Avivah Werner

Category: aliyah

  • Furnishing our new home

    We aren’t yet finished furnishing our new home, but we’re getting close!  Today I want to share with you what we bought, and how much we paid for each item.  Initially I was shying away from sharing these details, but then I thought about those who would find it helpful to have hard figures to work with in estimating costs of used furniture in Israel, and general comments about ‘finding a good deal here’ or ‘much cheaper in America’ aren’t super helpful.

    To get an idea of what we’d have to expect to pay for used furniture, I casually skimmed an excellent website called yad2  for about three months before moving – this is the Israeli equivalent of Craigs List, and it’s very, very helpful.  The one caveat is that it’s in Hebrew.  When I first looked at it, I couldn’t figure out how to use it, but once I did, I loved it!

    One challenge when buying used furniture and not having a vehicle is you have to figure out how you’re going to get your purchase home.  It took us almost two weeks to find a solution for this, and I’ll share what we paid for each item as well as how much we paid for delivery.  Because we weren’t able to do this from the start, we ended up buying some things from a second hand store because he offered delivery, something I generally avoid.

    In the US, our kids shared bedrooms, with two bunk beds in each bedroom (ie four children in a room), and one child sharing a third bedroom with the inventory from my nursing pillow business.  When I talked to them about what kind of beds to buy, all of the older kids said they didn’t want bunk beds.  When you get older it’s not fun or cool to climb up, and they wanted the open space above their heads rather than another bed.  I still wanted to use the space well and have extra sleeping space for guests or possibly future children, so the below is what made all of us happy.  🙂

    For the first girls’ bedroom, we bought matching twin beds with spring mattresses.  Each bed has an additional bed frame (but not an additional mattress) that can be pulled out, in addition to two large storage drawers the size of the bed.  We went to buy these with the intent that they’d be for dh and I, but when dh got there and saw the color of the drawers below (in the one picture I had seen they weren’t visible), he decided to go ahead with the purchase but that they’d be better for the girls.  Dd15 and dd10 share this room and are very pleased with it.

    Dh traveled to Akko to buy these beds, and paid 1000   shekels for both (they were asking 600 each but we got a lowered price since we bought both).  We paid an additional 200 shekels for delivery.  They are each 80 cm wide.

    Now you can see the bed that pulls out

    This is the four door closet for the girls’ room.  The previous tenants had originally offered to sell this to us for 1000 shekels; I offered 500, which I felt was reasonable based on my yad2 browsing.  They ended up leaving it behind after taking it apart and realizing it was too much work to get it down the spiral staircase from the upper bedroom.  They told us they were leaving this (and some other items upstairs that were equally cumbersome to get downstairs) in exchange for the paint they should have paid for.  It’s not exactly free but I think of it as if it was.

     

     

     

    The next bedroom is our guest room that dd16 likes to call her room. I’m holding out on calling it hers as a matter of principle.  🙂

    Four door clothing closet with four drawers at bottom

    This next bed took a while to find, since I was trying to find something that matched the wood of the closet we had already purchased.  (It’s not easy trying to match furniture just by the online pictures in the ads, since lighting affects the accuracy of the picture!)  It’s easier  to first buy the bed and then match the closet to it, but we bought what we did in the order that we found things.

    This has an additional pullout bed, and two huge storage drawers (width and depth of bed) that also pull out.  The bed is 80 cm wide.  We bought this in Moran for 700 shekels, and paid 100 shekels for delivery.

    Same bed with additional bed pulled out

    On to the boys’ bedrooms.

    Littles’ bunk bed

    This is one of the things we bought at the second hand store on a second trip.  The price and quality were actually decent, but it doesn’t look as good as what I usually look for (you can see the stickers on it which the littles actually were excited about!).  It’s all wood, and is 70 cm wide – there are three standard twin sizes in Israel (70, 80, 90), and 70 is called a youth size bed.  If you measure a standard American twin, you’ll begin to see how buying Israeli furniture allows you to use the space much better.  If we had US twin mattresses, we’d lose a lot of the floor space in between the beds and the closets, and the rooms would be much more crowded.

    This was 700 shekels.

    With additional bed for ds2 pulled out below

    Below this bed is a pull out storage drawer (narrower than the beds), and I had the seller throw in an extra mattress.   I was ideally looking for a bunk bed that had a pullout bed and storage box included, but this is what I found, so I improvised.  The storage box is only 60 cm wide, but I cut down the foam mattress mattress to size, then resewed the mattress cover all around so it fits perfectly now.  I plan to replace this with a pullout that is 70 cm and to use the drawer for storage, since due to the narrowness I consider it a short term solution for ds2.  The delivery was supposed to be included, but the store owner called me when they were on the way and said he had made a mistake in calculating the prices, so he told me to pay the delivery guys 100 shekels when they got there, and he would also pay them 100 shekels.

    Five door closet for boys

    Across from the bunk beds is a five door closet that all of the boys share.  I measured the space in each bedroom and got the largest closet I could in order to maximize storage space.  The boys’ bedrooms are upstairs and due to the slant of the ceiling that starts at about 5’8″ high on one side of the room, this is the only space in the two rooms where we could put a full size clothing closet without blocking windows.  Our ceilings are high and you can see it goes almost to the top, so there’s loads of space.

    We bought this from someone in Haifa, and paid 600 shekels.  Combined delivery with the fridge we bought the same evening was 550 shekels – the price was higher than usual because the closet had to be dismantled, and a refrigerator is a more expensive item to move.

    Now the older boys’ room, shared by ds9 and ds12.

    Second boy’s bed (note additional bed peeking out at left corner)

    This is a bed I bought at the same time as the bunk bed, because the wood colors matched perfectly  and I got it for a reasonable price.

    This bed has an additional bed that pulls out from underneath, and the drawer from the bunk bed actually goes to this bed, which is where it will be returned to when I replace the pullout bed of the bunk.  I’m considering cutting the legs on this pullout bed down so it will fit under the bunk.  It was a little rickety when we got it but dh strengthened it with a few well placed braces and now it’s very sturdy.  300 shekels.

    Boy’s bed with three storage drawers and additional pullout bed (not shown)

    Across from the above bed is this one.  This has three pullout storage drawers that are the width and depth of the bed, and an additional pullout bed.  I didn’t bother taking a picture of that since you can probably figure out how it works by now!  The pullout of this bed is what ds18 will use when he comes home.

    I bought this in Haifa, and paid 500 shekels for the bed (he was asking 600), and 300 for delivery (delivery also included a stop at Kiryat Motzkin, to pick up most of dd16’s belongings that she had left there over the summer).  This bed also took some effort to find since I was trying for a close match of the first bed, which was difficult since the newer beds are a different shade.  It’s not perfect but it’s quite close and the room looks nice.

    There’s also a small two door cabinet with two shelves and two drawers that was also left behind by the previous tenant that is a perfect match to the above bed that’s in this room. This allows the older two boys to keep a nice amount of their things in their room, though the closet is really just a few steps away.

    Now back downstairs to the salon (living room/dining room).

    Dining room set with eight chairs

    Finding a suitable dining room set wasn’t easy. Most sets have just 6 chairs, so I was trying to match up different dining room sets from totally different areas, just by looking at the pictures online, so that we’d have twelve chairs.  I was trying to keep in my mind over two hundred sets and went back and forth between sets, looking at the wood shades, counting the wood backing strips of the chairs to get a close match…I was getting a big headache from this.  Since the sets were sold with tables and chairs, I would end up with two tables, and I planned to put one table in the kitchen, though I didn’t really want more than one table, total.

