Lessons in patience

Many places in Israel are not exactly known for their customer service.  The stereotype is that you are just expected to "deal with it" and that complaints or requests are met with the attitude of "what? It's not my problem, what do you want me to do about it?" (picture someone doing that lip-curl expression of "meh" along with a shrug and arms up, palms open. This is the classic, accompanying, body language).  Although I have to admit that I don't encounter this super often, and customer service is just as hit and miss all over the world in my opinion. But, regardless of where you are, it is always a nice surprise when a place that you don't expect it from, does something really nice.

The other day we were grocery shopping at our neighborhood store.  The lines are always super slow, and guessing which line to take becomes very similar to the guess the quick line at the border.  The one you choose is always the slowest.  Always.  Add to this that speed and efficiency are not required or expected in a cashier (often the young ones will be continuously texting or browsing the internet while checking you through).  But on this particular day we managed to hit the mother of all slow lines.  We must have watched 3 people go through in every other line while we had all of our stuff on the belt.  Turns out, it's the training line -so fine, everyone has to learn, no big deal.  Then the person ahead of us could have qualified for an extreme couponing show...
We finally made it through, everything rang through without a problem, paid with credit card (there is no debit in Israel!) no problem, then....problem.  The new cashier called in a bunch of people who all tried to do..something.  At this point, having no Hebrew is super frustrating.  No one was talking to us so we had no idea what was going on - and being the passive Canadians that we are, we just sort of waited for them to tell us :).

Anyone who knows us knows that between Zach and I, Zach is the patient one.  Like, many magnitudes more patient.  So he was all cool and chill, and I was like, "What are they doing?! What could possibly be wrong?  Why are we still stuck here.." and so after about 10 min of just standing around (with much eye-contact making and sighing), I just grabbed the grocery bags and tried to leave, figuring that if we were part of the problem they would have told us already...and it wouldn't be unheard of for them to just be working on something and not care whether it was weird that we were standing there looking confused.  So... then we quickly found out that we couldn't leave (I do know that word!  Rega!Rega!Rega! is quite common and means, wait!)  Poor Zach.  I get fidgety sometimes.  I'm working on it, hah.

They quickly learned that we didn't understand what was going on ..the manager goes to the rest of the crew there, "ohhh, Angleet!" (which means "English") and they all gave knowing nods, and at that point I think they just said we had to wait (none of them seemed to speak English much).  Anyway, it all got sorted out in the end, thankfully, turns out the receipt printer was broken and we had to sign the receipt before we could leave.  So this felt like it took at least 20  minutes, but it was probably only 15 or so.  We take our bags and leave, and then the manager runs after us and I'm thinking, oh man, what else could possibly go wrong!  And he indicates that we could take a giant bouquet of flowers from the flower stand at the exit!  Yay!  I was so touched - it was so unexpected.  Haha, flowers make everything better.  So a long winded story, but they made my day :)  I would wait in the longest line everyday if I ended up with free flowers at the end :)

 

Mitzpe Ramon

As our time here in Israel comes closer to an end, Zach and I want to see as much of the country as possible.  We have been fortunate to be able to see many parts of it but the one place we feel we haven't explored yet is the desert.  So a few days ago we took a trip down to see the Makhtesh crater in Mitzpe Ramon, in the Negev desert.  

~Here begins a long aside about the crazy bus adventure we had.....

Since you are not allowed to drive on a foreign driver's licence after being in the country for more than a year (and since it costs a crazy amount of money to get an Israeli licence) we have resigned ourselves to taking buses and trains everywhere.  Luckily the country is quite small so it is relatively easy to get anywhere you want to go on a bus similar to a greyhound bus.  Getting to Mitzpe Ramon is pretty easy from Tel Aviv - you just take the train down to Beersheva (1 1/2 hours) then jump on a bus next to the station and take it for another 1 1/2 hours into town.  One of the stories we kept hearing from people who had visited Israel a while ago was how crazy it can be to take a bus.  Everyone tells you about how you have to push and shove or get left behind.  I have to admit that I thought this was nonsense because we take the bus all the time in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and it is exactly the same as Canada.  In fact, taking a bus as a student at Western was much more difficult many times (in terms of getting on a crowded bus) than I have ever seen it here.  That is, until this past Sunday.  

We scheduled our trip for Sunday - Tuesday to take advantage of weekday rates and avoid the hassles of no public transit over Shabbat (Sunday in Israel is the start of the work week).  However, we forgot that Sunday is the day that many soldiers return to their bases after having a weekend off, and there are a few bases along the route to Mitzpe Ramon.  Also, soldiers ride the bus for free.  All this being said, when we got to the bus stop in Beersheva, we were alarmed to see a giant group of teenagers and young adults waiting as a crowd for the bus.  At the central bus station in Jerusalem people more or less line up to get on the inter-city buses.  Not so in Beersheva.  It became pretty clear that if we wanted to get on the bus we were going to have to push.  I'm not sure I've ever been in such a forceful group of people all trying to get through one tiny bus door. The first bus pulled up as we were entering the bus station and we were pushed into the middle of the crowd- by the time that bus had filled and left we had managed to push ourselves into a great position for the next bus.  Somehow we managed to get on - luckily Zach is a head taller than almost all the soldiers, and I have no fear of using elbows and knees to stick near him.  I wish I had a picture of that adventure, but there is no time for pictures when a bus seat is at stake!  Someone even hung onto my backpack forming a sort of human chain with me and Zach to get carried along into the bus - it was madness.  

