next few days…
We spent the first friday night, they day after our arrival, just with our family in the apartment. We had a nice friday night dinner, and went to bed early and woke up early the next day. I went to shul myself because everyone else was too tired to get up that early, and we weren’t even unpacked enough to be able to find shul clothes for everyone. I was surprisingly able to find the shul, kehilat netivot, meeting at the beit knesset in the Open University, just two blocks from our apartment. I met a bunch of people at the small kiddush, very nice, met the rabbi too, also american who gave a dvar torah at the end of the service in american-accented hebrew. I don’t remember anyone’s name that I met, but the overall feeling was quite nice.
that afternoon we went to beach in Herzliya; the kids had a great time.
The next day, sunday, is a regular work day here so we tried to get a lot of work done: – we went to the local bank but they’re actually not open sunday, we wanted to go to the misrad haklita (absorption ministry) to discuss the government assistance that is available to new immigrants (money each month until you can get your job established for up to 6 months; ulpan, hebrew language immersion classes, etc) but you need to have a bank account first so they can register you to receive the payments/reimbursements. so we ended up going back to Ikea again, and to a few big grocery chains to stock up the apartment. (SuperSol. but not just SuperSol; SuperSol Deal. But not just SuperSol Deal; SuperSol Deal Extra 😁😁; sort of like a SuperTarget instead of a regular Target, its a grocery store that also sells appliance and household goods. As well as StopMarket, another grocery store. And then we took the kids to Max Brenner’s Chocolate Factory for late lunch/dinner. Yum)
Then on monday we finally got the bank account up and running, then val dropped me off at Meir Hospital where I met with the cardiology department chair, who was very nice, and mentioned that as a new immigrant there are government subsidies for my initial salary, especially because the health ministry says that although all my medical diplomas were accepted i still need a three month observation period to be signed off by a dept chair at a recognised institution. And he would like to see if I can qualify to get that government salary subsidy. But, he said that if I can get the government money, then I could start whenever I want, even tomorrow.
Then we went to the Tali school, the one that the boys will attend to say hi and introduce ourselves. The office secretary gave us some forms to fill out, which she graciously helped us with as they were in hebrew. We also found out when we showed them our teudah zehut (our israeli identity cards) that they mistakenly only have three of our children listed on it. So then we went to the misrad hapanim (the interior ministry) to try to get that straightened out. But the first time we went there it of course was closed; most gov agencies we’ve discovered are not 9-5 like in the US, but are 8-12:30 and maybe 3-5 on certain days.
