Day 4 – Does Anyone Speak Eeenglish?
Number of Cockroach Sightings: 0
Time to collect our sal klitah and register non-hebrew speaking husband for ulpan. We take a bus and observe the “alternative” Israeli that resides in the North. Generally a little calmer, more polite, better dressed (less of the all-hanging-out look you see in Tel Aviv) and really keen on olim. Strangers have been telling us how wonderful our choice is, and how happy they are to have us (in stark contrast to the way we speak of immigrants in Britain….). A helpful but misguided lady on the bus puts us off at the wrong stop, but this turned out to be a good thing as we now know where the Misrad Hapnim is, which we will need to pay a visit to at some point. Luckily, return bus tickets are reusable, although they have some bizarre rule here along the lines of “collapse your buggy or pay another 5 shekel”. No idea which Nazi kid-hating person thought of that one.
We find the office, and of course, nobody speaks English. In fact the primary language here is Arabic, followed by Russian. Hebrew is a third language, and people haven’t seen enough English movies to understand you if you cant at least speak basic Hebrew (one look at the location and cost of the nearest cinema explains this phenomenon). But the lady is lovely, and helpful and tells me my Hebrew is good enough to join the advanced ulpan (as I had hoped) and Jojo as usual charms everyone with his English rose colouring and cherubic smile. Thank goodness for his looks. He seems to attract people wherever we take him, women seem compelled to touch his blonde curls and even men seem to love him. It’s very different to England where people may smile shyly at him or the odd old lady will comment, but generally people are less warm. It makes our life a lot easier. But then again Israel is a baby-friendly country to start with. Babies (and children) are not seen as an inconvenience, like I often saw in London, nor are they regarded as the centre of the universe, creatures that should have everything material one could possibly imagine, as I have witnessed in America. Rather they are part of life, and people are not shy to pick them up, or offer them a biscuit. It’s one of those rather special qualities about Israel, and one of the reasons behind my aliyah, aside from the sunshine and the fact that we will (hopefully) afford to eat meat more than once a week here.
We view a rental property and I am appalled by the “kitchen”. For a nation that is gastronomically inclined, famous for, and totally obsessed with good food, I have no idea how they cope with tiny kitchens. The property was a decent size, you could have a family of 4 or maybe even 5 happily living there but the kitchen (or rather kitchenette) wouldn’t be fit for a student. I presume they are frequent visitors to the pizza store on their street. I know I would just abandon cooking altogether if I lived there. The estate agent informs me that unless you live in a villa or decent sized house you would be unlikely to have a large kitchen. No wonder kids here only eat oven schnitzel.