Just when you thought it was not developmentally appropriate for adults to tantrum like toddlers....

(segue to public transportation in Israel)

In fairness, I have to paint the background of public transportation commuting in Israel. Mornings generally resemble America before the Civil Rights Movement with colored foreign workers quietly holding up the back of the bus until they all shuffle off at some popular unknown stop. The religious folks pull out their smart phones and mumble aloud their morning prayers. The bus driver typically has an inflated ego and has often times nominated himself g-d, president, and C.E.O of the large vehicle. Events such as kids puking, aggressive battles over keeping the window open or closed, or having the bus break down while you wait in rain for the next one become customary. Of course, at any moment a security officer can board the bus and demand that each passenger dig around for their receipt to ensure the driver is running business appropriately. An elderly man may loose the wheel of his fully vegetable-loaded cart forcing fellow passengers to pull a quick Macgyver move to repair it. And I can only briefly mention without getting choked up, that this is where my 3 month old Sony Ericson Xperia mysteriously disappeared. Sniff Sniff. There is a basic sense of Survival of the Fittest happening at all times by each passenger. In order to survive, you must understand a few basic psychological principals:

Fight or Flight

Everyone, and I mean everyone, young and old alike has at one point felt like Rocky Balboa training for a fight. The fight to make the bus that is. The decision has been made to run behind or alongside the bus with bags flopping, hands in the air, awaiting the ultimate devastation or success of making the bus. Within milliseconds the driver holds your destiny in his hands and contemplates your fate. Fellow passengers observe and wait to see whether you will be granted entrance.

The Jungle Gym

This phenomenon is when your stuck standing on the bus and must grab onto the dangling straps from above to hang on for dear life as the bus' velocity ranges from speeding to a screeching halt and bodies sway like children hanging from monkey bars.

The Sardine Squeeze

This event occurs when the bus is already soo stuffed and the driver stops to let people off and new ones attempt to board. New passengers desperately fight to board a bus that is already beyond its capacity and their asses are just a hair away from being snipped off by the bus' closing doors. Once on board, begging to relieve the body on body pressure commences with pleas to distribute the pressure of the Sardine Squeeze throughout the bus. Those who just begged for entrance now curse the animal conditions.

Seniority Rules

There is typically an unspoken (though at times it becomes quite spoken) code of ethics governing the bus system in Israel. There are 4 coveted handicapped seats reserved for those with physical needs at the front of the bus. During times of the Sardine Squeeze or Jungle Gym those seats, among all others, are eyed by many but chosen by few for fear of violating Seniority Rules.

Once I witnessed an elderly woman verbally and physically bully and completely ridicule a young woman out of the seat to make room for her caretaker. After the shock settled, the young woman complied with the Seniority Rules and made her way to the interior guts of the bus. Most passengers ignored this somewhat typical behavior until about 30 minutes later when the young woman was preparing to exit the bus. With her voice cracking and tears in her eyes, the young woman dared to violate the code of ethics by returning the ridicule. In front of a completely packed and now totally silent bus full of passengers, the young woman looked the elderly woman straight in her eyes and dared to launch into a tirade “schooling” the elderly woman on empathy towards fellow human beings. After a few strong, relentless rebuttals the young woman managed to shut up the grumpy old beast.

Nahag Complex

Nahag (Hebrew for Driver), as I mentioned, rules with authority over his bus. Beyond all assumed power his title carries, his has complete control over how much you will be charged for your ride and whether your ride comes with a complementary individual moral lesson. For instance, the central area of Tel Aviv and the surrounding cities has developed a universal system between multiple bus carriers so that a magnetized card (Rav Cav) can be scanned and the amount deducted from a prepaid card. However, the city is zoned and depending on your point of origin and destination the fares range. After overpaying for 2 weeks, getting yelled at by drivers, loosing my magnetic powers, and getting different responses from each driver I decided to go to the central office. After a discussion in English at the office revealed the cause of confusion is basically related to the intelligence and care of the driver, I now engage in a private chat with the driver before I allow my card to be scanned. I watch to make sure he takes the few seconds to code it properly and I am on my way. While I think I have cracked the mystery of the Rav Cav, my new challenge is to crack the “Cartesia.” After the explanation I still have no clue why I need this AND the Rav Cav. The only consolation is that the office was full of Israelis bringing in their receipts asking for explanations as well.

