Plants, of course

Lemons for lunch.

Ow.


Mmm.


Ahhh.

Sightseeing or Not

Arnona is the district we live in.


Pigeons don't need to read signs.



Why did I take this picture? Because it's reality.
There are more rocks here than on the moon.

Old Year Odd Pictures

Today we signed up for language class, which doesn't start until February, and I got a library card and one book.

I remember how excited I was when I first started kindergarten and when I first started reading library books. But it was a bit different going to the library already understanding and speaking the language. This time I'm going through the tedious process of looking up every other word in the dicitonary.

Staying in the house and studying all day gets pretty old. So today Al took me out for a picture-taking spree. Some of the pictures look really good on full screen, but I'm resizing them for the blog, and I don't know how they'll look when you zoom them. My camera has the annoying habit of picking out the brightest part of the picture and exaggerating it. And there's the problem of not being able to hold the camera level. I guess cameras don't come with plumb lines.

On this post I'm putting two odd pictures. One is a tiny part of another picture, blown way up, because I like the red roofs. The other picture didn't have good color, so I deliberately made it less colorful. Next post will have better pictures.

More plants

Evergreens are everywhere.


I'm not "just"a thistle. I'm variegated, as you can see.


Olive grove.

Fall colors.

Blue daisies? Asters?

Home Pictures

This guy grows right out of the cement.

The Y

Steep stairway to chapel.

Doorway to stairs.

The chapel where we meet.

Even the dogs.

Nice floor mosaic.

On the door it says, "Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me."

The Y

Lobby

Front of Y

Fancy Pillars

Arches

Conservatory

Strange Keyboard

My computer has a keyboard that you can switch back and forth from English to Hebrew. I've run into a few bugs. When I type on Notepad, every time I hit the space bar, the cursor jumps back to the beginning of the line, and with the next letter it jumps back again. When I type a quotation mark, nothing happens until I hit the next letter--then it types both the letter and the mark. For an end quotation mark, I have to hit two spaces. Wordpad does the same, only without the jumping cursor.
One time the quotation mark key was making some sort of umlat or something, but half-way through the page it fixed itself. I suppose the next time I want an umlat, I won't be able to get one. (Er, why would I want an umlat?)
The backspace key, when you're typing with the Hebrew keyboard, goes forward, the opposite way of the arrow on the key, but that's backwards in Hebrew. If you switch back and forth in a document, the cursor will jump to the right place, and the delete key knows which way to go. Pretty clever, these Chinese. Oops, someone might not like that statement. But what else can I say? How about "Pretty clever, Hewlett Packard." Just doesn't have the same ring.

Another day

We bought groceries today to avoid the mad rush tomorrow, when everyone is preparing for Shabbat. I was able to figure out my grocery receipt this time. Do you know what vrnflqs spells? (Answer at bottom.)
At a roadside stand I was trying to figure out the price of strawberries, until I realized that the sign I was trying to interpret was about winning the lottery.
Al bought (without my permission) something called Nutella. It had a picture of some kind of nuts on it. But what it was was some kind of chocolate. Well, I can't let it go to waste, can I?
I learned a new word today--well, several, but this one was interesting. It is pronounced "ee" and it means island. I didn't see "ee" on what looked like thousand island dressing, but maybe it's in the plural and I haven't yet found out the plural of "ee."
Vrnflqs spells bran flakes.
Other words: sweater is "svedder" and sweatshirt is "svecher." Close enough for jazz, eh?

This pillar built on top of a plow says, "And they shall beat their swords into plowshares..."

Bet Juneau would get his fur up at these guys.

A suburb of Jerusalem, I believe. At the bottom of the hill.

At the top of the same hill.

More flowers, of course.

I'm told this is a bougainvilla (sp?)

Sorry this is a little out of focus. I wish I knew what these blue flowers are called.

This might be rosemary. Rosemary is everywhere.

This is a sort-of-like vine. Again, I wish I knew it's name. It probably doesn't care to be called "you-there" or "what's-your-name."

Flowers, of course.

Balconies, Yes! (See the yes at the bottom?)

Is that a midget or is that a really big yucca?

Home

Yep, this apartment really does have everything: toaster, electric kettle, phone, dishes, cookware, cleaning supplies, teabags, sugar, candle, matches, spare lightbulbs, clothespins, and more. We're mostly organized now, but that doesn't mean we don't lose things several times a day. The place is small enough that it has to be [My new computer has a strange keyboard--where is the quotation mark?] a place for everything and everything in its place. Which means also that we have to remember all those places.

I've just spent a while reading other people's blogs and I wonder why am I blogging. How do you do it? How do you find time? How do you collect your thoughts? How can you make it interesting? Oh, well, I'll just go through the motions and hope for the best.

