Author: bevwilso

I have a confession to make and it is an uncomfortable one. I am afraid of heights. Sometimes.

Today we drove fifteen minutes southeast to the Carmel National Park. The main road goes along the ridgeline and it begins to feel like you are driving into the sky. After entering the park, we turned left onto a one lane road and I could see up ahead another left turn and then nothing but clouds and sky. I froze and eventually backed up, and drove back out to the parking lot along the main road.

We had a decent walk and were able to locate the trailhead we had initially planned to drive to on the way out. I ended up driving that same side road from the other direction and it was okay. We didn’t careen over the edge. It was okay. Really.

The frustrating thing about this is I realize it is irrational. As a child, I had recurring dreams about falling and the sensation still freaks me out. It doesn’t always happen, but basically I feel light-headed and a little dizzy. It is sometimes hard to stand up. It may be a panic attack but also could be vertigo. Usually, this involves being close to the edge and having a direct line of sight down. As someone who prides himself on discipline and self-control, the clear lack of self-control during these situations is alarming and humiliating.

A few weeks ago, Adena, Aviva, and I took the bus to the Stella Maris monastery here in Haifa.

This is the upper terminus of the Haifa cable car located across the street from Stella Maris. Long story short, here are photos of Adena and Aviva riding the cable car down the mountain and back up. I didn’t tag along.

Living in Illinois for the past nine years has meant that I really didn’t have to think about this very much. Here in Haifa, this issue has re-asserted itself. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. I fly in airplanes and sit in the window seat. I have been to the top of the Empire State Building. I like hiking and I even took the cable car in Portland two years ago with my friend Dave. Full disclosure: it took about fifteen minutes for me to actually board the cable car, but I did it (Dave is unusually patient). Maybe the solution is to use this time here in Haifa to work through this with repeated exposure.

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These photos are not from the hike we expected, but from the trail that led down from the main parking lot.

Believe it or not, we have settled into a routine and life feels a little more mundane now. In the best possible sense.

On a typical day, we drop Millie off at her daycamp outside the Dan Panorama Hotel on HaNassi, then Bev catches the bus to campus. From 8:30 to noon he has language immersion class with people who are about fifteen years younger and starting medical school. A few are starting graduate programs or are here with partners who are in school. Laura arrives at eleven, and between 7:30 and eleven, Adena and Aviva run errands, go to the park, and just hang out. Bev takes the 4:30 bus home and just misses Laura, who leaves at five. That’s okay though, because the girls are watching TV and he gets dinner ready while Adena wraps up her workday at six. After so much angst and drama, mundane feels nice.

We didn’t go to the beach last Saturday (Bev and the girls went Friday afternoon) and instead visited one of the few conservative synagogues in town. Turns out, the girls have trouble sitting quietly in the service here too.

On Tuesday, we got to try out our health insurance. The camp counselor called and suggested that we have a doctor look at a bug bite Millie had been scratching. Adena and Millie went to one of the three doctors “in the network” here and while it was certainly different, it was a good experience.

The bus ride was about thirty minutes and the (Russian?) doctor was helpful.

We have been trying to get an appointment at the Ministry of the Interior for about a week to apply for a visa extension. Our tourist visa (three months) expires September 10th, so it has been a little stressful. Bev tried using the web form to schedule an appointment, called the office several times, and even sent a fax. On Thursday morning, he took the bus down to the office.

That’s the approach to the Sail Building (where the office is located) with the harbor in the distance. We now have an appointment for the four of us on September 4th, but again, this was much harder than it should have been.

The staff person made it clear that she was doing me a favor and that we should have made this appointment as soon as we entered the country.

There is construction on HaYam Road, which runs parallel to our street and is one of the main routes down to the beach. The metal barriers shown below were placed there a few weeks back to clear the way for buses rerouted down our street, but they also took away already scarce parking spaces.

The bottom floor apartment in the building is apparently for sale, and we have seen lots of people coming to look at it over the past few days. Note the big banner below.

Our apartment is on the top of the building hidden behind the tree there. Here’s a video tour of our apartment.

We didn’t have time to straighten up, so please ignore the mess.

