Sunday is a work day here in Israel, so that morning I was prepared to get a lot done.  Dh and I went to the municipality with dd16 and ds18 (we thought afterward we’d be going to the Ministry of the Interior and they’d need to get their ID cards), but after I took a number, I told the kids to go home rather than spend their time waiting around.  After a while, our real estate agent met us there, and about the time our number was called, the seller’s real estate agent met us as well.

We explained that we were there to transfer the water bill into our name, and after doing some checking on the computer, the clerk told us that the seller or someone he gave power of attorney needed to be there in order to complete this.  I thought this meant we’d need to come back another day, since the seller couldn’t come and the attorney who had his power of attorney was in Russia.  But I didn’t take into account having an Israeli real estate agent there, who cajoled, demanded, cajoled, insisted, produced unhelpful paperwork to prove his point, insisted it was helpful paperwork….and after a very, very long time there, we got the account transferred from the tenant’s name into the seller’s name.   But not transferred to our name.

At the end of all of this, I asked the clerk if I had even needed to be there for all of this, and she said, no, but I’d need to come back again to get my part taken care of!  I raised my eyebrows at her and smilingly told her that I had a lot of things I could have been taking care of, and this secular, immodestly dressed young woman told me, “Think of it as a chesed (act of kindness) that you did for the tenants.”  I love that.

We finally left to the office, and it was hard not to notice the grumbling of the people who had been sitting there waiting for us to finish our business, but from there dh went home, and I went with the real estate agents to transfer the next account.  Our agent dropped me off together with the seller’s agent, and we walked together to the gas company.  When we got there, the meter reading we had from the tenant didn’t match any numbers on the account, so the agent called the tenant, told her to check the meter again and call him back.

In the meantime, he told me we could go to the electric company to get that bill transferred.  So we walked over there – fortunately, the electric company was only about a block from the gas company, and got things transferred there.  That was almost relatively smooth, except the person who was processing this had a problem with her computer, so we had to start all over with someone else in another office.  But it got done.

Then we headed back to the gas company, where he gave the corrected meter reading, and I was told I’d have to pay the seller 250 shekels as a deposit (apparently he put it down when he opened the account, so now he needed it back) as well as an additional transfer fee.  After I paid for this, we completed the paperwork.  Off the agent went, and I decided since I was in the area, to stop in at the phone company and find out about their pricing.

After waiting at yet another office, I spoke to a very pleasant woman and was somewhat disappointed to learn there are no plans that have unlimited calling.  I made a list of all the choices, none of which really appealed to me, to take back home to discuss with dh.   I asked how long it would take to get a line and internet hookup, and was surprised to hear it would take over a week.  So I mentally resolved to check out another provider.  Then, because I was still in the area :), I thought I’d do a bit of shopping at the store nearby that has kosher chickens.

I didn’t have ten shekels on me to get a shopping cart, but had taken a recyclable cloth bag with me, so I loaded it up with the sale items and headed to the checkout.  When the clerk told me the total, I told her that none of the sale prices had registered.  She was surprised and initially told me it couldn’t be, but then she checked the receipt and realized I was right.  She said it was because I only bought sale items, and I couldn’t get the same prices without buying at least 50 shekels of non sale items.  And since some of what I bought didn’t count as sale items, I just had to spend another 22 shekels, and she casually flicked her hand at a bag of overpriced chocolates and suggested I grab them.  Um, no.  That’s not how I shop.

Off I went to find something else to buy, but I was quite tired by now – it was mid afternoon and I hadn’t eaten lunch or had anything to drink for hours, and had been walking back and forth in the sun from office to office.  (I didn’t know how long I was going to be out or I would have been more prepared – the initial plan was that one agent was going to drive us from office to office.)  All I could find was salt, which didn’t help to raise my total since it was under two shekels, so I told her to cancel my order and I’d just get a couple of things.  As she did this, I saw that the sale turkey I bought wasn’t registering as a sale price, and I asked if I could get more turkey towards the 22 shekels.  Sure, she said.

Don’t ask me the logic of some sale prices counting and some not counting, I still don’t know how to figure this in to my shopping.  So I got some turkey, came back, rang it up, added in the sale items (packages of split peas, wheat, and barley), and got ready to pay.  But now the sale prices were only coming off of some of the sale items, not all of them.  ‘Why?’, I inquire?  Hmm, she’s not sure herself what’s going on.  Then she tells me it’s because after all of that, I’m only allowed to buy 6 of the sale items.

I was really tired by this point, and thought to myself this was way too many hoops to jump through to save 15 shekels (which is less than five dollars).  I only bought the fifty shekels worth of items because because I thought I could stock up at the sale price on the other items and it would be worth it! Lesson learned: pay close attention to the fine print on the sales flyer.  I paid the bill, then headed home on the bus with my extremely heavy bags of stuff.  When I finally arrived home, I was too tired to eat or even drink a cup of water.  Instead, I conked out on my sleeping bag for a couple of hours. 🙂

Errands take a lot more energy and time here – but doing them is part of the experience of being here!

Avivah