The crater in Mitzpe Ramon is called a "makhtesh" which is the Hebrew word because there are only 3 of these types of geological formations and they all occur in the Negev and Sinai.  A makhtesh is formed when a hard rock overlies soft rock like sandstone.  Water erodes and carries away the soft under layers and the hard rock crumbles and collapses forming a large crater. Makhtesh Ramon is 500m deep.  The town is on the top edge of the cliff and there are trails all along the edge and down into the crater itself.  It is the largest nature reserve in Israel.

There are military practice zones surrounding the area.  They recommend that you don't wander into one...

 While we were hiking we could hear the large booming sounds of tanks (I think!) firing.  It sounded like thunder!

The visitor's center is closed for renovations, so we looked up some hiking trails on the internet.  One from the edge of the crater appeared to be a really easy hike, and only a few km so we thought we'd start there and then continue on if we were up to it.  However, the hike ended up being almost 5 hours long (yay for estimating scale!), and wasn't necessarily what I would call "really easy" (climbing in and out of the crater again) - but it was incredible!  We came across this weird formation of rock along the side of a dry river bed.  This is me practicing camouflage.  Call me, Mossad.

There were these cute ibex everywhere along the top of the cliff.

Excited that we finished our hike before sunset and looking forward to soaking our feet in the hot tub!  At one point on the hike, we were down on the black hill (straight left from my knee) - it is left over basalt from an ancient volcano.

This is the top of that black hill:

We got up reeeally early to watch the sunrise over the makhtesh - it was incredibly beautiful. (photo credit, Zach)

Possibly my favourite.  Zach just missing the timer.

Snow Day!

Just kidding!  Ok, so the title is quite misleading since we didn't have any snow in Tel Aviv... However, the North and Jerusalem had tons of snow (for here) and they did have snow days.  Pretty exciting when you are just used to tons of rain and not much else.

For the past week all of Israel (and really a lot of the Middle East) has been having a wild storm.  The weather was the topic of conversation all over the media which is crazy because it's about a week before the election and politics is a pretty big deal here :)

Also, in Canada the weather is one of those common conversation topics, but here not so much.  Usually common topics are politics, religion, or maybe complaining about how the garbage trucks always come by at 4am and operate as loudly as possible. But you never really hear: "so, it's sunny again huh?  Yah, second straight month of sun.  pretty sweet."  you know?  It's just not that interesting when you only have two seasons: 1) sun and hot; 2) rain and cold.  

So when the storm rolled in last Friday it was fun (I love a good thunderstorm) but not really uncommon.  Even when it didn't stop raining for 2 days, not really a big deal.  But it never stopped.  And it was coming down crazy hard, with super strong winds.  They were so big that trees were falling over, and signs were falling on cars.  That sort of storm.  In Tel Aviv we really didn't get the worst of it.  We had one day of intense wind when Zach and I walked to the beach to try and get a picture of the crazy waves, but as you see, the salt water blurred the lens a bit.... (note to self, don't try and take a picture beside salt water in a wind storm)...

You can see that we had a little break in the rain which is why we braved the wind to get here.  We didn't beat that next bank of clouds home....

Note how the palm trees are all sideways.  Also, the beach is completely flooded - it usually extends out to the breakwater that you can just sort of see to the right of the picture (it is also in the first picture on the left - under all that water)

WINDY!

Anyway, the major TA highway flooded along with the train tracks so the city shut down for a couple of days.  A friend commented that when missiles rain down everyone continues on their life, but when it is pouring, the whole country shuts down.  Pretty much sums it up.

Yesterday the sun came out for the first time in a week and as we ran along the boardwalk, among unbelievable amounts of debris and garbage littering the beach, we saw the most beautiful sunset I've seen in a long time.  One of those hot pink ones over a sparkling gold ocean :)

Christmas Travels

Hard to believe I was frolicking in snowy Winnipeg and Oakville (!) only a few days ago.  Back in Tel Aviv it is sunny and pretty warm - warm enough to consider spending time on the beach if not swimming :)
I am so thankful that we were able to spend time with our whole family back in Canada and we even got some snow at the tail end in Oakville - quite a change from last year!

This is on the drive down to Mitchell (near Steinbach), Manitoba.  It was so wonderful to catch up with good friends who have recently moved there from Oakville.  We even went sledding!

In Mitchell, Manitoba they build wooden slides to sled down since the hills are little- they give you great momentum :)

Eliana is so adorable and sweet natured - she didn't even cry when I held her ;)

 It took quite a few tries to get us all (almost) looking.  Zach had a great time sword fighting with these boys while Elena and I caught up :)

Back to Oakville, celebrating Zach's birthday.  I tried to get him to give a proper "blowing out the candles" face - this is close :)

Fourth round of the "bowl game" - charades under a sheet.  This is guaranteed fun family time.  There may be videos - so just wait until your wedding Michael....

 In Hamilton

We finally managed to get all six of us together!  What a great day :)

One of the many rounds of ticket to ride...

From Winnipeg to Toronto...how appropriate ;)