Ulpan starts, and some other surprises

Sarah’s first day of ulpan
So, she went and could not pay, because everything in Israel takes forever, and we still don’t have a bank account. However, we do have some charges to the account, but since Israel’s high tech banking system has not learned to have an online banking website in English…We hope to figure this out in the next two days. Also, banks close at 2:00. We found this out when we got to the bank at 2:03 today. But Sarah has a great teacher, probably because Safta called to inquire about the teacher. Also, she has made two friends there as well. More on this topic to follow.

Friendly remarks from the dean
We met the dean of our faculty. He has about as much personality as driftwood. He looked as full of happiness addressing us as Sarah looks after I drink this amazing Israeli chocolate milk. He said things like “it is great to have you here” and “we are so excited to have you in our country”, but he looked like Pat Riley coaching the Knicks during his postgame interviews with reporters.

We now have clean floors
In terms of the floors, everything is under control. We are now cleaning experts, and Sarah has cleared the stones out of our water heater.

Thunder and lightning and rain
As god promised to Noah, never to again flood the Earth. She lied. God has been causing rain throughout this country for an endless period (which finally ended today). I actually had to buy an umbrella a few days ago, because it was pouring. In Haifa, we had to stay indoors the whole weekend because of the Mabul (flood from Noah’s time). We hope that this weekend will be much sunnier. We want to go folk-dancing. However, I did show Niva how to use the Cutco knives. Wa-wa-wee-wa! She exclaimed. Safta sent us home with food as usual, and we have yet to cook hot food for ourselves.

Pot shower
Good news. Our shower is completely unclogged. Bad news is…This might have been the most exciting part of our trip so far. We arrived back from Haifa on Saturday night to find our hot water to be non-existent. I called David, our landlord who said he would check it out. By the next day, I was checking the gas tanks, which he said he would replace the following day. But after being replaced on Monday, that was not the problem. So Tuesday came around bringing more rain, and very oily hair. For me, it was not really a problem. I don’t have much hair. But for Sarah, it was. When she took her hairband out, her hair stayed in a ponytail. So we decided to shower anyway. We were inspired from Marisa telling of her travels to Africa. We had no hot water. We did have a koomkoom (hot water heater). So, here is how we showered. I ran to heat water in the koomkoom, then put it in a large pot in the bathroom. Ran back to fill the koomkoom up with more water. Ran back to the bathroom to add some cold water to the boiling water in the pot. Then I took a smaller pot, dipped it into the larger pot and put water in it, which I put on Sarah’s hair. Then as Sarah put shampoo in her hair, I ran to get the new hot water. Then I poured it into the larger pot and then added cold water, but not before running back to refill the koomkoom and start warming it. Then I added more cold water to the pot and then scooped some more up into the smaller pot in order to help get the shampoo out of her hair. It is as easy as cleaning the floor…(see second entry) .And this is how we showered that night The next day, the hot water was fixed just in time for Oze to arrive.

Oze comes to Israel
Oze here, excited about the opportunity to contribute to this blog, one of the greatest sites to hit the internet since Google. Meteorologist Bowen had predicted that my chances of flying out of JFK on Sunday night were about 50-50. Though the plane was late arriving because of the weather and icy stuff was coming down, Delta decided to board all the passengers and keep us there as hostages with no food for 4 hours. After 2 hours or so, 2 passengers started expressing their disappointment rather loudly and were politely asked to leave the plane by half a dozen security guards. They had the last laugh however, as when we were finally released from the plane and the flight was officially delayed at 3:15am, they greeted us warmly in the terminal with cups of duty-free whiskey in their hands.
So we slept Sunday “night” on the floor of JFK (“night” = 4:30-6am). Around 6am they made an announcement urged passengers to organize a minyan if they wanted, as we would be boarding shortly for our “7am” flight. The 7am flight was delayed to 7:30, then 8 then 8:30, then they made an announcement that they were waiting for one of the pilots who was an hour and a half away, then they announced that the airport would be closed until noon, then they said it was unlikely the weather would clear up before 6pm, then at 11am they told everyone to stand up and prepare for boarding. We boarded the plane around noon, spent 10 minutes rocking back and forth as the plane pusher truck tried to push us backwards but kept slipping in the snow, spent a half hour being sprayed with some chemical that was supposed to take all the ice off the plane, taxied into the incredibly long line waiting for the runway, taxied out of line because the pilot announced that we hadn’t yet received permission to enter the airspace of some of the countries we would be flying over, taxied back into line because there was a near mutiny on board with so many people cursing the airline company over its inability to not only provide food for any of its stranded passengers but also to fill out the simple paperwork needed to fly an international flight, and finally took off somewhere around 2:45 pm on Monday. Once we landed 10 hours later, the captain thanked us for flying Delta and hoped that they would see us again soon, to which several dozen people audibly replied “LO!” But all’s well that ends well. I made it to Yuval and Sarah’s, slept a good 13 hours last night and am starting to resemble a person again. They’re too good to me these two, I’d be in pretty bad shape without them.

Visiting in Haifa
It rained like Boston. Boston Sucks! Let’s go Yankees!

Laundry is delivered, like the Jewish people
Not much else to say about this. Only that like our people before us, laundry was delivered (no pun).