Zany and Crazy Life

Ive been holding off on posting for a while now, as I have been on a bit of a rollercoaster day to day and figured its best to wait it out and make sense of it after. So its after, but I dont know if it makes any sense....

While I was in the US, I saw a job posting online that looked to be fantastic - the kind of job that would be fun and enjoyable and open doors down the road to all sorts of exciting opportunities. I emailed them my resume, and they said they wanted me to come in for an interview when I returned. This was exciting - so much for the "it takes six to nine months to find a job", I found one in three weeks!

So after we landed and (kind of) settled in, I called. Turns out they're in a moshav a bit past Ranaana, and the HR lady decided it was too far a commute.

I didnt decide that, she did.

But okay, she had a point, I guessed, so I turned my attention to a part time social work posting I had seen. Again, I was invited in for an interview. I was invited to a second interview, and after a short weekend was called back, told I had a job, and someone would call me the next morning to tell me the details, hours, salary, etc.

So its a day and a half later, and.....still waiting. Am I (part time) employed? I dont know :)

Anyway, I finally picked up my check from Nefesh B'Nefesh, and discovered it is a dollar check, drawn from an American bank. In today's Israel, check cashers are not happy with American checks (apparently they arent as easy to cash as they used to be), and they want a high rate (about 4-5%). And if you want to deposit it in your bank, good luck - they take a minimum of 30 days to clear, you get charged a fee (then again, your bank in Israel also charges you for meeting a teller and using the ATM, so no surprises there), and that's if they're no MY bank...
...which, the first time I went, refused to cash my check because they decided darling wifey had to be there too (since it is addressed to both of us).
So I tried again, at a different branch. No problems - there was even an English speaking teller there, who was quite nice.
Then I get a phone call today - they wont cash the check, because my signature on it and my signature on file there dont match. Of course they dont, I signed the check in English and the bank has a signature in Hebrew on file. Okay, fine, they tell me, theyll take it.

Which is great, because the Misrad HaKlita has been withholding our sal klitah since we...well, arrived. See, if you leave the country during your first 6 months here, they freeze your payments until you come in person and ask for them back. Which is ridiculous, because they know when you come and leave thanks to the computer system (its how they knew to turn off your payments in the first place!), but fine, Ill ask for them personally, and nicely, right? No. It seems their appointment system is leftover from the advent of the telephone. Literally. You're supposed to call in, leave a message, and they call you back with an appointment. Except the "call you back" part is a little...unreliable. I have called 12 (?!) times since we landed, and never got a phone call. So I went there yesterday unannounced, to discover the place is empty. But they had appointments that time, you see, so can I come back Wednesday?

So I will head there tomorrow, and hopefully, Ill get September and October's payments, and maybe even November's too.

Sigh. Dont you love a long, winding, torturous narrative that has no real completion? Welcome to life here!

PSA - An Article of Mine is Published on Jewishideas.org

http://jewishideas.org/articles/text-and-context-reflections-contemporary-orthodoxy

...and We're Back

So we returned to the US on chol hamoed Sukkot to be by my brother's wedding. In some ways, we never left, and in others, boy - we were never here.

We were only gone a month, but in so many ways, we were gone a lifetime. Which, as anyone who has survived a plane trip with two lil kids can testify, we technically were.

But we are back, and the "Adjusting from Jet Lag Project, Part II" has commenced. 2.5's body clock is on Tokyo time, while 8 month old seems to have settled on Chicago time.

But the wedding was nice, and seeing family was too, and all in all it was bittersweet to see old friends and the life we left behind.

And here we are, with our lift arriving tomorrow (finally!), and the job hunt getting into full swing. Hopefully everything comes together soon...