• It would be hard to live in Israel if your name was Kenneth. People are constantly saying “ken” no matter where you go.
• Make the Turkish coffee just before you get in the shower. That way, it is ready and cool enough to drink when you get out.
• It is hard to cook in someone else’s kitchen, but it helps a lot if they have a gas stove. I wonder how much it would cost to switch out our electric stove at home…
• I have not seen a female bus driver since leaving the States.
• Trucker hats are really popular and highly valued here.
• The best places to get food on the Technion campus are in the Civil Engineering, Computer Science, and Physics buildings. Go figure.
• Sour cream comes in packages labeled “גבינה לבנה”, which translates as “white cheese”.
• If the campus michlol (general student store) doesn’t have it, you don’t really need it.
• Do not buy or eat corn-on-the-cob in Israel. Under any circumstances.

Please note that the observations below are based on my personal experience. They do not reflect the opinions of any organization, employer, company, or other contributors to this blog.

deus ex machina
noun: a person or thing (as in fiction or drama) that appears or is introduced suddenly and unexpectedly and provides a contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty

Our bank referred us to a website maintained by Visa that lists all the ATMs where our debit cards should work, but we had tried a couple of these last week without success. After talking with Adena’s parents, we realized that maybe some but not all ATMs would work at the specified locations. On Monday Bev tried taking shekels out of ATMs at two different banks in two parts of the city—and they both worked!

Apparently you have to not just find an available ATM, it also needs to have the ₪ and $ symbols at the top too. The debit card has a one-percent foreign transaction fee, but pretty soon we will only need to use these to withdraw cash (rent, preschool tuition, babysitter, etc.) because the no fee credit cards finally arrived and are in Jerusalem with Uncle Paul and Aunt Laura. We haven’t checked to see what the fees are for wiring money yet.

Bev managed to mostly fix the damage to the car mirror. It is bent a little at the edge, but it seems secure and you can still use the electric switch to move it—just not as smoothly as before.

On Sunday, Adena and Aviva visited the Haifa police department only to learn that Bev needed to be there too. So they made the most of being “downtown” and visited the train museum.

After the false start on Sunday, on Monday Adena, Bev, and Aviva successfully filed the police report downtown.

The police officer was extremely calm and stoic. We appreciated his “all business” bureaucratic tone and were done in fifteen minutes or so.

The bus ride home was more eventful, but Bev was still able to make the last hour of ulpan.

Ruti (shown above) is one of the best teachers he has ever had and he is learning a lot very quickly. He was even able celebrate these wins with a bag of the “American peanuts” he loves from the downstairs vending machine.

Next up, is switching the health insurance and extending our travel visas. We will keep you posted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gplia9D6rcY

When we started planning this trip we knew that there would be some challenges. The late 80s TV comedy “Perfect Strangers” clearly showed that things don’t work as smoothly in another country, particularly if you are a new arrival or are not a citizen.

But this is ridiculous.

Back in May, I went to our bank to open a safe deposit box and learned that they offer a Visa credit card with no foreign transaction fees and free cash advances at ATMs. The person I talked to assured me that it could be done by the time we left the country roughly four weeks later. I returned that Friday with Adena to apply for the credit card and add her to the safe deposit box (they take security very seriously at our bank). We didn’t get to talk to the same person during that visit, and as the new staffer was helping us fill out the application on his computer, he mentioned that he typically worked out of the campus branch and that they didn’t handle a lot of these applications over there. It also took a really long time and by the end, I was openly questioning if he knew what he was doing.

A couple of weeks went by and I happened to be in the bank putting some more items in the safe deposit box (documents, because we don’t have anything interesting) and bumped into the original staff person. I asked if we could check the status of the cards and I learned that the young man who helped us had not actually submitted the application. We sat and re-entered the information and were told that the whole thing would be expedited.

After we left for Israel without the cards (surprise!), we made a plan with the staff member for them to be shipped to her at the branch, then she would send them to us in Jerusalem. They arrived in Jerusalem earlier this week. As in July 31st. She mailed them standard post on June 28 rather than priority mail or FedEx. Where is a customer service satisfaction survey when you need one?

Since then we have learned that our debit cards can be used to buy things in a store or restaurant, but not to take cash out of an ATM. We have also learned that Israeli bank accounts are only for citizens and students.

