Let's Talk

After I took the kids to school/daycare, I came home to wait for the cleaning lady and air conditioner people to finish and then I went to Modi'in to try to cash some travelers checks that Freddy gave us and to meet Arica for coffee (by coffee, I mean rugelach and borekas) and get the last 2 bags that we had left at her house. The guy at Cheefully Change or whatever it's called was not cheerful enough and he wouldn't cash the travelers checks because they were in Fred's name. He said I could try forging his signature but that the bank would reject the checks if the signatures weren't exactly the same. I ended up just writing a check to change some money because we didn't have any more shekels and Bank of America charges a million dollars to take money out. Supposedly David opened our bank account here, but he has yet to give me any information about it or even an ATM card. We have been getting some mail from the bank, but we can't understand any of it:)
Anyway, it was great to see Arica who I miss since we don't live with her anymore! We made a quick stop at the supermarket and had a truly Israeli experience of the "express check-out" lane taking forever. I did manage to make it back to Ra'anana just in time to pick up the kids. When Frieda came to open the door, she told all of us waiting parents that today was "Yom Italia" and they pretended to fly on a plane to Italy where they danced and sang and ate pizza and ice cream and then they flew on a plane back to Israel. She said all of this in Hebrew--when Simon came out, I asked him where he went on a plane and he looked at me confused and said "I didn't go anywhere on a plane." I think he must have had no idea what was going on! He did say he had fun though.
Before Eli's nap, Simon and Eli actually played together for the first time. They sat on the floor of the living room and Simon rolled a ball to Eli and Eli grabbed it and then threw it back at Simon. They did it a couple of times before Eli lost interest, but it was so cute. Of course I didn't have the camera handy.
After Eli's nap, we met Simon's friends Oren, Boaz and Mika at the park for a little while. They all had a great time and they all shared their snacks with each other. Simon is clearly not a true Israeli because he hadn't brought any bamba. I will let him eat it if someone else gives it to him, but I think it is so disgusting and I refuse to buy it. Also, I've seen so many people giving bamba (which is made out of peanuts or peanut butter) to babies and that is almost as weird to me as the many people that I've seen driving with carseats in the front seat.
Anyway, by the time we got home from the park and the longest getting gas experience ever (note to self: bad idea to go to the gas station on the main highway during rush hour!!), David was already home and he was making pizza omelets for dinner. Right after we ate, David left to go to the supermarket (that was almost 2 hours ago and he's still not back--he just called and said we should remember that it's not a good idea to go to the supermarket on a Thursday night) and I bathed the kids and then put Eli to bed. Then I read Simon 2 books and told him it was time for bed. He said "first we're going to talk about somekin." I asked him what he wanted to talk about and he said "I don't know...maybe school." He asked me to get his blanket and then we cuddled up on the couch and he said "let's talk!" Again I asked him what he wanted to talk about and he said "do you like your office?" I told him that I don't have an office here but that soon I'm going to go to school. He said "yeah, that's right. I'm going to pick you up from school." I told him that my school is called Bar-Ilan and he said "oh, like the street." There's a street a couple of blocks from here called Bar-Ilan, but I have no idea how he knows that. He then followed it up with "but we don't live on Bar-Ilan because we live on Shai Agnon."
I let Simon play with the camera in the car (it's already broken anyway)--the one of me driving is his work. He said "look at me and say cheese" so I did and then he said "oh, that was a good one!" We were at a red light, don't worry, I'm not a crazy Israeli driver yet!!