    Finally, I decided to just look for one with eight chairs, and to supplement with folding or stacking chairs as needed.  There weren’t many sets available that had eight chairs, and when combined with the size table I was looking for and the price range I wanted to stay in, it took some looking.  I was pleased when I came across this set, which is solid wood and very well made.

    We  bought this in Kfar Tavor, and it was 2000 shekels.  We paid 200 shekels for delivery of this, which included delivery of the oven the same evening.  I was pleasantly surprised when dh got home to see how heavy the table and chairs were.  There are two leaves of half a meter each that are added to each end (not pictured), which brings the table to a total length of 2.9 meters, large enough to comfortably seat 12.  We can manage to fit around here for regular dinners without putting the leaves in, by seating two people at each end.

    Couch on left

    We bought our couches from the second hand store on our first trip there.  Ds18 was with us and thought they looked decent, and since at that time we had no furniture, I expected the other kids to be excited when the couches arrived since we’d finally have a place to sit and relax.  They hated them!  Dd16 even told me they’re so ugly that she’ll be embarrassed to bring her friends over; I won’t share the more graphic comments about how ugly they were.  It’s more of a European style (which makes sense, since they were made in Italy), but they prefer American style couches.  They aren’t perfect, but I think they’re nice.   And the kids have gotten used to them by now.  (Sorry the picture isn’t so good; I took it for an intended post to show you the set up of the apartment.)

    It’s a set of three couches, medium brown leather with solid wood frames.  In the picture you can see the big couch on the left; in the foreground is the edge of the matching chair, and across from that is a loveseat.  The way this second hand place is, things are stacked on top of one another and you can’t fully see what you’re getting, unless you insist that the owner take out every single item, which isn’t such a small thing to ask.  I asked him to take down the loveseat for me, and sat on it to see how comfortable it was; it looked good.  The two larger couches were in fine condition, but the matching chair looks significantly more used, which I didn’t realize until they arrived.  They were 900 shekels.

    On to the kitchen.  I already wrote about the challenges of our fridge and stove, but these problems actually were the catalyst for a much better working solution for our appliances.  So I’m really glad that we didn’t have things that worked okay to start with, since we would have settled for them and it would have continually crimped my ability to function effectively in the kitchen.

    After trying to use the standard size Israeli stove that was left behind (which only had one rack that was kashered), I realized that part of the problem we were having, is that we cook such large quantities that we simply needed something bigger.  I had planned initially to keep this stove and make do, but this realization got me thinking in a different direction.

    I was up late one evening when I saw this oven come up for sale, and though I hadn’t specifically been looking for something like this, as soon as I saw it I knew that’s what would be perfect for our needs.  But I didn’t know if it would still be available by the time I was able to call about it in the morning.

    This is the space intended for the fridge and the oven

    I’ve rarely seen ovens this large for sale second hand, probably because Israeli kitchens aren’t sized to allow for something this large; it is 90 cm wide.  But when looking at the space in my kitchen, I realized I could put the oven where the fridge and oven were supposed to be, and then put the fridge across from that where the table would be (if we had one).

    I was delighted when I learned it was available, then less delighted when I learned that although he advertised it being in Karmiel, it was actually located in a different town.  (This was only the second item I was buying directly from a seller, and I wasn’t yet comfortable with the idea of paying someone to travel there to get it, regardless of if I’d end up getting it or not.  I got used to buying something based on skimpy pictures followed by a phone conversation with the seller, rather than seeing it in person, pretty quickly.)  After speaking to him, I decided to send dh together with the delivery guy to go buy it.  Dd15 and dd16 had been very frustrated when trying to cook for Shabbos, and I didn’t mention to them that we were getting this, since I wanted to surprise them when it arrived.  They love it and so do I!  Cooking for our family got so much simpler with this purchase, and though it was more money than I could have gotten a perfectly good stove for, I feel it was a very, very worthwhile purchase and an effective use of our kitchen space.

    And we did get an excellent price – we bought it from a seller in Rakefet for 1000 shekels.  As I mentioned above, we paid 200 shekels delivery including the dining room set.

    Finally, our fridge.

    Our wonderful new fridge

    I’ll detail in another post how I decided on this model, but this has a good capacity (I think 568 liters, but I might be wrong on that) and I liked the setup of it.  The seller was asking 1900 shekels, and said he was slightly flexible on the price, so we paid 1800.  I know, not exactly major savings. 🙂  This is lots more than I initially planned to pay for a fridge (my original budget was 1000 shekels), but after our first fridge fiasco that ended up costing us 1400 shekels, I decided to get something newer that would hopefully last us for a long time.  The delivery cost was listed above, 550 shekels for this and the five door closet.

    If you’re wondering what we’re doing with the old fridge, I found a solution!

    An expensive ‘lemon’, but a decent cooler

    The fridge itself actually looks nice (unlike the first one, which was not a bit attractive), but the fridge part is like a cooler and the freezer part is like a fridge. I decided to keep it to store the fresh fruits and vegetables in, which I buy in such large quantity each week that I really don’t have room in one fridge.  Before this I couldn’t buy enough in one trip to last for a week.  This also works well since it’s not opened as often as a regular fridge, so it keep the cold better than it did when we needed to open it often.  It’s next to the good fridge, in the kitchen, in the space that would have accomodated a kitchen table.

    I didn’t take a picture of our washing machine, which I think is the only thing left.  We paid 900 shekels at the used furniture place, which was too much and I knew that when I bought it, but I needed something and I hadn’t yet figured out a way to buy directly from sellers.  Thank G-d it works and as long as it continues to work, it will be fine.  At the point in the (I hope, distant) future that I need to replace it, I’ll look for a ten kg model.  This is supposedly a 7 kg model, but I say supposedly because that’s what I wanted so that’s what the seller said it was.  I can’t find it written anywhere to say how much it actually holds, and since the veracity of his words has been repeatedly been shown to be questionable, I’m not assuming in this case he actually said the truth.

    We still need to buy beds for dh and I, a clothing closet for our room, and eventually will need some bookshelves when the twelve boxes of books we’re sending on someone’s lift will arrive.  You might be getting caught up in how much more cheaply all of these things could be purchased in the US, and you’d be right.  But when you take into account how much it would cost to ship the items here, it changes the picture quite a lot.

    These were all good buys, but if just getting basic furniture was my goal, I could have spent much less.  For example, someone offered us a free, wobbly table, and someone else offered us a fridge that doesn’t seal well.  That could have been fine.  However, this was my chance to furnish our home, and I was willing to spend more to get what I wanted and felt good about, while staying in my budget.  If I would have gotten things given to me, or bought very cheaply, the total spent would have been less but my home would be mismatched; I would have ended up keeping it because it basically worked even if it didn’t look great.

    I’m a visual person and seeing nice looking things around me makes me happy, and seeing things that look junky doesn’t bring a smile to my face.  It doesn’t have to be fancy, but I want what I buy to be good quality and stand up to the heavy usage it gets in our home.  To me, bring frugal doesn’t mean that you do without things that are important to you because you must get everything for the least possible amount of money, but about having the quality of life you want within the financial constraints of your budget.

    Even so, you can see that the total (if you’re doing the math), though not small, even including the extra delivery costs, is still far less than the approximately $6000 to send a 20 foot lift, or $10,000 (36,000 shekels) to send a 40 foot lift (which is the size that would be big enough to have brought all the things we needed to buy).  (And I would have had to buy furniture to bring with us on a lift, so we had to take that into account, as well!)