Moral teachings of the driver typically has to do with Respect. For instance, a group of teenagers beat an older man onto the steps of the bus. They innocently boarded the bus right before they were screamed at for their poor manners. He scolded them, “How dare you board before your elder” and made them step down and wait for the man to board. Oh, and during a Sardine Squeeze, a uniformed soldier dared to speak up from the interior of the bus. “Driver, I don't think there is any more room for people.” Oh shit. Big mistake. The driver glared into his rear-view mirror and in front of everyone belts back something to the effect of “you're 18 years old and your job is to care about serving this country. I will worry about letting passengers onto my bus, ok? I worry about each passenger and you worry about each citizen of this country. How dare you!”

Supermarket Madness (Guest Blog from Devorah)

Tonight Sheree, Indi and I are about to have our first sleepover guests, from our sister and brother in spirit, Lironne and Saar. The last couple of weeks have seen epic battles to overcome dirt, roaches, mold, and the Israeli system, and our bodies are feeling it. We’re getting quite close to having the most adorable apartment in the most adorable neighborhood, with the most adorable dog, and all of that makes us feel lucky and happy every day, (at least most of the day). We decided to make a celebratory dinner, in our big-by-Israeli-standards, uh, let’s say portable oven, (though all appliances are portable here, aint they. Hey Israeli tenants, let's all make a pact together starting today, ready? One, two, three…Leave your appliances when you move!)

 

We went out earlier to get groceries for our little party. My application for a club card at Supersol, a necessity to make shopping significantly more affordable and steer me toward certain brands, required my teudat zehut (Israeli ID) number. So did getting a bus pass, and just about anything else I’ve done here. I’ve never felt so on the grid, but somehow more OK with Israel knowing whatever they feel they need to than I am with the dirt that Facebook, Google and the other cyber overlords can now calculate on me. (wow, some subpar grammar in that last sentence. Forgive me, my now-native-language is not English, my friends). We found these super cute mugs/bowls that we absolutely had to have. Sheree stopped for a second, to remind me that we had to check if they were dishwasher safe. You know, so they could go in her lovely dishwasher…in her townhouse in Highland Park, IL. Oh right, the dishwashers here are colorful, crappy sponges that melt in your hand are just generally much worse than American sponges, for about twice the price and a tenth of the options. Speaking of a tenth, you know what the giant, economy sized pack of paper towels has? Six small rolls. Six. That’s as big as it gets. My Target-Costco American mind can hardly comprehend this.

 

Mugs in cart, we went to the cheese counter, where we tasted cheese and picked our favorites. Having decided on lasagna for dinner, I asked the impatient old Israeli woman if they had any ricotta. “MAH?” (what?) Ricotta, I repeated. “MAH?!?!” Screwing on my best Israeli accent, I tried once more, “rhee-coat-tah” “OH, rhee-COAT-tah!! ZEH, yesh lanu.” (Oh, Riccota, this we have.) Thus a lesson learned – Yes, Israelis may be nice about our American accents, but that doesn’t mean they’ll go out of their way to know what we’re talking about when we don’t make the effort to clench our throats and pepper our speech with ehhhh’s. Once she supplied the rhee-coat-tah and before we could tell her if we wanted anything else, she walked away having decided we had enough cheese, and she had enough of us, for the evening. As for lasagna noodles, there was but one option, Osem. Fortunately, these noodles fit in the one of 2 sizes aluminum pans available, something I’ve grown to not assume will happen around here. We continued down the aisles, getting what we needed. We were laughing the whole time, generally enjoying the experience, and continually reminding ourselves of our growing Israeli-ness. Next time, we knew, we’d bring the small rolling bag that we had taken on the bus to Tel Aviv’s Shuk HaCarmel just a few days ago, to fill with groceries and housewares. But this time, without the roller bag and laden with heavy bags, we took advantage of the loophole available to us when in a jam – smile cutely, act like a lost, sweet American woman who just needs some kindness from a nice powerful Israeli man, and ask for what we want. We requested from the security guard that we be able to take home our plastic shopping carts to carry our groceries. A smile and some broken Hebrew can get a lot done around here, but must be used sparingly. 

