There are six of us in our apartment and two other apartments about a 3 minute walk away with ISFers. We had lots of cleaning and organizing to do between the three apartments (or flats as the Israelis like to call them). All of the apartments need to be kept kosher, so we had to kosher a lot of the kitchen utensils and plates etc and I labelled everything with בשרי וחלבי for dairy and meat. Speaking of which I labelled pretty much everythingggg that could be labelled: table, drawers, mirror, fridge, sink, etc. We don't start ulpan until after the haggim so I need to get a head start! The first day was full of running around to the bank where I openned my Israeli bank account and will get my visa card very soon and then a quick falafel break and over to the grocery store. I walked back and forth to the downtown area four times though which boy oh boy was a long way with a lot of sun. Good thing I packed buckets of sunscreen! Everything in Akko is walkable, but I will definitely be walking off my meals doing it. And so far we're eating pretty well! Peanut sauce stir fry a la Hannah for the first night and just tonight had more chicken and penne pasta. We are all shopping and cooking together, family style, which is working out really well so far!
The grocery store called ShuperSal שופרסל is just around the corner, I'm talkin' crazy close! But of course the way cheaper market called My Market is in the center of the city, about 20 minute's walk. More to come on what will prevail: my laziness or my cheapness.
I'm learning new things every day. Yesterday I learned that pigeons are not social creatures, they enjoy solitude from people and finding an empty apartment is like winning the pigeon lottery. So we have been procrastinating the cleaning of the laundry room where we still have friends visiting us every morning. I'm sure once we get desperate enough for clothes we will figure something out. For now, we have brand new sheets and towels courtesy of Ma'ase Olam (very stylish ones at that...).
Today we visited the Municipality building and got a special tour of the security center. And it really was special, we are some of the only people besides employees who have ever been allowed in that room! Akko has cameras on every single corner so they can see the ENTIRE city from a few TV monitors. Seriously, they can zoom all the way up to your window... so living on the fourth floor and I'll still have to close my blinds I guess. But they work with the police department משטרה as well as their own security guard-like people who patrol the area to keep everything safe. They even have an app where you can push a button on your phone and it sends an SOS to them and they call you and send somebody out to help right away, which is really nice to know!
We also visited the Young Adult Center מרכז הצעירים today for a Rosh Hashanah toast with the Israelis which is the place where we'll be doing all of our study sessions and ulpan. It also has computers for us to use and tons of other resources!
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