Little America

Number of Cockroach Sightings: 0 (it seems they aren’t so keen on air-conditioning)

Number of Burekas consumed:  Lost count

Number of Crap Waitresses spotted in Karmiel: Like, the twenty fifth

We jumped on a sherut and 2 trains and escaped to family this shabbat in Bet Shemesh.  The stress of the last few weeks had finally taken its toll, and we were starting to feel unwell.  Luckily we had The Three C’s  (Comfort, Cuisine and great Company) so we happily stayed indoors and rested, as the Lord commands.  Bet Shemesh (especially Ramat Bet Shemesh) is one of those slightly bizarre parts of Israel where entire communities of Olim have upped and left their previous lives, only to set up shop with each other, and recreate their former existence.  One could happily live there for 40 years and never speak a word of hebrew.  The children however, pick up the language without much difficulty, and it will be interesting to see what effect these areas have on the country as a whole over the next generations.

It looks as if our dreams of buying a flat have been squished 🙁 Each time we think it’s sorted, another problem rears its ugly head. Having always been a person of faith in my creator, I am now starting to get the distinct impression that He doesn not want me to buy this house.  Perhaps in a few years I will realise why, and be really really grateful that it didn’t work out.  But at the moment, I’m just really pissed off.

We looked at a rental which was lovely, and quite reasonably priced but the landlady had some weird thing about us keeping her furniture, which would not have been so awful except her sofas had clearly been in a dog fight, and I had no idea what to do with them.  The kitchen was also a little small, and with it not being ours to mess about with I have no idea where we would store our fridge or how I would cook anything other than eggs. 

Having had no time to shop what with travelling and house viewings we ended up out for dinner this evening.  Once again I was amazed at the crapness of the waitresses in this country – in this  case the manager!  We had to keep calling her back to top up our water which she did one glass at a time, she kept throwing out the previous plastic cups (god forbid anybody here should think about landfill), they didn’t have like half the ingredients required to make sushi (ok they had fish and rice but that was it – how difficult is it to buy an avocado??) and she pretty much ignored her customers spending hours on the phone.  I know that bad customer service is accepted as the norm in this country, the bit I don’t get is – How do they get the job in the first place??? Why does nobody sack them??? Israelis hate getting bad value for money, so surely they would boot out bad employees? I worked as a barmaid and waitress in a  big pub once.  After a few months they noticed I didn’t seem happy serving food (I found it difficult not to wrinkle my nose when serving pork sausages)  and eventually they sacked me.  That’s how it goes.

Sigh.  We are not in Kansas anymore.