Grocery shopping is an adventure. I can't read the labels. I don't recognize any of the brands. When I tried to find a bag of rice I recognized the word for rice and it looked like rice, but, no. When I got it home I realized it was a kind of pasta shaped like grains of rice. Then I bought something that looked a little like an orange tomato, but it was definitely not a tomato. It was solid all the way through, but tender, and had a few very tiny seeds and was delicious and sweet. Good for eating plain or putting on cereal. Then I bought some salt, which turned out to be kitchen salt, which isn't what we call table salt because it was very coarse, not the best for sprinkling on food. Vegetables are cheap, which suits me fine because I love eating lots of vegetables. I bought a can of tomato paste which was really half-way in between paste and sauce for consistency, and a little bit sweeter. I am going to try red rice, which I hope tastes better than wild rice. So far I haven't found any rolled oats for making granola.

All shopping is an adventure, if you can forget how much time is being wasted. I don't have time to find the best buys, because I have to get to work studying Hebrew. A really good butcher knife is essential, and I was about to buy one, but while I was waiting in line I said to Al, this is either a sort-of-good knife, or a totally worthless one, but how can I know until I try it out. Another lady must have noticed my doubtful look (I don't think she spoke much English), because she shook her head and said, I bought, lo tove, which means not good. So I put that one back and went to another store, where I found a good knife and also a good set of salt and pepper shakers for under $10, wow, actually only $3. I try to remember the good bargains I find and forget all the bad ones.

Home Sweet Home

We're going to have a home! Kind of exciting. Although it was great living here at Goldby's. Our new place won't be far away. We can visit often, and practice our Hebrew on each other.

Here is the entrance to an apartment we looked at. But didn't get.

Our own place doesn't look like much from the outside, but it's beautiful inside. It's tiny, but it comes with everything--furniture, bedding, iron, board, washer, dry rack, tiny refrigerator, hot plate, and maybe dishes and other stuff. That'll save me hours and hours of shopping or trying to shop or wishing I could shop. We're going over for another look this evening.

Language

I'm studying on my own right now, but we'll be taking a class in a couple weeks. Pronouns... I have to remember that the word for "who" sounds like "me", the word for "he" sounds like "who", and the word for "she" sounds like "he". So it's "hoo...hee's a heffalump" for sure. Jesh might know what that means, as would Pooh-bear. Nouns aren't hard, and verbs so far don't look too bad, except that they're all irregular--well, not really, but the middle changes instead of the ending, and it's the last syllable that is usually emphasized, so the part I'm trying to pay attention to is in the middle and unaccented and hard for my untrained ears to hear. Plus they all have two or more syllables--no simple ones like go, come, sit, stay, hear, eat, love. Come to think of it, there's "ba," which means "come."

December something

Ok, I'm sorry, I really am, that I didn't post last week, but I'm really having a hard time getting it together. My camera is giving me fits, Al's computer is giving me fits, and I'm having a hard time fitting into this new life. Not that there's anything particular strange about it--it's just that everything's different and seems sort of aimless and haphazard, which it isn't really, but it's hard to see any progress--looking into bank accounts, phones, apartments, doctors, shopping at strange grocery stores, getting around (no ramps for wheel chairs, no scooters in grocery stores), crazy traffic, roads that wind around and up and down and I can't tell north from south, can't read the signs, it's too cold, and I don't have time to shop for another jacket or sweater, and I have a headache most of the time.

Nevertheless, it's great being here. It's new, it's interesting, it's beautiful. A stranger spoke to me yesterday, two words, and I happened to know them. He said, "Effo John?" which means "Where's John?" Wow. I've been studying Hebrew quite a bit, and I don't think it's going to be too hard. But I've got so-o-o far to go. I don't even know how to say, "I don't know."

Here's a bag for you

Sharon, how do you think these would work? If I were to save a hundred of these, what size bag could you make? I think they'd be prettier than WalMart or Kroger bags. Of course, you'd have to finish 10 to 15 other projects first.

Israel

Psalm 107:30 Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven.

We're here! Or there, depending on perspective.

I promised Sharon a picture of our front door. Here it is.

Actually [hey, it's blue again, who did that?] we're on the second floor, and there is no balcony, but there are lots of windows so we can look out over other people's balconies and gardens.

Brussels

Someone will surely like this picture of construction work at Brussels airport. Bright colors on a gray day.

Forty winks.

We had to wait 8 hours and there was nothing to do and we didn't even want to buy lunch since it was so expensive. A chocolate mint saved from a Greek restaurant in London kept me going for quite awhile. I found a nice little wool scarf for only 207 E. (Euro's I presume.) Decided to postpone buying it (forever).

Houston to Orlando to London

November 26, 2009

Roland family

Some nice trees in Horsham.

An interesting tree Mr. Roland showed us. Only it's not a tree, but a wooden pole decorated with branches.

I wish I knew what these blue flowers are called. And why did these letters suddenly turn blue? I didn't do it! Really, I didn't!

We stayed with Rev. MacLeod, who kept us well fed and drove us everywhere through London traffic and took us out to a Greek restaurant.