    We’re really happy to have bought the furniture we did here; not only was it a more affordable option, but equally important, it uses the space well and the apartment feels nice and spacious!

    Avivah

  • Choosing not to bring a lift

    I was asked a number of times, why didn’t we take a lift when making the move here?  Making a lift enables people to bring their furniture, appliances, belongings, and more to Israel, all of which can be purchased at cheaper prices in the US.  Combine the money savings with the comfort of having your familiar belongings with you at a time when everything else is changing, and bringing a lift seems very compelling.  So why didn’t we do that?

    I had two main reasons.  The first was financial.  Bringing a lift is costly, and I didn’t have enough good quality furniture or other items that I felt justified the cost.  I knew that the replacement cost for all of our furniture would be much higher than what it would have cost to send it, but I also knew that if we were sending our furniture overseas, we’d be better off buying something in newer and better condition to send.  Our furniture was fine, but after life with nine kids, most of it had seen better days!

    The second issue was that I didn’t know what the room dimensions of our apartment would be, nor how it was set up.  I wanted to maximize the usage of space in our new home, and felt it would be done best: a) after seeing it; and b) by buying Israeli furniture, which is more appropriately sized to the smaller Israeli homes.  This means that even if I had furniture that qualitatively was worth bringing (and I did have some), I felt that it would be questionable if it would be equally valuable once arrived, when taking into account the space constraints I’d be dealing with. Often Americans bring their furniture and find that it doesn’t fit well into the available spaces, and I didn’t want to have furniture I had paid so much to bring to Israel feel like a liability.

    I’m very pleased with our decision to buy furniture here.  The main inconvenience was not having any furniture at all until we were able to buy something, but if someone sends a lift, they often have a period of time between their arrival and the arrival of their belongings in which they have to make do.  So this wouldn’t make much of a difference.

    We haven’t yet purchased all of the furniture we need – I’m still looking for beds for dh and I, as well as a clothing closet for us – but we have everything else and can say with confidence that as much as we spent (and it was a lot more than I would have budgeted were I in the US), it was still significantly less expensive than sending even a small (20 ft) lift, which in any case would have been too small to have held all of the furniture we needed.

    In my next post, I’ll share details of what I bought and how much we spent.

    Avivah

  • Surprise Shabbos visitors

    This week we had our first guests for Shabbos – I asked dh to invite a family of six that moved here three days before us, but they weren’t available this week.  (They’re coming for lunch next week.)  He took the initiative of inviting a lovely couple, probably in their mid forties, who are German and Ukranian, respectively.  It was interestingly coincidental that we had them this particular week, when dd16 invited a friend born in the Ukraine and raised in Germany, to spend Shabbos with us!

    Our meal was a mixture of English and Hebrew – the husband speaks English, and the wife understands it – and it was nice to get to know them.  They told us how wonderful our kids are, and when the meal was over, dd15 commented to me on how quiet the meal was.  Sometimes meals are lots more lively but today was definitely sedate!

    Dh went out to the porch after the meal to learn with dd15, when I suddenly heard shouting.  It was our downstairs neighbor, shouting at us from his yard down below for being so noisy.  He was ranting and raving about how we make noise nonstop, how our children aren’t a blessing but a siyud (sp?- siyut?) – neither dh nor I knew what this meant, but I asked an Israeli later that day who doesn’t speak English, and was told it’s a very harsh insult along the lines of a terrible tragedy.  This was, well, a little surprising to me.

    When we lived in Baltimore, our neighborhood was about 50/50 Jewish/African American, and our non-Jewish neighbors all spoke very well of our children, even telling me they’d miss seeing the kids around when we moved!  Another non-Jewish couple, who generally oppose large families, told us we should have more since they were so impressed with our children (and this was when we had nine already!).

    There’s no way a large family (or even small family) is going to be silent, but for a family our size we’re on the quiet side and I try to be on top of the kids when it comes to being considerate of neighbors and being quiet.  I didn’t expect our neighbors to actively be appreciative that the kids take off their shoes in the house, play quietly during 2- 4 pm every day (national quiet hours), whisper or speak in a low voice when in the building hallway coming upstairs, not play with balls, marbles, push cars, or anything else noisy at any time in the apartment, but this reaction seemed unreasonable to me, to put it mildly.

    About a half an hour later, there was a knock on the door.  I glanced out the peephole and was taken aback to see two uniformed policemen waiting there.  I opened the door and welcomed them inside, and they told me they had received a complaint about our excessive noise.  They said the caller complained that we’re shuffling chairs around nonstop from 6 am, we have a synagogue in our house, and we’re disturbing the peace, that we had at least twenty extra people in our house that day.  The officer doing the talking went on and on about how I have to understand that people work hard all week and deserve a break on their day off, and I have to make an effort to have peaceable relationships with my neighbors.  It was as if he’d already decided we were guilty before he got inside, or maybe it was when we saw we were religious.  Fortunately, the house was very clean and quiet when they walked in, with kids all either resting, playing cards, or reading books.

    I told him that my kids aren’t even awake that early, that we are very careful about quiet hours and as careful as possible during the rest of the day, too.  I explained that I realized that when one of the kids stacked the plastic chairs after the meal (it took about two minutes), it was too loud and we’ll be more careful about that in the future.  But, I continued, we don’t have a synagogue in our house and rather than the crowd they claimed we were hosting, only had a middle aged couple as guests.  It seems that when my husband, son, and guest sang three Shabbos songs together, this upset my neighbor and was what prompted his complaint about our in-home ‘synagogue’.

    As far as trying to be peaceable, I pointed out to the policemen that they didn’t get calls from me when these neighbors are playing music until 1 am (or later), having loud parties and barbeques late in the evening – one has to be willing to close their eyes to annoyances for the sake of being a good neighbor.  I thought to myself that it was ironic that this woman, who told me the first morning we were here that I would be bothered by other people not doing things according to my liking, was reflecting the kind of person she was with her comments.

    The reality notwithstanding, the policeman warned us that if they continued to receive complaints about us, they’d ticket us at 350 shekels the first time, with increasing fines each time they came, and once they received a certain amount of complaints, it would be very bad for us because then we’d be labeled a problematic address.  I asked what happened to the person who called in with unsubstantiated complaints, and he told me that he can’t say the caller was wrong – there wasn’t a synagogue there right then, but maybe I was the one lying about it.

    No, this really isn’t the nicest welcome to the building!  I know that this neighbor had complained about us to at least two neighbors within a week of us moving in (and probably a lot more), because two people told us about it; they told her we’re a nice family and to leave us alone.  One of these was a neighbor in my building, and explained that they’re very difficult people and she herself had suffered a lot from these neighbors over the past twenty years.  This person came to speak to me when the neighbor complained that by leaving a stroller in the corner of the wide and spacious entryway, I blocked her ability to get to her front door when she was carrying groceries.  If you saw my building, you’d see how ludicrous this was, but the same unhappy neighbor took matters into her own hands by pushing my stroller outside the building because she was so annoyed – all of two times that I left it there in the first three weeks we were here (usually I bring it up a flight of stairs with me).

    I met the husband the first Sunday morning we were here, when he knocked on our door and told me that he could hear by the way the water was running that we had a burst pipe, and he shut off our water.  Dd16 was frustrated since she was in the shower when he shut off the water, and dh checked it when he got home and said it was nonsense, there was nothing wrong and he suspected the person didn’t do it from a desire to help, but I couldn’t imagine someone would maliciously shut off our water just because the sound of it going through the pipes was too loud.

