Almost Eden

One of the most humbling (i.e., humiliating) things about making Aliyah has been my inability to conduct "business as usual" due to my poor Hebrew skills. A few weeks ago I needed to deposit a check that someone gave us. When I entered the bank a young… more »

My blog experienced a fatal shutdown last week, so I’m going to give you a quick update on the little things you missed... The closing on our house, closets arrived, shopping with Shoshana in Geula, the First International Jewish Blogger's Convention, Customs Paperwork, Backpack Shopping,and finally Shabbat! more »

Cashing our NBN grant check at Cheerfully Changed, Jerusalem Shopping and Visiting the Kotel (Western Wall) more »

Michael and Yisrael stayed home waiting for the refrigerator delivery and possibly the "technician" who was to bring and "install" our ADSL modem. I took the bus to the post office to exchange money (less expensive than doing it at the bank – better exchange rate), and attempted to pay the health insurance registration fees (14.7 shekels for each adult = $4.34 – no charge for children). The guy at the counter told me that I needed a Bituach Leumi card (national health insurance), he wouldn’t accept the form the Ministry of Absorption gave me at the airport – this was after I waited on line for about 40 minutes! more »

Between the long line of people waiting and the process opening a bank account took about 1-1/2 hours with the help of a very nice English speaking clerk from Brooklyn named Zahava. All the paperwork in Hebrew was a bit overwhelming, but then I reminded myself that I never read all those U.S. bank disclosures anyway (and I worked for a bank!) I may think differently when our first statement comes - will that be in the mail? Not sure, but we do have online banking and I have managed to log on and find everything I need (in English). One interesting thing about this bank is that they gave us a dollar account separate from the shekel account. I thought it was for our convenience until Zahava declined my offer to deposit a thousand US dollars in the newly opened account. She told me that it would be better for me to change the dollars to shekels at the Post Office and deposit those because of the bank's lower exchange rate and higher fees. more »