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