This is Rachel T. Frog reporting live on the scene...

So it is 5:53 in the morning and I can't sleep. Figures huh? I am sitting here on the floor in our room as it is the coolest place to be and Bet Shemesh is in the middle of a heatwave. Yesterday it was 37 degrees with medium humidity. Today is supposed to be about the same. The fan in our room is awesome, but even so I woke up feeling icky (yes that is the technical term) and have not been able to fall back asleep.

My loss is your gain though since i now have nothing to do but sit on the floor and bring my blog up to date.

So I guess the biggest news is that we got our teudot zehut (identity cards) yesterday. We schlepped in to the Nefesh B' Nefesh office in Jerusalem to get them. When I say schlepped I mean it. I may be a whole lot closer to the holy city now than I was back home, but it is still an hour long bus ride. Granted it is less if you get an insane bus driver, but then you also need to buy a new shirt when you get there.

So we picked Channah up from camp early and off we went.

Oh, so I guess I should tell you about camp.

First of all, we decided putting her in to camp was really important as it would let her start integrating with other kids right away. We also knew we would need her out of our hair while we did all of the hundred thousand things we need to do in order ot get settled. No 4 year old wants to go appliance and mattress shopping!

We landed on Thursday and she started the following Sunday. The camp is near our new neighbourhood so hopefully she will meet kids who she can play with once we move in. She loves it and everything is great. Except...

The camp is run by two eleven year olds! Ok, their mom is somewhere "upstairs", but on the whole there are two (fairly responsible) eleven year olds watching a whole bunch of four and five year old girls. I must be crazy. I never would have gone for this 3 weeks ago. Here, for 150 nis for 2 weeks it sounds like a great deal!

Anyhow, so yestarday after we picked up our rental contract from the landlord we picked her up early to take her with us to see the new apartment. She got to "choose" her bedroom. Fortunatly she "chose" the one we wanted her to! Sorry ma' that means you get stuck with the ugly teddy bear room when yo ucoem visit.

Anyhow, the apartment is nice. By Toronto standards it is a little small, but by Israel standards it is a palace! The entrance to the building is gorgeous, the elevator is small but nice, and the view from the mirpeset (balcony) is breathtaking! Seriously, we have an amazing view of the hills and the rock quary.

The layout of the apartment is not bad. No wasted space, but also no real room to put in cupboards for "stuff". There is a broom closet, but no pantry. There is also not a whole lot of storage in the kitchen. For someone who is used to a load of strage space, this is going to take some getting used to! I am not overly concerned though.

The oven is small and fleishiks. It is two small to meet the minimum requirements for kashering, so anything milchiks will need to be double wrapped. A bit of a pain, but not really that big a deal. It has a niche above for a microwave where I think we will get a large toaster oven. Not sure where we will put a microwave, but that is neither here nor there at the moment.

We measured in our room and it does look like we can put in a 4 door aron (free standing closet). This is a good thing. I have no idea why Israeli builders do nto believe in closets of any sort, but they have created decent work arounds that involve Ace Hardware or Ikea furniture. am hoping we can also fit in one of our dressers as we need the space. Not sure how it will work out though. The previous tennants are leaving us 2 aronot (closets) so we are not goign to buy one until we see if we really need any more space.

So, things we know we need to buy so far.

beds and mattresses - hopefully going ot go look at mattresses this morning. worst case senario we have mattresses o nthe floor for a little while (or forever). It is what we had back in Toronto so I do not think it would really bug either of us.

table and chairs - I found a set of a table that seats from 4-8 and chairs that stack. The whole thing is 3655 nis (roughly $1000). Not bad all things considered! It matches everything we already own, will fit nicely in the space allotted to it, and unfortunatly is on back order. We have a folding table coming on the lift so we can wait a little- just get the chairs and wait for the table to be back in stock- but that means 2 delivery fees.

I am foing ot keep looking.

night tables - Don't much care what they look like so long as they have a drawer or cupbord or something.

hebrew letter stickers for our computer keyboards - this hebrew typing thing is killing me!

a small tv screen - hopefully used. It is just goign to be used for Channah's clockstart computer.

a drill - walls here are concrete so you need a hammer drill to do anything. it is on the list.

I also need to contact broadphone about getting our Canadian phone number set up. And getting the modem. In the meantime we are reachable on skype.

Ok, so wrapping this up for now (ok, really just breaking it up in to two parts so it does not become too unwieldly) let me just say that we are all doing okay and adjusting. Jason is working on job leads and figuring out the but routes. I am starting ot make contacts here and am dealing with all of the millions of details that come with moving to another country (today I finally get ot go set up a bank account!) and Channah has told us she loves Israel and never wants to leave. I can't say I blame here.