Israeli Household Necessities

• Industrial Strength Washing Machine...

...and dryer.










NOT laundry detergent!





















Central Air Conditioning















Home Security System

Life in Hashmonaim

Life here is like nothing I have ever experienced before. We're definitely not in America anymore. When school gets out at 2:00 there are children of all ages roaming the streets, including 3-4 year old boys, without parents! In America they would go straight to child protective services. I even saw a toddler racing down a very steep hill on a little bike and crashed WHAM! right into a parked car. His sister who was supposed to be watching him was riding next to him on her bike. He cried a bit and went back on his bike. I saw some kids playing with a giant wooden spool of some sort which was almost as big as they were, and they rolled it down the hill WHAM! right into some body's garage door. There's a lot of garbage to play with here, people just dump it into open lots. That will change once more Americans move in, and once more homes are finished with construction.

Speaking of construction, the homes here seem to be built by Israelis with A.D.D. They get halfway done with one house and say "OK, we're halfway done with this place, let's go on to the next house!" None of the homes here seem to ever get finished. Ours was not set up for phone service. We're waiting for an electrician to fix it. The bathtub upstairs works fine, until you try to drain it, because then the water comes up through the floor. My neighbors tell me that is not atypical.

We don't have a washing machine yet, or a car. I tried doing some laundry by hand, managed to do a few loads, before I realized I was using fabric softener. The clothes didn't really get clean, but they sure smelled nice, and they were oh-so-soft! ( I used a LOT, because, darn-it, these clothes just weren't getting clean!)