    Then last week, my littles threw several olive pits in their yard on Shabbos before I realized what they were doing.  I gave them a stern talking to and said after Shabbos we’d go down, apologize, and pick them up. But we didn’t have time for that, since the father threw them back onto our porch – yes, all five of the pits!  I understood why he would feel frustrated, even though I didn’t think it was the most mature way to handle it.  But all in all, I was grateful that though they made it clear they weren’t happy we are living here, they weren’t constantly knocking at our door to complain.

    Back to my talk with the woman asked to tell me to keep the stroller out of the entry (she’s the head of the building housing commitee) – I told her I realized it was probably hard for our neighbors to have a big family above them after being used to a small and quiet family (a couple, grandmother, and a young girl).  She informed me that they had bitterly disliked the last people, that it was a ‘catastrophe’ – they wouldn’t talk to each other, and the downstairs neighbors had constantly complained about the noise level of this family as well.  I couldn’t imagine this family could have made much noise; I remembered that the retired policewoman I met last week mentioned she had once been called to my apartment with a complaint, and I didn’t want to pursue it since I thought it might be gossip.  But after today, I strongly suspect that these neighbors were the ones who called the police on that family as well.

    Later in the afternoon I went to the park, where I spoke with someone who lived here before the last family – I wanted to know if she had ever had any difficulties.  Oh, yes, she immediately said, they suffered terribly (interesting that both people used the term suffering to describe their experience) from these neighbors, they knocked at her door frequently to complain (though never called the police), they were bothered by little noises, even normal sounds of people living there.  The first thing her kids did when they moved to their own house was to loudly push the chairs back and forth in place, as a reaction to having been so constrained about every sound they made for so long, and relief that they didn’t have to worry about that anymore.  She told me to realize I’m not dealing with normal or reasonable people, and that there’s nothing I’m going to be able to do to make them happy.

    Amazingly, I don’t feel overly bothered about all of this. I tend to get very uptight about bothering people, and tried very hard (though unsuccessfully) to find a ground level apartment so that I wouldn’t have to worry about downstairs neighbors, but in this case, the reactions to us have been so extreme that it’s hard to be too upset about them.  It’s almost amusing, except that it’s not.  I’ll try to find a solution to the plastic chairs that we use to supplement our regular dining room chairs, since they do make more noise when people sit in them and shift their position than wood chairs.

    But I can’t make my kids or myself crazy about this – and the kids are already feeling anxious after seeing the police here.  Today ds2 started to cry, and ds5 told him, not as a threat but from alarm, to stop or the police would come.  Ds4 ran across the room in bare feet later in the evening, and when I asked him to walk quietly, he worriedly asked me if the police would come if he ran.  It’s hard not to feel somewhat anxious, knowing someone can call the police on you, and the police are totally subjective about determining if there’s a basis for the complaint – they stand outside listening before coming into the house (fun to picture police officers standing around listening when you don’t know they’re there!), and it’s up to them to determine if your noise level is reasonable or not.

    I plan to call my new friend, the retired police officer, and ask her if there’s anything I can do to alleviate this issue from a police standpoint.  I’d love it if she had enough pull in the department to tell them that the real problem is the people continually making the calls.  But even if that’s not realistic, I’d like to get her suggestions on the best way to handle this.

    Avivah

  • Finding great clothing deals in Israel

    Yesterday I had a super full and tiring day – as I wrote that, I thought to myself that lately, I could start most of my posts like that! – I went to do some thrift store type clothing shopping.

    Firstly, dd10 needs uniform skirts for school. The school has uniforms available for purchase, but only had very little girls’ sizes remaining.  I went to someone locally who sells uniform skirts as well as some used items, but she was also out of that size.  (I did get ds9 and ds2 nice vests for Rosh Hashana, though.)  Then I went to someone hosting a private sale in her home, and her prices were high, way more than I wanted to spend on a school skirt.  I also needed to buy a uniform shirt for ds9.

    I took stock of my choices.  Karmiel is a predominantly secular city, so there aren’t stores that sell modest clothing.  So buying something brand new locally wasn’t an option (though someone did tell me she saw one skirt in one store that might be suitable).  I was told that in Tzfat (Safed) I’d be able to buy skirts that would be comfortable and modest for about 40 shekels each, and so I decided to go there.

    However, before buying something at brand new prices, I always try to start with less expensive options.  I learned about a used clothing exchange in Tzfat, and planned to go on Weds.  If I didn’t find what I wanted at the used clothing exchange, I’d buy something new while in Tzfat.  Then on Tuesday evening I spoke to a friend who made aliyah just two weeks after me.  She had a less pleasant and much more frazzled departure than I did, and ended up taking her winter clothes but not summer clothes to Israel with her. So she got here and found she didn’t have much to wear!

    The family she was staying with for Shabbos in Ramat Beit Shemesh (RBS) told her there was a used clothing exchange where clothing could be very inexpensively purchased in the building next to them, and she was able to get a number of nice things for a small amount of money.  She told me the prices were 3 shekels for women’s clothing, 2 shekels for children’s clothing, and since this was less than the clothing exchange prices in Tzfat (I think I was told 5 – 10 shekels per item), I determined that it would be worth my while to make a trip to Jerusalem the next day.

    There are only three buses a day to Jerusalem from Karmiel, and I was on the first one, at 6 am.  It’s a three hour bus ride, and I knew I’d have to work to maximize my time to get everything done in time for one of the two buses back to Karmiel later in the day.  Firstly, I met ds18 at his yeshiva in Jerusalem and exchanged the stuff I brought him for an empty suitcase with wheels (the lovely one I got as a goodbye present from my dear homeschooling friends before I left), which I thought would be helpful for me to transport the clothing I anticipated buying, home.  He is really, really happy with his yeshiva, and it was not only nice to see him, but to see where he’s learning and living.

    From there I got the bus back to the central bus station, then got a bus to RBS.  That was a drive of almost an hour, and I’ll spare you the difficulties of getting off at the wrong stop and trying to figure out where I was (since there was no one out and about at that time of day to ask).  I finally found where I needed to go, and was pleasantly surprised to see the huge amount of clothes at the clothing exchange.  (A nice side surprise was when two minutes after I walked in, the woman who used to be my backup doula walked in – I had last seen her several years ago in the States, and she is now living in RBS!)

    I wished that dd15 could have come with me, since it’s nice not only for the company, but to have another opinion when choosing clothing for the girls.  I was able to find dd10 two very nice uniform shirts, and several navy skirts for school.  Additionally, I found a skirt, shirt, and top for Rosh Hashana for her, and a few other non uniform skirts (a total of ten skirts just for dd10 alone!).  I found some shirts and vests for the littles for Rosh Hashana, five pairs of shoes and three backpacks, several long sleeve solid color shirts for dd15 and dd16 to wear under their uniform shirts (has to be black, white, or beige), and some other miscellaneous items – the whopping sum for all of these things was 77 shekels.

    When I had initially entered this building, I noticed a sign for a two day sale of new and used clothing, which I made a note of.  So I got directions to that house, which became my next stop.  It was a hot day and by now the suitcase was full and pretty heavy.  As I passed a couple of women speaking on the sidewalk, I glanced back to make sure I didn’t bump them with the suitcase, and surprise! – one of the women was the director of the Baltimore camp dd15 and dd16 had gone to when they were younger; she lives in RBS during the year and goes to the States to run the camp in the summer.  So I chatted with her a bit before continuing on my way.

