Or in other words our lift has arrived

The Eagle has Landed
September 10, 2004

Or in other words our lift has arrived! So here's the story. A week ago Sunday Randi called the shipper in Israel, Yossi, to find out what the status was. He told her that he was sorry to say that our container was still in Italy. An hour later I received a call on my cell phone from Yossi. I don't think he connected on the fact that my wife had just spoken to him and he told me that our lift was in Haifa. Now even though it was supposed to go to Ashdod, I considered this a good thing since Israel is a relatively small country. Out of curiosity I asked him why he had just told my wife that it was still in Italy. He confided in me that they really have no idea what's going on, but he's sure that our container is in Haifa. The only catch now was the customs strike, which Yossi expected to be short.

Well, sure enough, this past Sunday I got a call from Yossi telling me that our container was in Ashdod and that we should expect delivery on Monday. I didn't even ask how, why, or when it got from Haifa to Ashdod. This time Yossi knew what he was talking about and our movers showed up on Monday afternoon. What a job those guys had! There were 7 guys, mostly Russians, and it took them about 5 hours to unload this container. Of course, now we can barely move in our apartment.

My goal the first night was to set up the couch. (Remember, that was one of the two things we missed the most.) The living room was completely filled with boxes, some furniture and the 5 sections of our couch. I'd say about 5% of the floor was available for moving around. Also, keep in mind that all of our furniture was tightly wrapped in plastic coated corrugated cardboard. Do you remeber playing with those number tile puzzles when you were a kid? You know, the little square plastic numbered tiles that fit into a larger plastic square. There was one open space and the goal was to slide all the tiles around until the numbers were in sequence. Well that was exactly what I had to do, just on a larger scale, to get the couch set up. My biggest problem was that I used to cheat at the tile game by taking out all the pieces and putting them back in order. Cheating wasn't an option here. But slowly we're making progress and we should be fully unpacked just in time to pack up and move into our new house!

Also on our lift were new appliances we brought with us from the 220 volt appliance capital of the world... Canal street on the Lower East Side. Anyway, we have this beautiful new side-by-side refrigerator, but it's not plugged in yet. Why? We're not allowed. Well, we're allowed but if we plug it in ourselves it will void the warranty. So we have to wait for the Whirlpool rep here to come and plug in our fridge! However, since the fridge and oven are handled by the same rep we first have to wait until the gas company comes to hook up the oven before we can have the refrigerator/oven guy come to plug in the refrigerator and turn on the oven. I won't even get into the washer/dryer with you right now.

Since my last e-mail we passed our one month anniversary here. Somewhere around that time it really hit home that, well, this is our home now. For much of the first month there was this "vacation" feeling about being here; it felt like after a few weeks of bopping around Beit Shemesh and Jerusalem we'd get on that El Al plane and head home. I think not having our furniture and other possesions added to this illusion. Well, unlike Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, we're not going to wake up and find ourselves back in Kansas or even Edison. (Not that we want to.) We're living a dream complete with the wicked witches (Arafat, Kofi Anan, ) and evil flying monkeys (the U.N., Europe). But also, with wonderful old and new freinds with hearts of gold and lots of courage. OK, this metaphor has gone far enough, you get the idea.

In other news. Randi and I began Ulpan this week. Ulpan has levels from Alef on up. Originally Randi was placed in level Bet and I was in level Gimel. By the third day we had each dropped down one level and are both much happier and learning more. Ulpan runs 5 days a week (Sunday-Thursday) from 8:30-12:45. That gives us just enough time to get back from Ramat Beit Shemesh to pick Meira up from Gan and gives me about 3 hours before I start working. Not a heck of a lot of time to work on upacking these gazillion boxes. :)

Meira loves gan. There are about 30 kids, mostly anglos, for one ganenet and her assistant. Meira is already coming home asking how to say words that Randi and I can't answer! I guess this is how all those European and Russian immigrants felt when they first came to America.

Elisheva is back in the US for the start of school. She's already coming home next week and will be here through Succot. Raanan is doing great in school. He changed rooms and is now with one other Anglo boy. He has already gotten some very nice grades on tests and his Math teacher calls him a "bomb", which I'm told is a good thing. Etana is commuting to Jerusalem for her Michlalah courses and is loving it.