Betsy: Shanah Tovah l'kulam!

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.שנהֹ טובהֹ וחגֹ סמח Shanah tovah v’hag sameach! to all our Jewish friends and family. It is Rosh Hashanah, but we got here so shortly before the holiday that we haven’t yet found a synagogue at which to attend services. So we are spending a quiet Rosh Hashanah together in our apartment. We will find a synagogue before Yom Kippur so we can attend services on that holiday. We are also looking forward to Sukkot; there are many city activities that take place during that week. There is a film festival with early showings for kids’ films and later ones for adults.

Our apartment is becoming home. As Stewart wrote earlier, we had some confusion with the appliances, but now we know which buttons to push to make happen what we want (even if the symbols still don’t make any sense. The weather here has been lovely (only the mid-eighties during the day and mid-seventies in the evening). I’ve uploaded some pictures of our apartment, the yard, and the view from the patio for you to see.

We have started Zach on home school lessons, which is somewhat of a challenge. He doesn’t feel bound to behave with us with the same respect he would show a teacher, so he questions almost everything. Yesterday was pretty challenging, but after some corrective measures, things seem to be going much better today. On the advice of my University colleague, Amots Dafni, and a couple of other local people, we are looking again at the possibility of enrolling Zach in the public school. We do want him to interact with other kids rather than spend all his time with us. Regardless of the form his education takes, we will be taking him to the library and labs at the University of Haifa to do fun and interesting things.

Now that we now a little more about getting around on the buses (although there is still a lot to learn), we feel more confident to get where we need to go. We know how to get downtown and to the University, two of the most important places we need to go. As Zach described in his blog entry, we walked down the steep side of Mt. Carmel, through the city, with lots of twists and turns and pedestrian stairways (all of which are marked on the map we bought, albeit all in Hebrew). It was fun and a great adventure. After a futile bus trip out to the main bus station to get a map of the bus routes (that doesn’t exist) we rode the bus right back to the downtown area where we’d started to find Tourist Information. The woman there was very helpful and we got a couple of city maps in English (although they don’t have all the pedestrian stairs marked!). She also told us where the shuk and the best (= cheap!) shopping areas were. We visited both, found a central bus stop with many buses, and then found the bus that I knew went near our neighborhood. The bus driver was appalled that we were going to walk 10 minutes from his nearest stop to get home, so I guess most residents don’t do that. But we also were told that there are no free transfers from one bus to the next. So if you need to take two buses to get to your destination, you pay twice. At the beginning of next month, we will probably be getting monthly unlimited ride bus passes so that will not be an issue in the future. But the 10 minute walk is also pleasant and it’s good exercise.

We had a wonderful Skype chat with Kate this morning. If any of you are interested, we have Skype capability (Stewart has a video cam; I don’t). We are 10 hrs ahead of Tacoma/Seattle and 7 hours ahead of the Detroit area. You’d be most likely to catch us online in the morning (7 - 10 am for us; 9 - 12 pm for the west coast; midnight - 3 am for Detroit) and again in the evening (7 - 10 pm for us; 9 - 12 am for the west coast; 12 - 3 pm for Detroit). We’d love to hear your voices and if you have a video cam, your faces as well.

I’ll stop now so I keep my promise of shorter blog entries!

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