    At the next sale I found a couple of new skirts with tags for dd15 for ten shekels each, a skirt for me for 5 shekels, a pair of shoes for ds12, and then nine other items for 3 shekels. (She had a few boxes of less desirable items that were three for a shekel, things that had some kind of flaw or she felt wouldn’t sell as quickly for some other reason.)  I was able to find a couple of things that I could easily put a stitch into to make as good as new, and for the price it was worth my effort!  (Most of what I got wasn’t damaged, though.)  Another 33 shekels.

    Then I went to one more clothing exchange, and this one was really a challenge since it was down a lot of steps and I had this heavy suitcase to deal with.  If I had known how many stairs there were when I first started going down, I don’t think I would have done it.  Because what goes up must come down and getting back up all those flights of stairs was a very intimidating thought.

    Anyway, this place was very well organized (not to imply the others weren’t – they were) and had nice quality items, but with higher but still reasonable prices: 5 – 10 shekels for children’s items, 10 – 20 for ladies clothing.  Though I always try to start at the least expensive places and work my way up, I had never been to any of these places, and was glad it worked out in my favor this time!

    At this place I found a uniform shirt for ds9 and a regular shirt for him (which I needed since I ruined his favorite shirt soon after arriving by attempting to clean it using something I didn’t realize was bleach until I saw the results!).  I also found a skirt for me, but as I was paying, asked the time and learned it was much later than I thought.  I had to leave right that minute if I hoped to make the bus, and didn’t there wasn’t time to wait for change for the skirt, I paid for the two shirts for ds9 since I had exact change for that and left the skirt behind.

    I then attempted to race up the stairs with my hugely heavy suitcase – my legs were buckling when I finally got to the top and a couple of times on the way up I had to grab the handrail to keep from falling- and I raced to the bus stop.  And learned the bus to Jerusalem has just passed two minutes before.  🙁  I needed to get the last bus back to Karmiel, which left the Jerusalem central bus station at 4:15.  It would take an hour to get to Jerusalem from RBS, and another bus wasn’t scheduled for another twenty minutes, which wouldn’t get me there in time.

    I was really feeling anxious when I thought to myself, “I’m where I’m supposed to be right now, and if I’m meant to get on the bus to Karmiel, I will.  If I don’t, I’ll travel to a different city in the north and get a connecting bus from one of those places.  But somehow, I’ll get home tonight.”

    Amazingly, a bus pulled up 11 minutes later, and continuing to think the above thoughts kept me from tapping my foot in impatience every time people got on the bus.  I got to the central bus station with just enough time to very quickly buy something to eat – it was already after 4 pm and I hadn’t eaten anything since the night before – and got on my bus four minutes before it pulled out.  It was so nice to sit, take a deep breath, and for the first time that day, eat and relax.

    Why did I feel it was worthwhile to spend so much time going to Jerusalem to buy these things?  It cost me approximately 110 shekels for my travel expenses.  I spent approximately 120 shekels on clothing, which included about 16 skirts, three uniform shirts, several ladies tops,  a number of children’s vests and dress shirts, and six pairs of shoes.  Total: 250 shekels.

    If I had to purchase just two uniform skirts for dd10, I would have had to pay at least 80 shekels plus the cost of a bus ticket to Tzfat (approximately 110 shekels).  I knew that if I found just two skirts for her at the clothing exchange, the cost of my travel to Jerusalem would be comparable, and if I bought anything else, I’d be coming out ahead.  Even assuming I could have found comparable items to what I bought that day in the Tzfat used clothing exchange (I don’t know how likely a scenario that would be), I would have paid at least double for just about every single item I bought, bringing the clothing cost itself to at least 240 shekels, possibly up to 360.

    Although my trip was fruitful, I don’t anticipate making this a regular event.  I went yesterday because dh is home and able to pick up the littles from kindergarten if I’m not available.  In the future, that wouldn’t be the case and this trip wouldn’t be realistic.  And it was a very long and fatiguing day.  However, because there were things I really needed for the kids for school, I wanted to go where the likelihood was highest of getting most of those things in one day, which is how it worked out.

    A trip to the used clothing exchange in Tzfat can be squeezed in between the time the littles leave to school and need to be picked up, and because in a family our size, there’s always someone who needs something, that’s a trip I hope to make next week!

    Avivah

  • And the final school decision…

    >>So DS9 is still home? Is that hard for him being the only “school-aged” kid at home?<<

    From the time we first thought about moving to Israel and discussed which kids might benefit from going to school, ds9 was the one child that I had absolutely no question about.  I felt for the following reasons that sending him to an Israeli school would be throwing him to the wolves:

    – As an auditory learner, his reading skills are weak; we had this with dd15 who went on to excel at a later age so we aren’t concerned; however,  since their primary sense that’s engaged isn’t visual, reading is a later start for them.  This is understandable but he wouldn’t be anywhere near the Israeli kids in Hebrew reading ability.

    – His nature is very sensitive and gentle.  Israeli kids are notoriously not known for these qualities.

    – He tends to easily get frustrated and overwhelmed when faced with something he didn’t understand, and this sometimes leads to tears.  Not a good thing for a nine year old boy, particularly for one who is tall and looks like he’s about 12.

    – His strengths of personality are the kind that aren’t quickly and easily seen; he has a depth of perception and compassion, a gentle and caring spirit, and an artistic and musical bent – but this doesn’t lend itself to playground play, and when combined with the above tendency, I was afraid he would be targeted by bullies.

    So when we decided to send everyone else to school, I felt really good about the idea of having him home to build up his reading skills one on one, to give him lots of time and attention, to build our relationship and use the opportunity to build his confidence in his abilities.

    But then I thought about what his self-perception would be about everyone being in school except for him.  As I contemplated this, I realized that he could easily internalize the message that someone is wrong with him, that we don’t think he can make it in school like everyone else.  And I remembered a story Steven Covey (of the Seven Habits) shared regarding one of his children:

    He had a child who was socially very awkward, physically clumsy and uncoordinated, and immature in pretty much every way.  When his siblings would make fun of him, his parents would tell them, “Leave him alone, can’t you see he’s doing his best?”  And then they’d tell him encouraging things to build him up.  One day, though, they realized that despite their words to him, deep in themselves they felt he was lacking.  And no matter what words they were using, the deeper disbelief in his abilities was being communicated to him.

    So he and his wife made a decision to see him as capable and treat him as such, to stop protecting him so much and give him a chance to find his own strengths.  As he grew up and matured, he turned into a wonderful young man who was skilled in all of the areas that he seemed so weak in.

    When thinking of keeping ds9 at home, part of my concern was that he couldn’t be successful in school at this time (though at a later age I wouldn’t be worried).   And no matter how positively I presented to him that he’d continue homeschooling, I recognized that part of my underlying feeling about his ability wasn’t fully supportive of who he is, regardless of my words to myself otherwise. Not only that, he would feel different than all of his siblings, and in a way that would be damaging to his sense of self.

    And so a week ago, I took ds9 to meet the principal of a local boys’ school.  (None of my kids thought this was a good idea, and ds12 went so far as to repeatedly warn me that it was a really bad idea.)  Ds9 wasn’t interested, but my repeated message to him was that I thought he’d gain a lot out of school.  You could kind of say I took a tough love approach.  🙂  I was very impressed with the principal, and liked the school philosophy, which is more similar to mine in terms of attitudes towards religious inclusion and focus on character than most Israeli schools.

