lizrael update

Tzur Hadassah is gymtastic!

Walking down the main avenue of cute little Tzur Hadassah, you will notice some park equipment on the side of the road. First time we noticed it my thinking was, “that’s a dangerous place to have kids play.”

When we got to the ‘park’ we realized it was actually an ‘adult park’ - get your minds out of the gutter - the colorful structures were outdoor gym equipment.

How cool is that? If you don’t know, I’ll tell you:

• It feels good to live in a place that spends its arnona money on productive items for the whole community.
• It’s nice to live in a place where people are really concerned with their health and well being (there are always be running/jogging/walking around Tzur Hadassah at all hours).
• It’s tastefully done.

This concept of outdoor adult exercise equipment is actually gaining across Israel; so far we’ve spotted it in Tel Aviv and the Dead Sea.

City feature: Dead Sea

Last weekend, we took some R&R out in the dry heat and salt water of the Dead Sea. A vacation in the Dead Sea is really a vacation by an enormous hotel pool, with occasional dips in the oily, salty, burning sensation that is the Dead Sea.

This, however, is less about the Dead Sea and more about the road to the Dead Sea… I forget every time I go how freakin’ cool the highway to the Dead Sea is.

You leave Jerusalem heading towards Maale Adumim… I’ve always though of Maale Adumim as “the other Gush” (as far as proximity and relationship to Jerusalem). But actually, it couldn’t be far from it in terms of the ecology. As soon as you pass through the machsom (border control) the scenery completely changes to barren, dry hills and a desert existence.

You also feel the temperature change pretty quickly, if you dare to open your windows.

There’s one part of the drive where you pass rows and rows of palm trees on a date farm. I love this part.

This was a little random: a Native American statue climbing a flagpole towards the Australian flag. Whatever.

Ok, some Dead Sea photos too… A greener part of the Dead Sea.

A classic Dead Sea view. Those are the Jordanian mountains in the background.

Sex and the Holy City…

…and I’m not referring to Israeli TV show Srugim, although from what I’ve heard, maybe I should be.

Riding on the bus through town today, I spotted this piece of culture sunbathing with all the rubble of the Yaffo - light rail construction site:

The Kama Sutra in Hebrew. Even Jerusalemites need a few new ideas once in a while.

Breaking my sleep barrier.

I woke up this morning at a quarter to seven to an enormous boom right outside the bedroom window.

I jerked my head up, like the deer in Bambi when the shots are fired in the forest. My first thought is, Oh shit they’ve bombed Beitar…

My husband mumbles, “Don’t worry about it,” and my second thought is, Oh shit we’ve bombed Wadi Fukin, poor bastards.

My husband continues to mumble, “It’s just a plane breaking the sound barrier.”

My third thought is, Oh shit! We’re bombing Iran today. I hope that damn box of canned food and bottled water he packed that I made so much fun of him for is in the ma’amad… which is also our bedroom.

When secrets become surreal.

It’s been real hard keeping this baby stuff a secret from friends, coworkers, family. When the only person you have to talk about it with is your partner, and even he gets tired of your late-night online research about your body’s minute-to-minute changes, it starts to become surreal.

I mean, it’s not just this little bean growing inside me. It’s the bean of craziness growing inside my head as I slowly go insane from having to keep all this information to myself.

Which is why, it was extra surreal, when we went to discuss mortgages with the bank today.

We’re sitting there, and answering questions about our lame salaries and savings, and how we totally don’t qualify for a grass hut, and then the dude goes, “So. Are you five months pregnant?”

I thought I hadn’t understood him correctly. Maybe herayon means something else besides pregnant. Maybe it means in debt. I asked him to repeat that.

“Sorry…” He gets an awkward look on his face… “But I have to ask - Are you five months pregnant?”

Me and my husband turn and look at each other, like in a movie or something. It’s as if we mouthed to each other, How does he know? I mean, on one hand, jeez I’m not that fat, and on the other, if I’m not showing at all at five months, I’ll be concerned.

