Wednesday, February 3, 2010

There’s a New Kid in Town

Well, we are starting to settle in as regular Israelites. Well, not exactly, we could still be picked out of a line-up.

HPIM2578These are some Police on horses we saw. I’m not sure what king of horses they were but the one looked like some kind of draft horse and the other looked like a Morgan. They were huge and beautiful. Police are out everywhere these last couple of days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HPIM2579Police officers let us take their picture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HPIM2585 Prime Minister Netanyahu’s entourage coming through as we walked home.

 

 

We have seen the Prime Minister entourage come through several times the last couple of days. This is because, not only do we live across the street from the President, but we live around the corner from the PM. So every time he has a hankering for a Big Mac, we get to see him leave along with several other cars with blue lights on top. Tonight on our way home, as we finished the climb at Yemen Moshe, we came to the intersection of Bloomfield and Jabotinsky and noticed the intersection was completely shut down—not a car in sight. Because we knew PM Netanyahu was in town, we assumed he was about to pass through. Sure enough we could hear the sirens and the loud speaker. They were speaking Hebrew so I can’t tell you what they were saying. Regardless, it was cool. We were pulling a suitcase full of clean clothes which we had just washed at Eric’s school. I was paranoid that someone would be curious about the big bag and why we decided to sit down just as the PM was coming through. Fortunately, no one seemed to care and we tried to get pictures but as you can see they really aren’t that good.

Speaking of laundry, we weren’t sure our plan to haul our laundry to Eric’s school once a week was such a good idea after making the trip to school. However, once we were home with clean clothes, the girls and I decided it wasn’t that bad.

Next to the school is the Jerusalem Protestant Cemetery. To get to it, you have to go through the school property. Meaning, someone has to unlock the gate to the school and let everyone in when there is a funeral. As we were arriving with our laundry, a funeral was also going on. Whoever was laid to rest today, had 2 Bishops present, wow! They walked right by us as we were hanging our laundry out to dry. Outside the laundry room, the school has a beautiful garden full of pomegranate, lemon and cumquat trees, lantana, cactus, herbs, etc. Today, we did school in the garden while waiting on the clothes. It was so cool to be reviewing the Fertile Crescent and ancient History on the top of Mt. Zion.

Just another day in Jerusalem.

(I’ve put some pictures below that I haven’t written about but wanted to share.)

 Shalom!

100_9773Beautiful Palm trees along Jabotinsky in the Talbieh—to fully understand their size, compare to cars on street to the right. 

 

 

 

 

100_9778Beautiful Apartment building along same route. Check out the foliage. Usually, these are geraniums flowing down of these terraces. Also, we were asked about the trees. Jerusalem is full of huge towering trees but it is also crowded with very tall buildings sometimes overshadowing these beautiful trees.

 

100_9780Another Apartment building along Jabotinsky.

 

 

 

 

 

UPS in JerusalemUPS in Jerusalem hasn’t taken off like in the states—can you imagine?

 

 

 

 

 

100_9813A home on Yemen Moshe. The back of this home has a beautiful view of Mt. Zion and the Old City Walls as well as JUC. I haven’t seen many homes that you can access w/o at least one flight of stairs. 

 

 

 

candy at soukCandy shop at the suk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jewish family shopping before Shabbot at soukA Jewish brother getting some shopping done before Shabbot. Notice the curls and hot. Most likely there is a Kipa under his hat.
 

 

 

 

100_9887The crowd while at the suk. You can see Lida and Tally in the foreground.

 

 

 

 

 

sweet treat

Halva shop. This is a sweet dessert in this part of the world. Karen tells me it is made of sesame paste and of course, sugar.

3 comments:

Kathleen said...

Hey - we all left some comments for you guys the other day but somehow they must not have reached you. Don't want you to think we aren't keeping up or enjoying your blog. We are immensely. Cope especially enjoyed Tally's blog on the cats and we all enjoyed Celine's blog and laughed at the picture of her playing like Lillian was her dog. LOL!

Girls have been out of school all week because of the foot of snow and freezing temps we've had here. They are sleeping in and I'll read your newest blog with them when they get up. We've all been enjoying it immensely :D

Love you! Stay safe!

Tina said...

Okay,just a little question for you. Compared to U.S. how does the costs of things differ from U.S. Looking at all the candy in one photo, Collin would like to know. Also, does it take longer to dry your clothes there than it did here? Although you probably never really hung your clothes out to dry in Texas. Did I tell you, "We love keeping up with your journey."

Eric Robishaw said...

I'd guess on average the cost of living is probably 25% higher in general. You can buy just about everything here that's available in the US, but American things (Diet coke, Raisin Bran, etc...) are just more. Also the American things are sometimes not exactly the same... the Diet Coke tastes like its made with Saccarin, and the Raisin Bran is made with yellow raisins instead of black, and the flakes are much sweater, like their coated in apple juice.

Groceries you buy at the market are the same or cheaper than US but you buy different items from different vendors. Candy at the candy vendor is sold bulk and seems very cheap ($1.50 for a pretty good sized bag of it), but American Candy bars sold at the store are about $1.50 each.

We don't drive anywhere, but gas is VERY expensive, like $8.00 /gallon.

Clothes take like 4 hours to dry in the dryer here. Don't know why, so hanging is the thing to do ... or a combination of hanging and drying.

The washer also only takes either VERY small loads (1/5 an American washer maybe) which takes 30 minutes, or at 1/2 an American load size it takes like 2 hours.