Immigrants. Greenhorns. That's what we are. We don't know the language and culture well. We can't make ourselves understood when we need to. We aren't as effective at anything as we are used to -- shopping, dealing with landlords, getting through bureaucracy, doing homework. Not knowing the law or local customs puts us in awkward situations. We don't know how to dress (apparantly shorts on women is frowned on in Jerusalem; even men don't usually wear shorts in the city, the clothes people wear to synagogue don't look like synagogue clothes to me -- if we had our clothes we'd be way too dressed up, and we're all fairly casual dressers). We don't even know how to sleep. They use duvets and duvet covers here instead of top sheets. How do you keep one of them on when there isn't enough room to tuck it in at the bottom? How do you keep it on top of two people all night -- they're only slightly wider than the bed?
Dates are written differently here, so we miss meetings or show up the wrong day. We missed an important meeting at Joshua's school because we read the date as the 9th of September, when it was written as the 8th. Dates are written day/month/year. The date 8/9/96 looked like the 9th of September. I knew the meeting was in a couple days and simply looked at the day place (in the middle).
Then there are the mistakes we make because we don't have our belongings yet. Our only alarm clocks are Mike's and Orly's watches (Joshua's watch needs a new battery), loud enough for a grownup to hear after a good night's sleep, not necessarily loud enough for a deep-sleeping pre-adolescent. Joshua was supposed to go to a 2:30 AM Slichot service this morning. He went to bed at 8:30, he set the alarm for 2:00, he put his clothes out so he could put them on quickly and leave the house and be at school at 2:30 (it's a five minute walk, not even worth a drive), and he planned to wake Mike up to take him at 2:10. He set both Orly's and Mike's watches. He slept through them. I awoke in the middle of the night (4:30) and knew without looking at a clock (couldn't, we don't have one to look at) that it was way past 2:30. Joshua awoke at about 5:15, opened his door, and saw the light coming in from the window, knew it wasn't 2:30, and cried. On the plus side, everyone got a better night's sleep than they would have.
And the dumb things because we just don't know our way around yet. I haven't found a good dry cleaner. So I've been wearing the same (washable) dress to synagogue every Shabbat and both days and evenings of Rosh Hashana because I haven't gotten the other ones cleaned yet. The interesting thing here is that I don't think anyone has noticed; Israelis are the worst dressers I have ever seen. The only ones who dress well are the very Orthodox women in Meah Shearim (the rich ones, I guess). Otherwise, clothing is pretty frumpy. Perhaps because dry cleaning is so expensive, the water here is rough on colors, and people don't generally own dryers. Also, they do a lot of walking and bus riding here. Maybe the very Orthodox dress well because they can just do everything in their neighborhoods (actually, I have another theory on this, but that's for another journal entry).
I won't even write about the cars that honk me on the road. I do know that while my routes to places get me there, they are most probably the long way. I've been working on finding my way around by just going on rides and seeing afterwards (on the map) where I've been. I've learned enough to follow my nose and get places, but native Jerusalemites would probably laugh at my routes.
So I know something now that I didn't know before about how difficult it must be for my new post-docs who come to Atlanta from afar. And I understand the odd things now that I see some foreigners do in Atlanta. What I don't understand is how some foreign transplants seem not to have any of those problems -- Amnon and Hila seem to fit in right away. Perhaps they'll tell me the tricks and I'll fit in in another few weeks (should be easier when we get our shipment).
Before the end of the year, we expect this to turn into a happy journal.