We both look back at him and answer at the same time, stuttering in unison, “Yes - we’re pregnant - but not five months - just two… But how did you know???”

Then he laughs. “Oh, it’s just a question I have to ask; once you are five months pregnant, the bank considers you with at least one child. It’s for the questionnaire. I didn’t mean it like that.”

I can’t describe how weird it was to tell someone who isn’t wearing a lab coat, out loud, that we are pregnant. I also can’t describe how I really really thought this guy was some kind of mind-reading freak until he explained that.

This is just one big old learning experience after another, isn’t it.

It’s a blessing, not a sickness.

Took my first pregnant blood test today. In Beitar. I find that they’re used to this kind of thing already, so I can feel pretty confident under their care.

Nurse was very kind and kept repeating, “Enjoy this! It’s a blessing, not a curse! You’re not sick, you’re pregnant!”

Figures she was Mizrachi…

Look at that jobless punim.

The Kadima primaries began this morning and will end in about 40 minutes. We’ll know who gets the prize possession of being Ehud Olmert’s successor (in technicality and not job skill, we hope).

I wonder what he’s got planned as soon as he’s off-duty… Maybe he and Bush will go to Cancun together, smoke cigars.  Buy some property. Who knows.

(ynet)

A wee bit of an overreaction, eh, JPost?

I suppose with the panic in the markets, a bit of hysteria is to be expected. But this might qualify as too much…

A coworker sent over this image from today’s Jerusalem Post; read the caption under the image to the left:

A bit harsh, I’d say.

Bad example.

The thing about trying to get pregnant/being pregnant, is that you start to see pregnant women everywhere. This is probably true everywhere in the world, but when you’re in Israel, you really are seeing them everywhere because out of all the demographics in Israel, the one thing they have in common - whether charedi, Arab, or secular - is that they like their babies.

Usually, seeing pregnant women walking around Jerusalem is a positive experience. The maternity clothes are fun, the women are usually attractive. Then, once in a while, you come across something so utterly disgusting, it makes you want to run your car over it.

I’m talking about a giant, third-trimester arsit waddling around puffing a cigarette with the rest of the pack in her other hand. We were confronted with this scene today, as we sat in our car at the train station waiting to pick up some friends. The car was on and it took everything for us to not step on the gas and run this woman over, thus saving her unborn child from a life of misery and patheticness.

And I don’t mean because of the side effects of being born crappy from a smoking mom. I mean being born the son of an arsit, aka, a Beitar hooligan.

Today’s word: דופק

Today we had our first official visit with an ob-gyn (male, charedi) doctor. All in all, a positive experience. I wasn’t expecting anything crazy, pretty much a questionnaire of whether I smoke and if I’m taking vitamins. Oddly, neither of those topics came up.

Oh sure, I’ve been to Israeli gynos before, male charedi gynos even, but this was, of course, different, because I wasn’t only getting a questionnaire, but a checking-out, and not only a checking-out, but a souvenir.

Even though it’s only about seven weeks, we had our first view of the little bean that is currently residing within my insides. It’s amazing how hi tech this stuff is. He showed us the ultra-sound screen and pointed out the little bean that looks nothing like a creature, nevermind a human.

Then he said, “Yecholim l’rot ha-dofek. At ro’ah et ha-dofek?”

I had no freakin’ clue what he was talking about. Doesn’t dofek mean heartbeat? How does that thing have a heartbeat? I nodded and smiled politely but I knew he knew I had no clue what he was going on about. So he kept repeating it, and the word dofek pulsed in my brain. Hey, doc, if you think it has a heartbeat, then I’m perfectly ok with that.

Later on, we sat back down at his desk and went over the details. He said things are looking good for these early weeks. He mentioned the dofek again. I had to politely interrupt -

“When you say dofek, what exactly do you mean?”

“Dofek - pulse, heartbeat - you mean you didn’t see what I was talking about?”

“Oh… uh… I did… I just… They have heartbeats already?”

I guess I have a lot to learn. Like planning our wedding in Israel, this is a whole new experience that’s going to require a whole new Hebrew vocabulary.