Random events of the week....

Guess what!?!?!? I am writing this from our desk top computer, during the day instead of at two in the morning, while Phil is at work! So yes, computer is fixed, however, it did require purchasing a new hard drive because yes, ours was totally kaput. Lesson learned. Don't ship your computer overseas. Although of course now we must ship it back home, so lets just hope that it makes that journey home a little more safely. I guess we will cross that bridge when the time comes.

So we are unpacked and enjoying our new "home" now that the great wall of cardboard boxes has been removed from the living room. Unfortunately we have also discovered that we are apparently missing a box. How that slipped past us I don't know. Because I swear I carefully checked off every box number as they brought them into the apartment. However, we are slowly starting to remember random items that we absolutely know for a fact that we had in Portland and seeing as we don't have them now, the only logical explanation is that one of our boxes is MIA. I did, however, check off and then sign a piece of paper that says we received all of our boxes. Oooops. My bad. And of course we have had no luck trying to track down a copy of this paper just to make sure that I did indeed check them all off. Trying to get anything done here is seriously next to impossible. (Case in point, ghetto oven and ugly fridge--more info later.) The "silver lining" if you will, is that as far as we can remember there isn't anything too important or completely unreplaceable in that box--i.e. no photos, etc. Although who knows what may come up missing down the road. This is where I must remind myself that they are only "things" and that life goes on.

So as I am sitting here writing, I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of our new oven!!! He is supposed to be here between 1 and 4 and I will be completely shocked if they actually come in that time frame. (The cable guy was supposed to come at ten and showed up at 9, the movers were supposed to come from 12-3 and showed up at 10:30 while I was mopping the floor in my PJs and the maintenance man was supposed to come at 4 and showed up at 2 while I was out at the grocery store. Oh well, at least they were all early instead of late!) But I digress. So you see, over two months of fighting, whining and complaining have finally (sort of) paid off. I say sort of because it seems like ugly fridge is here to stay. So I suppose I will just have to make friends with ugly fridge for the next two years. (It's really not that ugly, it's just not the pretty silver fridge I was expecting to find when we moved in.) So the CEO of the relocation company came over the other night to try to "appease" us and make us feel like we are the luckiest people on earth (and yes, we do know how fortunate we actually are!). Basically he came over to get us to shut up. You know he schmoozed us and brought us a little house warming gift and blah, blah, blah..... And yes, he did arrange to have our boxes picked up the next day and clearly ordered us a new oven so for that I am very grateful. However, he did seem to clearly and obviously miss the point that, his company screwed up and therefore should fix the problem. The customer is always right philosophy is pretty much non-existent here.

Oh, and I have many examples to share with you. Our friends purchased some vacuum cleaner bags only to find out that they did not fit their vacuum. Normally, one would return to say Home Depot, and return the bags, no questions asked for full money back. Ahhhhhhhh....for it to be so easy. So our friends had to literally argue for a half hour to get them to take the bags back for store credit. You see, full cash back, does not exist here either. It's only store credit and in many cases you can only return an item if it is defective or for some reason does not work for the intended purpose. Now this poses a serious problem for someone like me, who has been known to quite frequently buy clothing items, bring them home, try them on with my existing clothes and shoes, consult Phil for an opinion, decide I don't like them and return them to the store. And even once, I must shamefully admit, I bought a pair of shoes, wore them for a day, decided I didn't like them, wiped them off and returned them to the store. Yes, I know, very bad. Then there is the time we ordered the hummus plate and asked if it came with bread and were told "yes" by the waiter. When we got the bill we were charged almost 5 dollars extra for the bread on top of an already expensive plate of hummus. Normally, the waiter would just admit fault and take if off the bill. Yeah, so didn't happen that way. We argued of course and probably could of pursued it more, but there comes a point when it is just not worth the energy anymore. In any case, I suppose that I will think I little more about any future purchases I make here!

So we survived Passover, althought it was a little more difficult for Phil and all, having to eat in the cafeteria at work every day, sans bread. Most of the grocery stores just covered up all their bread and other "forbidden" products and many of the restaurants were closed for the week. Our favorite pizza place and all the wonderful falafel stands nearby, included. And I also heard the most interesting story about just how seriously, and I do mean seriously, Passover is taken here. Apparently in Jerusalem, during the week of Passover, the enitre city switches their water source over to a well. Why you might ask? Well, apparently people fish in the lake where their normal source of water comes from and sometimes they use bread as bait. Yes, I can hear the laughs through the computer! I guess those bread crumbs are just so damn small that they leak through the filtration system and contaminate the water. Mostly I am wondering why they would want to drink from this lake in the first place! I see a few more problems that are a little more worrisome than bread being in my water!!!

We've got no plans for the weekend so we will just see what happens. We are starting to think about the places we want to visit while we are here and try to arrange and some what map out our next couple years here with various trips and visitors. We've got so many places on our list and (hopefully!) many visitors that it could get quite crazy! Oh, but it will be so much fun!