    I also met his teacher, who was very, very highly spoken of as an extremely warm and experienced teacher, and met the person who would be his personal tutor, to help him get a handle on the language.  I liked when the tutor told me that the focus of the school for the first six months wouldn’t be on academics at all, but on helping him get the language and acclimate – this is exactly my focus at this time, and I appreciated that I wouldn’t have to argue with the administration about how much academics to push.

    This isn’t the school that ds12 is going to and though it’s a very good school, isn’t where people expect us to send our kids, but I had a very strong feeling that this is where ds9 would thrive.  At this school they are better equipped to handle olim (new immigrants), have a wider academic and extracurricular program, and have a shorter school day.  And putting him in a different school from his older brother meant he would have the chance to define himself, away from any comparison to his socially, athletically, and academically gifted older brother and the threat of the shadow from below of his similarly gifted younger brother.

    When I dropped him off the next morning for his first day, his eyes started filling up with tears, and I told him, “I know it won’t be easy to not be able to understand what’s going on around you.  But every single one of your siblings (then I detailed each one) is having the same challenge – none of them understand anything in their classes either.  It won’t be easy but you’re going to do great.  If you need anything, tell your teacher or someone else; you’re got to tell people what’s wrong so they can help you.  You can’t start crying.  Don’t worry about speaking in Hebrew; your teacher understands English and lots of the kids have learned some English in school, too.  You’re going to do great!”

    So he wiped his eyes and I left to take ds4 to his first day of school (Friday).  All day I was thinking about ds9 and wondering how he did, but inside myself I really felt he was going to do well.  I wasn’t thinking about all the reasons it would be hard that had kept me from considering school as a positive option for him until this point, but about what a great kid he was and this would be a chance for him to find his inner strength.  I needed to reflect his strengths to him, not my fears about his weaknesses, and my decision to send him to school reflected an inner shift that I had made.

    He came home from his first day of school surprisingly happy.  It’s been amazing to me to see the positive changes in him in just a week – he’s much more relaxed, positive, helpful, and feels so good about himself.  His entire aura has shifted in a hugely positive way, something I wasn’t anticipating but am so, so grateful for!

    So that winds up our decision making process regarding sending the kids to school!  (For this year – I don’t consider this a forever decision,but as always, an educational choice that we will continue to evaluate and assess each year.)  It was pretty intense as dh and I discussed every single child one by one, and one by one made the decision for each of them.  It would have definitely simplified the registration process if we had decided to send them all at one time, so that I didn’t have to make repeated visits to the schools.  🙂  But though it wasn’t the efficient way to do it, it was the right way to do it for us.

    It’s been a really big and unexpected shift for me to go from eleven years of homeschooling all of our children (seven at home last year and nine at home the year before), to having just ds2 at home with me.  It was because I knew we’d homeschool that I felt confident about making the move to Israel with so many older school aged children, and so it’s particularly ironic to me that we’re not homeschooling now that we’re here!  But I have a deep sense of peace about this decision now, and am glad I was able to set aside my own ego and preferences to do what was best for my kids.

    Avivah

  • The stories behind the fridge and oven

    “But why aren’t your fridge and stove working properly?”

    Well, this is part of the fun of our move.  🙂

    First of all, the background.  I had been perusing the online Israeli classifieds for months to get a sense of what a good price for the items I would be needing would be.  Before we left, I wrote down some phone numbers of things so we could call about them as soon as we got there.  That was very good foresight, and would have worked if we had a way to transport the items we bought home.  I assumed since so many people here don’t have vehicles, that we could hire someone to help us move something, or rent a vehicle to move something ourselves.  Logical assumption, don’t you think?  Well, that may have been logical, but it wasn’t the way it worked out.

    When we arrived here, we found on the second floor of our apartment that a number of pieces of furniture had been left behind.  The real estate agent told us the tenant wanted to leave it in exchange for the cost of paint for the part of the apartment they hadn’t gotten to.  Now, a couple of months before, the tenant had offered to sell me most of these pieces at extremely high rates.  (I told you, I was checking the classifieds regularly so I would be able to recognize a bargain or a rip off.)  I passed along a message that I’d pay half the price she was charging, or buy the things I needed on my own.  No response, which was fine with me.  I’m not a stupid, rich, or desperate American.

    So when I got there and saw these items, I already knew these were things she didn’t want.  Also, it was clear that they started taking the furniture apart and then it was too much work for them to take it all down the spiral staircase, so they just left it all there.  The clothes closet was totally taken apart, but no screws or clothing rods were left behind; the bookshelf of the desk had the backing ripped off and they took it with them, the bed was old and nothing I wanted for even a day in our home….and they left behind a stove.

    The stove ended up being helpful, since we had no appliances, had arrived Thursday afternoon, and had no way to cook for our first Shabbos.  The stove top was cleaned and kashered, and dd16 was then able to cook our first Shabbos meal here.  However, the oven was very, very dirty – extremely.  It took another two weeks of scrubbing and cleaning before we could kasher and use it.  Once we kashered it, we learned that the door doesn’t close fully (stays about 1/4 inch open when baking).  We propped something against it to keep the heat in, which was a workable solution, but it was too small for a family our size, and trying to maximize the cooking space in it to suit our needs resulted in foods that were either burnt or undercooked.  (This wouldn’t be an issue for someone content to use just one or two shelves at a time.)

    Back to our first few days here – I wanted to buy through the online classifieds, but was stymied because we had no way to transport anything home.  Dh called a couple of people who did moving, and said it would be between 200 – 400 shekels to bring something from someone else’s home ten minutes away, even if we did all the moving work ourselves.

    So when someone recommended a second hand store to us, we decided to look into it.   I have a lot of experience and a high level of confidence in buying used furniture and appliances, but only buy directly from the person who used it.  I like to see not only the item, but get a sense of the person selling it, why they are selling it – particularly with used appliances that I don’t have a way to know how well they work when I buy them  – I buy only if I trust the person.  I’ve never had a problem, except with a used vehicle when I put my better judgement aside.

    The sole appeal of this store was that we could see what he had, and have it home that day – and at a time when we had no way how to get anywhere to view things, and no way to bring things home even if we could view them, this was definitely a huge appeal.  The quality of his things weren’t the kind of thing I usually look for, and because he had about six different storage rooms with things piled haphazardly on top of one another, it was hard to really see what he had.

    We ended up buying a fridge, washer, couches, a clothing closet, bunk bed, and another kids bed from this seller.    I felt the furniture was a decent price, though I could get much better quality for the same price from a seller directly, but the fridge and washer seemed to me to be very overpriced for what it was.  Dh said his priority was to get a fridge that day, and since we needed something, so we bought it.

    When we got home, we learned the fridge didn’t close fully, and didn’t cool down well.   A mid size bottle of water after twelve hours in the freezer still wouldn’t be frozen.  When the food we cooked on Thursday night was spoiled when we served it for Shabbos, because the fridge couldn’t keep it cold enough, I told dh we couldn’t keep hoping the fridge would be usable, since it clearly was a problem.  Before we bought the fridge I had asked the seller what would happen if there was a problem with the fridge, and he said he would take care of it (definitely vague about what that meant).  So dh told him the fridge hardly cooled anything and we wanted a refund.  (He still had made plenty of money off of us with our other purchases.)