There is one branch in Tel Aviv that foreign nationals must visit to setup an account and get this, you have to seed it with $50,000. Seems like a surefire way to discourage money laundering, which is the explanation given for this policy!

We also learned that the health insurance we purchased prior to coming here has much better “in-network” options in Jerusalem rather than Haifa, despite it being the exact same company that all the Technion students use.

The ₪1500 fee for the ulpan I am taking (is that even the right verb?) must be paid at the campus post office and cannot be paid with a credit card. The same goes for the ₪110 textbook we are using for the ulpan shown below.

I am waiting on a letter from the Technion that we can take to the Ministry downtown (in the Sail Building) to extend our tourist visas from three to six months. This will allow us to avoid leaving the country twice over the coming months to reset the tourist visa clock. The recent “nation-state” law suggests that these matters will be taken very seriously.

We are hoping to meet up with friends somewhere in Europe for Thanksgiving, but extending the visas at the Ministry will simplify things. I keep thinking “Ministry of Magic” from Harry Potter when I hear the word, but I bet it won’t be as cool.

Oh, and the vending machine downstairs ran out of the tasty peanuts I like yesterday so I settled for a Nature Valley crunchy granola bar. After I paid, I passed a previously unnoticed vending machine with not one, but two full rows of delicious peanut packets. Blerg.

Life is hard, and this is especially true in this country. Seriously, nothing is easy and I am surprised when people are nice. It really wears you down and you feel exhausted because every day means fighting these mini-battles. We will probably just wire money to ourselves two or three times and give up on opening a bank account. When we finally get these Visa credit cards in hand, they probably won’t let us take cash from the ATM either. But this is our life here and we will manage.

This post wanders here and there. At the end of the day, it is more about advancing the plot than character development. You have been warned.

Last Friday we signed a contract with Gan Betnua (motion?) where Aviva will be going each day starting in September. It is a shade under fifteen minutes from the apartment, but more importantly we all had a good feeling about the staff, facility, and programming that we saw. Adena visited another gan for comparison purposes, but Gan Betnua seemed much more structured and transparent. It also gives us an excuse to walk down to the Louis Promenade overlook each day. The babysitter (nanny?) we hired is working out very well and the girls seem to really like her. This is easy for them in part because her name is Laura. She brings props to engage Aviva in imaginative play, took her to the beach (more later), and even built a blanket fort with the girls last week. The grounds crew heavily pruned the tree outside the office Bev is using at the Technion and he can now watch people coming and going through the window (below).

Aside from the car issues and problems with our bank, things are fine. We have even gotten used to going to the grocery store every other day. Luckily our landlord left one of the handy carts (I’m sure there is a name for it) below in the storage room.

Friday afternoon Millie took Bev and Aviva on a tour of the Haifa Zoo. She knows it well from daycamp.

We were able to see most of the zoo in about an hour and a half. This includes the lions, stork, and fennec fox shown here.

Afterwards, we stopped at Gan HaEm (mother’s park) which is located right at the zoo entrance. The girls enjoyed the playground and I poked around a bit. Apparently this park was funded by Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, and his wife.

There is also a carousel donated by a gentleman from Los Angeles, but I don’t think he is famous. It reminded me of the playground at the Jerusalem Zoo that was funded by billionaire Illinois gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker. There are a few sculptures at the park, but I thought this one was particularly interesting.

It is entitled “Motherhood” and even if you walk all the way around it, you cannot tell exactly where the mother’s body and the baby’s body begin and end. Later it occurred to me that that is probably the point the artist was trying to make.

As we walked home we passed one of the many kiosks on the street selling lottery tickets. Each of the kiosks has lottery ball monsters on top (below), and I wonder if the lottery administrators were trying to be ironic, cheeky, or both with this design feature.

On Saturday we went to the beach. Spending three to four hours there is becoming part of our Shabbat routine and this week we tried Carmel Beach as an alternative to Dado Beach.

There are wooden structures along the designated swimming areas at the Haifa beaches that provide shade, but they fill up quickly. If you want a prime spot under one of these structures, you probably need to arrive before 8:00 am, which is impossible for us. Fortunately, the north side of Carmel Beach was blocked last weekend, which meant that we were still able to get a shady spot there when we arrived at 8:45 am. There is more sand at Carmel Beach and south side is protected from the waves by the north-south jetty shown on the map, which makes swimming easier. There was a sulphur smell in part of the of swimming area and the seaweed was heavy in places, but it was nice. The chorus of the song “Santa Monica” kept playing in my head and although it was crowded, everybody seemed genuinely happy to be swimming along together.

