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Well, we finally have an apartment in Israel.

Jason just got off the phone with the landlord and we can go to the apartment ot get the keys any time now. Yay!

Did I mention our keys are purple. Ok, not a big thing, but a fun thing none the less.

We spent all day today running and going and doing. I can not believe how much there is to do!

Today we got-

2 under sink cabinets - 1 for each of the bathrooms. I should explain that we sort of have 1 and 2 halves of a bathrooms in our new place. The "master bath" has a toilet, sink and open shower so the entire room gets soaked when you shower.Yes we have a shower curtain, but the water goes all over the floor and sprays pretty much all over the room. The "public" washroom is divided into two rooms. A tiny room contains a toilet and an itty bitty sink. A larger room next to it contains a bathtub and shower and a larger sink. A door at the other end leads to the laundry room and entrance to the mirpeset (balcony).

None of these rooms had any storage. We felt that toilet only room needed no real storage (but will likely be getting an on the wall shelf above the toilet for extra toilet paper and bathroom readers and what not). The other rooms clearly needed some storage for things like shampoo, toothbrushes, extra supplies, face towels, etc. Not having any cabinetry in a bathroom is a normal occurance in this country, so there are cabinets made of rubbermaid type plastic designed to fit around sink plumbing and are sold fairly inexpensively in hardware stores).

While we are on the topic of bathrooms, I also got two small garbage cans for the toilet bathrooms and toothbrush holders, toilet brushes, soap dishes, etc. Oh, and two night lights. One for each toilet room.

two phones (one for our regular phone line and one for our voip line.) - And while we are on that note, we still do not know when our phone lines will be set up. We called the guy who was supposed to arrange for it all, and he told us it was taken care of, and then we never heard from him again and he is not so hot at returning our calls. We called the phone company ourselves today and we know the order was palced, but it was for next week. We asked to have it changed to tomorrow, and they told us they would try. In other words, don't bet the farm on hearing from us any time in the next week. I really hope it goes faster than that becuase a week without internet might send me round the bend!

Night tables - we were having a hard time finding anytihng we liked in a reasonable price range. We found a set of desk drawers today. The right size, the right height. Decent colour. Excellent price. It is just funny becuase the top drawer of each set has a lock on it... I wonder what we should put in those...

A desk - Ok, so as we both have laptops we do not really need a desk per se, but we do need a permenant home for our files, our printer, regular office supplies, etc. We found a nice, cheap desk (actually, the one designed to go with our night tables) that has a hutch above it and a decent ammount of storage space and places for other electronics.

Lightbulbs - seems fairly self explanitory. I told you Israeli apartments did not include anything. Actually, I take that back. Want to know the funny thing? It includes mezuzzahs! Seriously, every door has a simple mezuzzah already in place. We will replace some of them with ones special to us, but theoretically they are already there. (Actually, as the halachot of putting up a mezzuzah are different in Eretz Yisrael and they need to go up the day you move in- even in a rental (no 30 day grace period like in chutz la'aretz)

Bubbie friendly objects - scrubbies, a broom, a squeezy (what Israeli's use instead of a mob), a dustpan, and other random bubbie toys :) Yes Bubbie, I even plan to use them once in a while. In this catagory

2 fans - when it is 37 degrees you run the air conditioner at night and save your sanity. When it is 32 you use fans and save your shekels.

a microwave - I do not think this one really needs an explanation.

a garbage can - every kitchen needs one. It is shiney!

a timer - for once we fianlly settle on which shabbat appliances we want ot buy (we are trying to decided between two different brands on hot plates, crock pots and shabbos kettles.

4 chairs - the precious tennants left us a nice sized table on the mirpeset. We are giong to move it inside and use it as our only piece of furniture in the main room until the nice one we ordered gets here and/or our lift shows up (whichever shows up first). We bought 4 plastic chairs to use with it that will end up on the mirpeset and being used in the succah.

So all the stuff is beign delivered tomorrow. No wait, I lie. That is what was supposed to happen. In the end they could not do that so my saviour Lor is picking the stuff up for me in the morning. Did I mention that I was in the store for almost 2 1/5 hours this afternoon?!?!?! Service here is not what it is back home... wait a minute... maybe it is... Ace is sort of like Canadian Tire now that I think about it.

Also being delivered tomorrow is our fridge, our mattresses and our beds. We hope.