Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Lights! License! Action!

You know, we came to Israel one month ago today.  For many, many years before that we had a nice, sane routine.  Go to work, come home, dinner, etc. etc., same routine next day.

For the past month every day has been a mixture of chaos, hysteria, relief, fear, and worry.

Let's take today:

8:00 am -  Go to the Modiin mall to find the office where we tell the property tax people that we are olim chadashim (new immigrants) and they should charge us less.  The nice lady tells us that we should wait until we get a bill for TOO MUCH MONEY and then come to her and she'll take care of it.

8:30 - get to the apartment (new).  It is raining and the apartment is, as usual, dark and cold.  No electricity means no heat and no light.  Start unpacking stuff.

9:30 - the guy comes to finish the tile work in the kitchen - he says it will take an hour.

10:00 - we hear that the electricity guys are in the building and soon we will have lights and heat!  they come into our apartment to check things!  so exciting!

10:15 - our new neighbor Itzik invites us over for hot tea.  He hooked up his cooker to some power line - very nice.

10:30 - I call our driving instructor who had PROMISED to call me when our licenses come in.  He says, "Oh, hello Susan, your licenses came in!  I'll drive them over today!"

11:00 - the driving instructor arrives with our licenses which are....pieces of paper - you see they are only temporary licenses.  OK, no problem, at least this is OVER!  hahahahahahaha!  No, it is not over yet!  You have to take this temporary license to the post office and pay another 200+ shekel each for the privilege of receiving a real license in the mail in a month or so.

11:15 - Bern drives over to the post office to pay for the licenses.

11:20 - the electric guys show up again, still testing, still saying "soon, soon!"  OK, we'll wait.  We continue to unpack.

12:30 - it is getting colder and colder and still the electric guys are not ready to turn things on.

1:30 - we hear the electric guys wandering around!  maybe soon!  it better be because our noses are falling off!

2:00 - THE ELECTRIC GUYS SAY WE CAN FLIP THE SWITCHES!  we do and voila! we have electricity! we stick in a bulb and it lights up!



2:02 - we walk over to the thermostat/ ac/ heat thingy pad on the wall and happily switch it to "on" and....
NOTHING HAPPENS

2:03 - we cry a little.  Our heat is not turning on.

2:04 - my son in law Donny calls the "guy" who handles this who tells us that HE has to come and turn it on and he will do it - tomorrow.

2:10 - we talk and play with Ariella who walked to the apartment from school (nice!) and have a fun time giggling and talking - ahhhh, that's what makes it all worth it.

3:00 - tile man - remember him?  the one who said he'd be done in an hour? Finally done.  Nice job.

4:00 - we need to go to a store to buy closet stuff and on the way we stop at a Toyota dealership and talk to someone about prices, etc.

5:00 - we go to the home supply store and as we check out we get harassed about signing up for a special store credit card.  The nice cashier is like a bubby and puts her arm around me and tells me how much we need this and so we get it.  Suckers.

6:00 - that's it.  zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz


2 comments:

  1. Do you miss TV? What on earth do you do after 6 pm? I thnk you should blog about that.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Here's hoping you have heat very soon.

    we talk and play with Ariella who walked to the apartment from school (nice!)
    :)

    ReplyDelete