“We can live beside the ocean
Leave the fire behind
Swim out past the breakers
Watch the world die”

According to the supercomputer from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the answer to the ultimate question of life is 42. Today happens to be my birthday and it also happens to be my 42nd birthday. I often plan “adventure days” for the girls over school breaks where I take one of them and do some new things in a new place. This is a good way to have one-on-one time with them, but also to do it in a way that is exciting for me. I decided to plan an “adventure day” for myself today. After we dropped Millie off at daycamp, I went back to the apartment and gathered my things: a few snacks, four containers of water (two of them frozen), and the camera. I walked down to the trailhead on Lotus Street (below) and was on my way.

The descent was pretty quick and the first thing I noticed was the quiet—nothing but birds and an occasional flying insect. As I walked along the rocky terrain, it occurred to me that I was hiking alone and that I had better be careful because a twisted ankle or broken leg means you can’t walk out of here. In other words “Don’t panic”. The trail was clearly marked (below center and right) and the view changed as I made my way down.

After walking for about an hour, I noticed that the rock had become smoother and lighter. There were even a few caves in the hillside and I hiked up to the one shown below.

As I neared the end of the trail, I heard water trickling and saw what looked like an otter. Apparently this area was used by Carmelite monks (hermits?) a long time ago and they dug narrow irrigation channels to make use of the the water from the two springs nearby.

At the very end of the trail, there is a nice view of the water and you can see the minarets of the mosque on the ridge. It took about 80 minutes from start to finish, which is not bad for a 42 year old!

From there I caught the bus over to Bat Galim at the city’s northernmost edge. I admired the cable cars moving people from the beach up to the monastery above.

I checked out the cable car station at the beach, but decided to save it for another day. The cars are much smaller up close than when they are zooming past and there was absolutely nobody else in the station at the time. I wasn’t brave enough to ride alone. Instead I walked over to Elijah’s Cave but mostly poked around the actual cave entrance. There are signs out front that say “This is a holy place” and “Dress modestly” (thanks Google Translate!). I wasn’t sure if my cargo shorts and t-shirt met the standard for modesty and I was too afraid to ask the lady in the colorful headwrap seated by the entrance. Here are a few photos though.

From there I walked the Bat Galim promenade, stopped to eat the snacks I had packed on a shady bench, and was approached by this little bird.

I walked to the end of the promenade, snapping photos as I went, then boarded another bus.

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The German Colony is a neighborhood of Haifa that was originally settled in the mid-19th Century by Lutherans (Templers) from Germany. It is situated at the base of the Bahá’í gardens and the streetscapes are a little different. The balconies reminded me a little of New Orleans. I even passed a combination laundry and cafe establishment (coming soon to your neck of the woods!).

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We had plans to meet some friends from Champaign-Urbana who are originally from Israel this evening in a town about an hour away, but when we piled into the car it wouldn’t start. This is the second time we have had to call the rental company in the past four days, but they eventually sent someone out to (I think) replace the battery. Our dinner plans didn’t work out out, but we were able to enjoy some birthday cake.

This was maybe the best birthday cake I have ever tasted. We are already trying to find an excuse to buy another cake from them over the coming months. Turns out that “Don’t panic” is pretty good advice and turning 42 is not so bad.

After dinner we all took a leisurely walk to the Louis Promenade. It was about 6:30 pm and the heat of the day was dissipating, but the breeze coming off the water felt nice anyway. The view of Haifa Bay was breathtaking. In the hazy photos below you can see the waterfront with the unmistakable Sail Building (left) and the Shrine of the Báb (right), which is part of the Bahá’í gardens complex.

We only walked a portion of the Yefe Nof, or “beautiful view”, but plan to do more exploring this weekend. Here are two more pictures of the view facing north and of us walking back toward the apartment.

Supposedly you can see Lebanon on a clear day, but that would be about 25 miles in the distance. That seems unlikely. Stay tuned!