The nice thing here is, everyone in Israel gets how hard it is, and sometimes we all come together to get things done. Like the “Nahag Wave,” where a person runs to catch the bus, someone in the back of the bus sees it and yells “Nahag!” (driver,) and the yelled word Nahag is passed up the bus in a wave until it reaches the pretending-to-be-deaf-as-long-as-possible driver. These bus drivers are something. On the hectic and not fun day of moving into our apartment, for no apparent reason my bus pulled over as I tried to speed from Tel Aviv to Givatayim. After multiple people yelled at the driver, the most we got out of him was the word “dakah,” (minute), Several minutes later, his buddy walked onto the bus with a bag of food for him, they chatted briefly, and we were off. But that’s Israel, where the one time schedule you can be sure something won’t happen on is the one it’s supposed to happen on.

 

But I digress. Here we are in our apartment, the baking lasagna full of fresh-picked herbs from the garden hanging out our window, which is happily growing in the December sun. That sure makes the hard parts easy to forget. Lironne and Saar are on their way. There are the most divine French macaroons in our fridge, from the sweet Israeli girl at the fabulous French patisserie just down the street. Life is absolutely wonderful. And really hard, and sometimes completely ridiculous. Enough that the first response I get from so many Israelis when they hear of my solo aliyah is, “WHY?!” We chuckle together. But I think they know. I’m home. And we’re all in this together. And if we can relinquish some control, and most expectations, we can enjoy the crazy wild ride.

Roaches, Mold, Bat Shit Oh No!

The pains of an immigrant. Well officially I'm not an immigrant yet but I think the last month has been the shock wave that I naively thought I had evaded. Nope. This country appears to the international world as though it is a 1^st world developed country, leaders in technology, the military, and innovation yet Israel has recently been reminded me that remnants of it's 3^rd world past still remain.

I've developed a relationship with the entity I call “Israel” and find myself having conversations with her. For example: “come on Israel, it is not normal to have cockroaches living in your kitchen,” or “seriously Israel, why wouldn't you build closets in bedrooms?” or “Israel, installing a bathtub would really solve the whole squeegee-mold issue” and one of my favorites, “Israel, why bother with the no smoking law in pubs and bars if it doesn't really apply?” And I'm just warming up. These are just the ones most relevant to health standards.

To be positive, I LOVE my new apartment and the adorable urban neighborhood Devorah, Indi and I now call home. I have a yoga studio literally across the street, really nice parks all around to let Indi run off leash, the mall in walking distance, trendy boutiques, and cafes that are open on Saturday. Plus the benefit of quiet nights and privacy due to the silence of our graveyard neighbors.

Since I haven't decided how long I will remain in the land of my ancestors, I have embraced the concept of 2^nd hand furnishings. Almost without a glitch, and with Lironne's connection, we managed to arrange movers to make 3 stops to pick up all the necessities before arriving at our new apartment to unload. But wait! The multiple phone calls ensuring that the previous tenants would 1000% be moved out by 3pm (i.e. 15:00 in Israel) resulted in our truck pulling up right behind theirs on a busy street while they were right in the middle of moving out with one elevator and an extremely narrow stairwell. Apparently, their 1:00 scheduled movers just didn't show up so they rushed to find a new one and overlapped with us. If I didn't know where I was, I would think that was a lousy excuse but then again, I can totally see the moving company stopping for a cigarette and coffee break disregarding the time and deciding to go home early. Looking back, watching myself get pissed off in Hebrew was hysterical. Emotion and thoughts have no language, sometimes the nonverbal communication can tell it all. Up until that moment, things had been running as expected cruising through the one-way streets of Tel Aviv in a big truck making U-turns and stopping traffic left and right. Since I not only had to go back and help clean out my first pad AND wake up for work the next morning, Devorah handled the rest of the unloading mission and indirectly prevented my total meltdown.

For some reason, the two single guys who were living in our apartment did a good job disguising the dust, mold, and cockroaches that we've declared war on. So much so that we have staged nightly ambushes by baiting them with just the slightest bit of food, turning off the lights, leaving the apartment and then BAM, BOOM, BANG we go Charlie's Angles on their crustaceous, gross bodies when we return. Though we have warm up exercises for both mold scrubbing and roach ambushing I swear our apartment and neighborhood are amazing. These just come standard in Israel and we are thrilled that we opted for the apartment next to the cemetery with roaches and mold versus the one with an amazing porch covered in bat shit. A girl has to have standards. I now can not only can identify bat shit but know about their shitting habits, who knew?

“Living in Israel is like having an affair with a really hot and somewhat abusive lover”-Dscrubs Matkowsky