I'm BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK....With a List

Hello friends, countrymen, bank clerks and taxi drivers.

I am finally back.

It has been EONS since I last posted and although I know you have been devastated, no one has felt the absence of my blogging more keenly than I.

I have so wanted to post my observations, anecdotes and brilliant ideas on a regular basis. In fact, I have thought about nothing else (except cute boys, food, the great weather, buying furniture, Pesach and remembering to call George, my electrician who hails from Cypress and usually needs to do a service call at the reasonable hour of 7am). Nothing else.

However, I was derailed for over a month by:

• My move to a beautiful but completely empty apartment;
• Starting full-time work and balancing that with ulpan; and
• Of course, a girl needs to eat.

So there has been little time for you, my lovelies. Thankfully, my exile has ended and your Good Girl is back to being Tov, instead of חסרה

What's that? You don't recognize those letters? Why, they're Hebrew! And being the crafty girl that I am, I inserted them in an ever-so-blase manner. Yes, I finally overcame my mental block and have begun the long, bitter struggle to learn to type in Hebrew. (And that Hebrew word means 'absent' if you didn't know.)

Okay, enough of this showy display of re-introducing myself! On to the real stuff!

Well, there's no better way to say this but to be blunt: The party's over, people. I am way off my aliyah high and am in the thick of the daily drudgery of acclimating to the Middle Eastern culture, as well as my new apartment, friends, job and the change in fashion (about which one can never say enough times: "Horrors!").

Yes, I've visited Israel many times before and know the language but let me tell you, it is NOTHING like living here. I must admit that I've burst into tears a number of times. Don't worry, I'm okay. It's all part of it, which I know and so I've been told.

Still, I'm going to give you the harsh reality: It's not easy at all. But nothing easy is ever worth doing, right? (Or so we've been lied to our whole lives, ha ha.)

In any case, I am committed to living here for the long haul, so I am just getting on with it and taking it day-by-day (or "l'aat l'aat" as they say here - it's too much work to type that in Hebrew). But blogging can be a wonderful outlet for feelings. So to give you a full picture of what's been going on, here is a conservatively numbered list of things about Israeli culture that I am not, shall we say, wild about.

*Please note: If you consider this complaining - don't read it! (This disclaimer is quite demonstrative of my acculturation to Israeli norms - I am now incredibly blunt.)

ANYHOO:

Random Things That Do Not Cause Me To Burst Into Song & See Rainbows:

1. Customer service is non-existent: The customer is always wrong. The way I see it, you just need to learn the simple fact that if you ask for assistance from someone who is being paid to help you (and not to converse with their co-workers, drink coffee, talk on the phone or do their nails - to name a few activities), their automatic answer will be LO! NO! (It's just a shift in the way of thinking really - the 'no' stands in for the 'yes' you would get elsewhere.)

2. Less Boundaries: Sample conversation:

Random person (RP): "How much is your rent?"
Me: (laughs nervously): "Oh, enough."
RP: "So nu, how much is it?"
Me: "It's what it should cost, given the size and neighborhood."
RP: "SO???? WHAT IS IT???"
Me: (runs away)

(Okay, I exaggerated. But only slightly.)

3. Bizarre apartment norms: Appliances such as refrigerators and stoves are not automatically included in rentals. You have to be lucky to get them as part of the lease. (I did.) Otherwise, you will have a gaping hole where the stuff you normally expect to be there...is not.

4. Beauty school dropouts: The beauty industry in this country is scary. My eyebrows have been made into straight lines, my hair bleached Donatella Versace blond and I have been inspired to buy shiny, Pepto pink nail polish.

5. Bizarre shish kebab: Just the thought of eating kidneys on a skewer makes me sick. But thanks for offering.

Okay, enough complaining. I'm going to take a nap. I'll wake up on the right side of the bed, don't worry. Until then, mon amies...