    Instead, he came to our house to fix the fridge, and the next morning, it was worse.  All the food that had been frozen was now defrosted.  So dh spoke to him again.  The store owner told him to come in and pick out another fridge, but when I got there later in the day after spending hours that morning taking care of school enrollments and going to the Ministry of Absorption, he was grumpy and irritated with me because I hadn’t come sooner.  I didn’t get to choose a fridge – he told me which fridge we could take – it was smaller than the one we had bought, too small – but insisted that’s what we could have and he was losing money because of his generosity to us.  Right.  All we had to do was pay another 200 shekels for delivery, and the delivery guys would bring it over and take the broken one out.

    Well, at this point I wasn’t sure I wanted anything else to do with this guy, but hoped that the replacement fridge would be better than the first, even if it was small.  It definitely looked a lot nicer, and the seal on the fridge was good so the door actually fully closed.  An improvement.  We had already spent 1200 shekels and I thought another 200 might be more ‘spilled milk’, but it also might redeem the money already spent.  Unfortunately, this fridge also didn’t work too well, and the vegetables we bought on Thursday to last us for the week already look like they’re at the end of their life span, just three days later.

    Several days ago I met a retired Israeli policewoman who took a liking to me, and we spent quite a bit of time together one afternoon, going through things she was selling/giving away.  She’s a warm and good hearted person, but when I mentioned we were going to be looking for a fridge because I bought one at a second hand store, her demeanor changed as she said, “Don’t tell me you bought from David?  That disgusting, dishonest, horrible person!”  I told her that dh and I assumed he must be honest or he couldn’t still be in business in Karmiel after so many years.  She told me all the locals know to stay away from him (interestingly, even someone I asked directions from today for a different second hand store mentioned his store, and when I said he wasn’t honest, told me he was well aware of that already), that they know his stuff is overpriced, he pushes things on people, and the fridge will break within a week of getting it.  She was so upset about our experience, though it seems like it’s typical for at least a good number of his customers.

    So we’ve now spent 1400 skekels and still don’t have a fridge that works properly; right now it’s kind of like a cooler.  If something is cool, it will keep it cool.  And overnight, when no one is opening the fridge, things can actually get cold and in the freezer, frozen.  Maybe we can keep it as a backup fridge.   I’m working on getting new (used) appliances, but in the meantime, this is what I have!

    Avivah

  • Finally, a working sink!

    When we arrived here directly from the airport 3.5 weeks ago, we entered the apartment and found there was no water.  Fortunately, with some effort my husband discovered that the previous tenants had turned the water off, and after turning it back on, we had water in most of the apartment – except for our kitchen.

    When the tenants first moved here, they didn’t like the kitchen faucet so they replaced it.  When they moved, they understandably wanted to take it with them, so they removed it and replaced the old faucet.  The only problem was, the old faucet wasn’t connected to the water supply line, so it didn’t help us much.

    After two weeks, the seller agreed to pay someone to replace the faucet, and we were so glad when that was finally done!  The only thing was, when we ran the water, it didn’t drain down – at all.
    By this time we realized that we couldn’t expect the seller to leave the apartment in the agreed upon working condition (when the second floor didn’t have any electricity because of something the tenants did when they removed their air conditioner, we had to pay to have it fixed), but to be fair, he allowed us in to the apartment when he only had 80% of the money, and had to wait another 10 days for the final payment.  We didn’t want to start agitating about what wasn’t done because then he could have claimed we owed him the penalty fee for not having the loan closed on the date written in the lease, so we felt it all balanced out.

    Anyway, I couldn’t understand how the sink had been used at all before we came – the water literally didn’t move down the sink.  Dh didn’t want to pay a plumber to take care of it because our financial outlays have been significant and this is something he felt he could handle.  He bought a ‘snake’, opened up the pipes, and found a blockage unlike anything he had ever seen before.  He was trying and trying to get through it, and kept coming out with tiny pieces of plaster.  He finally said to me, “Is it possible they poured concrete down the sink??”

    We couldn’t imagine that anyone would do that on purpose, and as I was thinking about it, it occurred to me that they moved out before doing the painting and plastering that they started, and probably rinsed off the plaster and paint in the sink.  Since they weren’t living in the apartment and running the water, it hardened in the pipes and created a complete blockage.

    My husband has been working on this for a week and a half; some of the time, he’s left the pipe under the sink open and the water runs into a bucket, which we pour into the toilet when it gets full.  Sometimes he closes it back up and the water doesn’t go down at all.

    But my husband is persistent and didn’t give up when most people would have thrown up their hands and agreed this was a case for the experts, and today he totally cleared the kitchen pipes!  After weeks of washing dishes in the bathroom and feeling like there was always a pile of something waiting to be washed (because there was much less room there), it is SO nice to be able to use our kitchen sink for all of our kitchen needs!

    Avivah

  • Eleventh grade girls get together – at our house!

    Dd16 came home from school several days ago and casually asked if I’d mind if she invited some classmates for shalosh seudos (the third meal) on Shabbos.  She had asked me last week but I’d told her since we don’t yet have a working sink in the kitchen, oven, or fridge (we have a fridge and oven, but they don’t work properly), beds to sleep on, or even a table big enough for our family to sit at, I’d like to wait another week.  So she waited.  At the beginning of the week, we bought a dining room table and eight chairs, and all of the kids now have beds (haven’t yet found beds for dh and I, but I hope I’ll find them soon!), so though I still don’t have a kitchen sink, oven, or fridge that work properly, I agreed.  After all, we’ve been here a full three weeks now!

    She mentioned when she came home a couple of days ago that a few classmates were coming and that they’d each bring a dish.  Very nice – I’m so glad when my kids are comfortable bringing friends home.  Then yesterday she mentioned that she thinks there will be between 8 and 15 girls coming.  Oh.  Very nice!  It seems the girls were thinking of doing something as a class this Shabbos, and dd16 had the idea for inviting people for shalosh seudos before she heard anyone else was thinking of something, so this is now the official class get-together.

    I’m glad she’s doing this, and it’s so nice to see how quickly dd16 is not only settling but thriving.  When we were looking at apartments, I was very clear that the most important thing to me was a central location, even if the apartment itself wasn’t as nice.  Almost immediately upon arriving, we saw what a good decision that was, since the kids have friends over or go to friends almost every day!

    If you’re wondering about where we’ll put everyone, the neighbor who loaned us the folding table and 11 plastic chairs told us she wants to give us the chairs, so combined with the eight we just bought and one cheapy folding chair that the old tenants left behind, we now have seating for 20. Plus we have couches they can sit on – we have a living room/dining room combo known here as a salon, so it’s all in the same area.  We returned the folding table the day before dd made this announcement, so I don’t actually have a table for more than sixteen people (at the very most) to sit at, but things are more casual here and dd thinks it will be fine!

    Avivah

  • Ds12 starting at local yeshiva

    On Tuesday morning, ds12 had his interview with the principal of the school, with dh along as his translator.  Oh, but before I share about that, let me fill you in on how I decided to send ds12 to school.

    When considering which kids should be sent to school, he’s been the biggest question mark of them all, due to his age and his extreme reluctance to move to Israel.  On Friday afternoon, I made the sudden decision to send dd10 and ds5 to school.  On Shabbos, he met a boy that he really hit it off with, and on Saturday night, he told me he was thinking he might like to go to school.

