Classic Israeli Moment (CIM) #2

While walking home from a morning session of Mommy & Me and impromptu play at the park in Vardiya (A dad was overlooking three of his kids and encouraged his son to play soccer with Declan), an elderly gentleman on a motorized wheelchair approaches us on the sidewalk. Daniel and I told Declan to make way for him to pass, but he stopped to make conversation.

Gentleman: How many children do you have?
Daniel: One [points to Declan]. Two [points to Petra].
Gentleman: Just two children?
Daniel: For now.
[I break into a cold sweat.]

Other moms I was hanging out with at the park between Shimshon and Yocheved Street assured me that I will once again get "baby fever" when Petra turns two. I decided not to share the fact that I have never ever felt baby fever.

The average number of children per family in a typical Israeli family used to be three. Now it is four.

Declan said "good bye" and "see you later" to the elderly gentleman in Hebrew, which made the man chuckle. I especially enjoy making old people happy, especially the ones in Taiwan and Israel. Their generation has ben through so much, it's pretty ridiculous. Whenever I see an elderly person in Taiwan or here clearly enjoying life, it always makes me pause to reflect on the resilience of the human spirit. Maybe I'm being too romantic to apply that in general to old people from countries with backgrounds of widespread war, but it's certainly true for both sets of my grandparents.

Following that, we continued walking down the sidewalk, stopping every now and then to share between the three of us one large watermelon popsicle. And we saw the same man again, this time cruising slowly down the middle of the road. Cars started building up behind him. He continued to "speed" along at a leisurely pace with the road open before him as more and more cars lagged in retinue. Israeli drivers are aggressive as a norm, but nobody honked.

Then, the elderly gentleman stopped in the middle of the road to make conversation with someone else by the sidewalk.

But, as we walked past and away from that particular street in that neighborhood, I still didn't hear anyone honk. Israelis can be pushy and aggressive, but they sure enjoy their children and respect their elders.

tel aviv marathon 2013

It was super hot due to the sharav (or maybe chamsin, as it was also very dusty) aka heat current blown north from Africa, and a good number of people running the half-marathon got heatstroke/dehydration. One person died, inexplicably, despite having thoroughly trained for the race as well as being in general a very fit IDF officer. Several people are still in the hospital under medically-induced comas.

I ran the 4.2K course, which was just 10% of an actual marathon. A lot of people kept saying how amazing I was to be running after giving birth exactly two months ago. I'm glad I was able to do it, but I still don't see what's so amazing about that. It's only 2.6 miles and I basically jogged the whole way on a very flat course.

Many thanks to my sister-in-law for motivating me to run a few times up and down the hills of Haifa beforehand.

I ran it for the race atmosphere, in one of Israel's biggest running events.

feeding my bibliophilia

I must say, the U.S. public library system as I have experienced it from coast-to-coast is a wonderful establishment for which I cannot show enough appreciation. Growing up in Salem, Oregon -- a state capital that is surprisingly rural in nature in the eyes of a city kid from Taiwan -- the Salem Public Library was my home away from my two other homes (school and that other place my parents bought). My English improved as a result of the literally 50 or so books I would check out every week from the library during my first year as an immigrant; I would take them home, read them out loud to improve my pronunciation, and look up then memorize new English words. No way could I have been able to afford buying so many books in order to accrue the same amount of knowledge and other benefits as I did from the library. I also read all seven biographies on Joan of Arc that the library carried during my obsession with her, then with Robert Kennedy, and so on.

The Ann Arbor, Pittsburgh, and Seattle public libraries all rocked as well.

Israel's, not so much.

Okay, to be fair, I'm sure Haifa has great public libraries for Hebrew readers. But I have yet to find a sustainable and truly satisfying source to feed my reading habit. There's a library on Pevsner Street that I've heard about, but how to get there remains elusive (which bus stop? What number?) and I'm still cherishing its potential and not wanting to have my hopes dashed.

Meanwhile, book shopping at Steinmatsky (Israel's largest bookstore chain) is pricey, with most English books marked up to twice their US retail price. But I think I'm starting to hit a suitable arrangement, thanks to the advice of other English readers here to get books from the Book Depository and my husband's/his parents' very kind gift of a Kindle*.

So, today, I finally registered and synced up the Kindle and I see that Kindle offers a lot of free books daily. While these aren't books I normally go for, I am not as big a book snob as I once were. Living away from public libraries have humbled me in this respect. And these free books look interesting...of better quality than the free books that Nook routinely offers.

And I also ordered a book to be shipped from the Book Depository that couldn't be found on Kindle or Nook but I must have for this English book club I'm in. This UK company has free shipping *and* sells books at a discount pretty regularly. It was much cheaper than buying from Steinmatsky, so there's my new source for book purchases, should I desire something beyond what I can get free via the Kindle or Nook or able to check out via OverDrive at the Pittsburgh Public Library.

That's a lot of resources... (as I count them out now, four!) I think I am set for another year (or two) of living without a good public library nearby.

* It amuses me to recall that my brother had given me my first eReader, the Nook, shortly after Declan was born. And now that my second eReader, the Kindle, was gifted to me shortly after Petra's birth, I see the secret to obtaining another eReader someday**.

**So kidding. Having a third child just so I could get a new eReader is all kinds of lunacy.

CIM #1

A Classic Israeli Moment:

When a mother brings her piano-recorder to the park, and plays a simple tune for her crawling child. Like a pied piper, her music attracts the attention of other children in the park, and everyone--child and parent alike--wanders over to stand and gawk at her. Soon, a circle of moms/nannies and children rings the woman, and song requests are shouted at the woman. She complies, as the older caretakers start clapping their hands in rhythm and interrupt occasionally to argue over the lyrics. Since Pesach is coming soon, everyone sings traditional/common songs about Pesach.

Declan takes me by the hand, tells me to sit so he can crawl into my lap (alas, I can only squat as I was cradling his little sister) and joins everyone else around the circle of music appreciators.