Shabbat
We had a wonderful Shabbat. It was my birthday and David Zvi joined us. The girls could barely contain themselves and had lots of questions for their big brother. Friday night David Zvi, Noa, Maayan and I went to shul and took our places where we have been sitting since we arrived. We discovered a few weeks ago that the man sitting in front of me is the “candyman”. The girls made several trips to him and after the second trip he turned to me and saw that I did not want them to have more candy. He looked at their cute smiles and gave it to them anyway.
Dinner was great and David Zvi told us more about his Yeshiva. Their method of looking at halacha is very radical but quite refreshing. Shabbat morning we slept in and after we davened we walked outside and showed him the parakeets that seem to be building a nest in the tree next to our house. Alison looked up the name and they are called Rose Ringed Parakeets. They are BRIGHT green and seem to be using a hole in the tree created by a woodpecker.
The other new animals we have discovered are also pretty exotic to us. Growing up in Canada I was always used to hearing the garbage cans crash as raccoons feasted on the week’s trash. There are no raccoons here but one night last week Alison and I looked at each other as we heard howling noises. I thought they were cats but Alison pointed out rightly that cats don’t “howl.” We did a little checking and learned that they couldn’t be wolves because the only wolves in Israel were in the Golan Heights, a long way off from the coastal plain where we live. The Internet is a great resource and in time we learned that they were Jackals and called Tanim in Hebrew. The next day we checked with Alex and Doris and they confirmed it. They are supposed to be pretty timid and mostly come out at night. My cousin Marilyn mentioned to me that there are poisonous snakes in Israel but we have not seen any slithering creatures except for a lizard. Alison thinks she may have seen one in the house so we have to get in the habit of checking our shoes before we put them on.
Shabbat, being our only real day off at this point is our only time to sit and enjoy the newspaper and try and learn more about what is going on outside of the Moshav. We have subscribed to two papers and are trying to decide which one we will go with after our inexpensive trial period ends. Haaretz is a left wing Hebrew paper that started printing an English version. It also comes with the International Herald Tribune which keeps us up to date with world news. The paper is a good read but is a large broadsheet which makes it a bit difficult to read in our tiny bathroom. The Jerusalem Post is a different style and is turning out to be Alison’s favourite. Neither paper comes close to the quality of the National Post.
After Shabbat ended we walked David Zvi the 3 kilometres to Makeret Batya with the girls in their stroller and he caught his bus to Jerusalem.
Uncategorized | Stephen | 
February 13, 2006 2:12 am