    But he seemed hesitant to tell me directly, so I suggested he walk with me to a nearby neighbor I was planning to get school details from on the other two kids.  We ended up sitting in front of her building for a while discussing it.  He told me he had met a few kids from the eighth grade class, two are English speakers and a third understands English well, and he felt all the boys he met were really good kids.   He was concerned since officially he’s supposed to be in seventh grade (his birthday is January so he just missed the cutoff), and this class is an advanced class, and in addition to not speaking the language, they’d be much more advanced in gemara than he was.  At the end of our talk, I told him I’d get details on his school schedule, potential teacher, classmates, and we’d discuss it further.

    At the interview, the principal told him that he felt he should be in the seventh grade because: the teacher speaks English (the 8th grade teacher doesn’t) and the class isn’t as strong academically as the class above, so the teacher repeats things several times and this would make it easier for someone just learning the language to pick things up.  Also, the eighth grade is a hard time to come into a boys’ yeshiva since there’s a lot of pressure to get into a good yeshiva high school, and ds12 wouldn’t be able to be up to par in that short period of time.

    I thought these were all good points – very, very good points.  Particularly the last one, which is something that has weighed on my mind for some time and is troubling to me.  This is part of the academic system that I have very strong negative feelings about, that boys who are only 13 or 14 are accepted into programs based almost totally on their gemara skills and how wonderful they may be doesn’t count for much.  Honestly, it seemed almost a non-question which grade ds belonged in – seventh.

    But from having spoken with him, I strongly felt that ds would be very unhappy socially in the seventh grade, and that having English speaking friends in the class was more important than a teacher who speaks English (since after all, he’s still going to teach in Hebrew). Also, the eighth grade teacher is known to be phenomenal, and an experienced teacher with a known track record was very important.  So we advocated for ds12 to be put in the eighth grade, and countered the principal’s concern about him not being able to pick up the gemara fast enough with our feeling that the main learning of student coming in without speaking the language is – the language!  Everything else is secondary.  And dh told them he’d work with ds12 to help him through the material.

    Dh also explained to them that ds12 likes a challenge, and would find it motivating to be in the more advanced class and work harder to keep up.  Ds is also tall for his age (5′ 8″), looks older than he is, and is also emotionally and socially mature for his age.  We really feel he’s a better fit socially in this class than the other, and in the end, where a student feels they fit socially can be a huge factor in how positive their school experience is.

    On Tuesday evening, dh spoke to the principal again and was told they agreed to accept ds12 into the eighth grade, as long as he shows within 6 weeks that he’s understanding everything that’s going on.  I laughed when I heard this and told ds not to worry about it, that it just means they want to see him making an effort, because it’s totally unrealistic to expect anyone to pick up the language that fast!  I mean, ds is bright and I think he’ll pick it up relatively quickly, but not that quickly!

    Ds was really glad to hear the news, and at the same time, is feeling understandably nervous – not just about going to school for the first time, but about all the unknowns awaiting him.  Despite my earlier hesitations before we got here about putting him into school, now that we’re here he’s been really positive about the move, and with this decision to go to school being initiated by him, I know he wants to do well and is willing to put in the effort to do so.

    Oh – as far as ds being accepted into a certain caliber high school, I’m not going to worry about it – I’ve decided to cross that bridge when we get to it.

    Avivah

  • Enrolling ds5 for school

    After registering dd10 on Sunday morning – a process that I felt was a bit too drawn out for what needed to be done, but at least it was done when I left the building –  I went to the boy’s school to register ds5 and ds12.  It was supposed to be less than a ten minute walk away, but I’ve noticed something about Israelis – they tend to be not very good at giving directions.

    As I was getting directions to the school, I thought I’d just ask someone when I was somewhat closer and thought I’d probably see obvious signs of the school, since I knew what street it was on, and how to find the street.   But as I got to the street and walked all the way until the end without seeing any hint of a school, there were hardly any people out to ask, and I spent the next hour and a half walking back and forth, up and down flights of stairs, trying to find the building.

    I finally gave up and went home, then called the school secretary to find out how to get there and what time she’d be in until.  She said she’d only be there for a short time more, so I told her I’d come in the next morning.  In the meantime, I spent the day trying to get hold of the principal by phone.

    Bright and early the next morning, I left (another) message with the principal saying that in case he was there, I was bringing ds12 because I understood an interview was a prerequisite to being accepted, and then set out with ds12 and ds5.  This time I had better instructions, so I was able to find the school for ds5.  But I got there and the gate was locked, with no way to get in.  I rattled the gate but no one came out; that was kind of a problem because the plan was the teacher of ds5’s program would tell me how to get to the school that I was afraid would continue to elude me.

    Without any directions, I wasn’t optimistic about finding the building, but we went up and down the street it was supposed to be on – again.  This time, though, we heard the faint shouts of children at play, and we followed our ears until we came to the school!  As soon as I saw it, it was obvious why I couldn’t find it – both schools (for ds5 and ds12) have street addresses, but neither are located on the street.  You get to them by unmarked staircases that lead to unmarked paths between the streets – there’s really nothing helpful to get you there for the first time.

    We go into the school, where ds5 meets some friends in older grades and ds12 is likewise greeted by new friends while I’m in the office.  I was told when we got there that the principal would be too busy to meet with ds12 that morning, and to come back the next morning for an interview.  I asked the principal how he would conduct an interview if he didn’t speak English and ds12 didn’t speak Hebrew, and he agreed that it was slightly problematic.  He said he would ask one of the grade school students who spoke English to come in and translate, but feeling that wasn’t a good idea, I suggested my husband come along and be the translator.

    So I told the secretary that I wanted to complete the registration for ds5 while I was there.  I gave her my ID and she got out the paperwork, then sat back down, and asked me what grade he was going into.  (I had previously told her.)  When I responded, she told me that for that particular age  and only for that age, I couldn’t do the registration at the school office, but needed to go to the Ministry of Education and get it taken care of there.  Immediately, of course.  🙂

    Although I had planned to go to the Ministry of Absorption after completing enrollment because they needed my signature on something important, off I went to the Ministry Department of Education at the municipality.  (I’m doing a LOT of walking.)  When I got there, the person in the office I was supposed to speak to wasn’t there, and the two women replacing her told me that I couldn’t do registration at their office, that I needed to go to the school.  I showed them the form the secretary gave me, and they had no idea what to do with it.  So they told me to come back at 4 pm that day when the person who was supposed to be there, would be there.

    Dh went back later in the day to the Department of Education (because after spending hours that morning trying to deal with it, I was tired and not up for another trip there the same day), and the person in charge was there but still didn’t know what to do.  So I suggested that dh ask the secretary about it the next morning when he took ds12 to his interview.

    Fortunately, the secretary had told me that ds5 could start the next morning (Tues) even if the paperwork wasn’t completed, which was good because he was chomping at the bit and raring to go!  He was so excited that he had a hard time falling asleep, and then woke up very early the next morning, repeatedly asking me when he could leave to school.     I took him in and stayed for 40 minutes to see how things were going, but as I knew he would be, he was totally fine.  There was one boy from an English speaking home whom he was introduced to soon after he got there, but when I went to pick him up, the teacher told me that he went on to play with Hebrew speaking kids and she was very impressed by how quickly and easily he acclimated.

    I’m so grateful that ds has the sunny and friendly nature that he does, because I knew it would make his transition from home to school much easier – he’s in his element when he’s around lots of friends and lots of activity.  We still haven’t gotten his paperwork completed, since the secretary can’t understand how no one at the Department of Education is able to handle a standard registration for kindergarten, but dh will be going back again tomorrow to both the school office and the Ministry of Education and hopefully that can be finished up tomorrow.

    Meanwhile, we were working on the enrollment for ds12…..

    Avivah