Ted’s Aliyah, Day 2

Again, this is not MY writing, it is the only-slightly-deranged musings of my very talented husband, Teddy (Akiva) MacLeod.  If you like his writing, check out his art (sort of!).

I meant to send this last night but you know...things happen
Anyway, here is Day Two of Project Israel
So, I forgot to mention that we live on the seashore, beside a resort called The Amigos Bar, where every morning at 8:00 AM sharp, we are awoken to the sounds of the lifeguards yelling in Hebrew through mega-phones at the early swimmers. Naomi asked me what they were saying and I paused, pretending to listen and said “Oh, he just told Shmueli to not stand on his brother’s head because he can’t breathe underwater.” Or another classic, “Hey you swimmers! Have a nice day!”
Today, we went to open a bank account, but because we didn’t have all our immigration papers completely processed yet, they wouldn’t let us open the account. So now I have to walk around with money falling out of my pockets all over the place, Oy Vey! Amir Tamari told me that Israel is “99% a great place, but there is always that 1% that screws things up”, which I am finding to be an incredibly accurate analogy.
So we turned the rest of today into a tourist day and bussed it over to the Haifa Zoo to look at things like catatonic African Lions sitting in the shade, oddly, big furry Syrian bears (how do they stand the heat?), a million kinds of snakes including the Palestian Viper and also surprisingly, some Honey Badgers (which the kids liked because it had ‘honey’ in its name).
We stopped at the Mama Shnitzel restaurant on the way home for yes, you got it, some schnitzel (glorified breaded chicken fingers). Later at home, I took the kids swimming again, this time they were a little more calm and even introspective, if you count Naomi rolling around in the water, gazing at the waves in deep thought.
And now, winding down this evening, things are still hopping over at The Amigos Bar as I can hear some horrible Karaoke singing drifting into my open window. I can’t exactly make out the words of the songs, but I think the woman with the sad voice may have won some sort of prize. Oh well, this reminds me so much of the time “The Mexicans” as I called them, lived in the house behind our backyard and used to have three day parties every weekend.