A Busy Week Has Passed and an Exciting Week to Come

This week was pretty routine aside from a few hiccups here and there (literally and figuratively).
On Monday I had an interesting experience at my doctor's office. To make a very long story short - I had to go to her office in the more charedi area of Bet Shemesh because that's where she has morning hours. I basically waited an hour and a half for my 10 minute appointment and RIGHT before it was finally my turn to see the doctor, a woman walks in with her doctor saying she NEEDED to see the doctor and it would only be "shtei dakot". Well it wasn't "shtei dakot" and, needless to say, I was grateful to finally get out of that office half an hour later (after my 10 minute appointment was over).

On Tuesday I finally decided to try to get in touch with Tipat Chalav again. For those of you who might not know, in Israel your child gets their vaccinations and "check-ups" (kinda) at a place called Tipat Chalav. Every neighborhood has one. The doctor's office is for sick visits and flu shots which are the only shots not done in the Tipat Chalav (very confusing, I know). Anyway, I called them about a month ago ready to say my whole shpiel about being a new oleh, wanting to make sure my son's vaccines were all up-to-date, etc. The woman who answered the phone immediately cut me off, asked me for my name and number and said someone would call me. One month later, I decided it was time to try again. I was told by everyone here to ask for a woman named Dina who is the very nice english-speaking nurse that I would be taking Netanel to see. I finally got in touch with her and she was, indeed, very nice. She gave me an appointment for this coming Tuesday but told me to drop off his immunization card (from the states) before the appointment so that she could get his file started and see what he will need. I went to drop off said card on Thursday and it didn't go as smoothly as one would have liked (one meaning ME). Dina, sadly, was not there when I got there so I had to try to communicate with the hebrew-speaking nurses who, I can only assume, didn't really care. I tried explaining (several times) that Dina told me to bring in the card in advance and they kept insisting that THEY would not be able to open my file, something about not being "accepted" (still trying to decide exactly what that means - is my son not good enough for the Israeli vaccines?) I told them to just leave the card for Dina and she would deal with it. Finally, one of them switched to english and said - "Well I guess I can just leave this on Dina's desk" - brilliant! Why didn't I think of that!? We'll see what the story is when I get there Tuesday morning....stay tuned.

Still on the topic of Netanel's health, thank G-d he has been very healthy since we got here and we have not had to see the pediatrician as of yet (poo,poo,poo). However, seeing as my son is generally in the doctor's office once every 6 weeks, I was getting antsy having not seen the inside of a pediatrician's office in 3 months, so we decided to just make an appointment to meet the doctor and get Netanel a general "checkup" (it's in quotations because they don't really do check-ups here, another story...) Thankfully, the doctor has Friday hours so I was able to have Elie come with us. We took him this morning and he is, thank G-d, very healthy and we even got him a flu shot (woohoo!) The only hiccup (I said there were a few) is that the pediatrician's office is not really walking distance from our apartment. Thankfully, the Tipat Chalav is very close but the doctor is not. This is when we are the most thankful to have Elie's family right around the corner. David, Elie's brother-in-law, picked us up and took us there on the way home from his food shopping and Sara, Elie's sister, was able to pick us up afterwards and take us home - THANKS GUYS!!

The third (or is it fourth?) hiccup in my week was my shopping experience on Thursday morning. I went to Supersol (the big supermarket here) with Sara to do my usual Thursday shopping. When I was in Supersol 2 weeks ago, I decided to give in and sign up for the stupid Supersol credit card basically because I was so sick of being harassed every week when I go in. It also has some perks, like I was happy to experience this week - basically, in every aisle, there were several products that were 10% off if you used your Supersol card - yay for me! Or so I thought....We got to the checkout line and it was getting a little late (I had to get Tani at 1 and it was about 12:35). Something important to note before I go on - I have not yet received the actual Supersol credit card yet but I have gotten some other info about it in the mail. In the meantime, I was told I could just give them my Teudat Zehut number and that would find me in their system. Or so I thought....The cashier asked if I had a "kartis moadon" (rewards card=Supersol credit card) and I was very excited to finally answer YES! I told her, in my fantastic hebrew (insert sarcasm here), that I did not yet receive the card but I gave her my teudat zehut number. She proceeded to tell me that I was not in the system and I have to open a new card - it's as if I never signed up. I knew this to be impossible because I had already received lots of info in the mail so I was obviously in the system. Basically, the rest of the story goes that the lady who sits in the tiny kiosk to sign you up for a new card and my cashier were yelling back and forth as the minutes quickly ticked by. I'm still not quite sure what happened but I did get some kind of temporary card and was able to take advantage of all the sales (phew!). I don't know what the situation will be next week when I go...stay tuned.

As I mentioned in the title, this coming week is very exciting because my parents are coming on Friday!!!! We are really excited to see them and look forward to all the goodies they are bringing us...I mean we look forward to spending time with them and showing them around. See you soon, Momz and Dadz!