. Our closed balcony, which we actually use as a dining room, and the separate toilet room and bathroom, and the "michpeset shirut" where we have our washer and dryer-- none of those count as rooms either. Nope, this apt. boils down neatly to 3.5 rooms, and that's that. (Btw, this means that a "one room" apartment in Israel is an efficiency, containing ONLY one room. Plus maybe a bathroom or balcony or kitchen.)

In about a year we'll start looking for an apartment or house to buy, and already I've been lusting over real estate and figuring out some more oddities of Israeli terminology. For example, a "cottage" (that's actually how you say it in Hebrew-- 'קוטג) means a house attatched to another house... which in the US I'd tend to call a duplex. A "duplex," on the other hand, which is also a term used in Hebrew (דופלקס), means a house or apartment with two stories. Then there's the difference between a "villa" and a "bayit prati," which I still don't understand. Except that maybe a villa is bigger.

Oh, and an Israeli "first floor" apartment is actually on what would be the second story in the US. (The ground level in our building contains parking and storage lockers.)

Check out Israeli real estate listings here, if you're interested!

The moral of this post? Don't assume that you know what terms mean-- just because words sound like English doesn't meant that they carry the same meaning.

P.S. Yesterday, for the first time, over 100 visitors came to this blog in one day! (We've been right up at about 90 visitors for a while.) That's so exciting! Thanks, everyone! Oh, and er, don't ask me how many of those visits were me checking back. I'd prefer not to know. ;)

The Miracle of NesCafe... (coffee cup aliyah)

In the US, I wasn't exactly a coffee snob, but I liked my fresh ground coffee dripping into my cup every morning. And maybe a few times each morning. And maybe with peppermint-flavored coffee creamer thrown in for good luck.

When I first arrived in Israel, in fact, ground coffee was one of the things I desperately missed-- I didn't feel the right buzz from instant coffee, which is all that was available in my husband's aunt and uncle's house. My husband earned huge points when he found me a French press in a department store, and I started preparing Turkish coffee in a French press every morning. It wasn't quite fresh drip, but it was pretty good. Already, though, my slippery slope into Israeli coffee drinking had begun-- for some reason, Turkish coffee tastes better without milk (but with plenty of sugar). For the first time in my life, I started to drink my coffee black.

Then I broke the glass part of the French press, so I started making Turkish coffee the Israeli way-- heating up the grounds in a little finjan (a saucepan, basically) on the stove. Ok, it wasn't totally authentic, because I wouldn't cool down my coffee and reheat it several times until it had truly become black sludge. But I used enough grounds that my coffee could still corrode metal.

Then I decided that maybe it WASN'T such a good thing that my hands were shaking for hours after my morning cup-- or two-- of Turkish coffee. I also decided that Turkish coffee is a huge pain to clean up, because rather than be filtered out, the grounds collect in the bottom of the finjan, the cup, and (of course) my sink when I tried to clean everything out.

So finally... somehow... I have become an instant coffee drinker, like most Israelis. In fact, you can go to coffee shops and order Nescafe (or in more generic terms, cafe namess). Somehow, this country of caffeine addicts subsists on expensive espresso and instant coffee with very little in between. So here I am, on the watery and light side (until I add in that extra spoonful of instant coffee granules, and plenty of milk and sugar)... maybe I really have become Israeli!

Oh, a word to the wise: if you want to order a latte equivalent in an Israeli coffee shop, it's called a "cafe hafooch"-- an upside-down coffee. I was mystified about this at first and used to just order whatever the person ahead of me in line had ordered. **Update-- Miriam offers a convincing explanation in the comments of why "cafe hafooch" is called what it is! **

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What War Zone???, a hilarious blog about life as an oleh, is hosting Havel Havelim this week. (Actually, technically Benji is hosting. As far as I know, his blog doesn't spontaneously generate its own content. Although that would be cool.) Check it out!