Milestone

I made aliyah in February 2014. That's two-and-a-half years ago. (Trust me: I just did the math.)

During that period, I converted from shekels to dollars many times to determine whether or not something was a good price. Yesterday, I was considering buying some things online, and found myself converting from dollars to shekels. Cool.

I don't see myself converting from Fahrenheit to Celsius any time soon, though.

Mildly Amusing Pee Story

Note the title: this story involves a urine test. Please stop reading now if that makes you uncomfortable.

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Still here? Okay, the second warning is that this story is very mildly amusing, so consider your expectations sufficiently lowered.

I've gotten my favoring urine test results in this country. The nurse looked at the dipstick, smiled, and said "Everything looks fine." Then she looked at me sternly and added, "But you need to drink more."

International Kashrus Alert

Israeli Honey Nut Cheerios are now certified OU-dairy. (!!!)

Judging from the allergy information, they're probably just dairy-equipment, but still.

Speaking of Cheerios, I've only seen Honey Nut and MultiGrain Cheerios here, not the Original "yellow" variety. I hear they're available, but much less-widely stocked.

Birthday Wishes, Israeli Style

I sent BSM to daycare with a bunch of cupcakes for his Hebrew birthday, and Dikla sent photos and a video of the kids celebrating to our Daycare Whatsapp group. