Wednesday 7/18

The main reason I had to sleep in Jerusalem Tuesday night was so that I could get to my Misrad HaKlita (Absorption Ministry) meeting without having to wake up ridiculously early. The Misrad HaKlita is one of the useless government agencies that is supposed to help make absorption into Israeli society easier. Their main purpose is financial: they give us money just for moving, rent subsidies, and tax breaks for years. Otherwise they fail miserably in their other attempts to make adjusting to life easier. Because I'm still the epitome of the wandering Jew I had a big bag with me that I was schlepping around the country. I was hoping to meet up with Marilyn and Lia after my meeting but my bag was just too heavy. My meeting went fine. I gave the lady the information from my bank account so they could begin automatic transfers of my absorption money and rent subsidy. She started to tell me about how to get my drivers license transferred to an Israeli one and then just gave up and told me that it was a complicated process and that I would figure it out- classic. My other problem with her is that she was also very clearly an immigrant and her Hebrew was so thickly accented with something else that it made her almost impossible to understand. It was an awesome experience. Then I schlepped about 10 minutes up the road to wait for the bus to take me back to the Moshav to wait for Marilyn and Lia to get back. My cousin Asher had gotten sick so my Marilyn and Jack took him to the doctor. While they were gone I hung out with Lia and Noa while Lia packed her things for the army. Her draft was in the morning and she had a bunch of organizing and stuff to take care of. We ordered pizza for dinner and we are truly piglets as we ate almost the entire whole pizza. It was delicious. We went to sleep early because we were all waking up at 6 something-ish to take Lia to the buses that will take her to the army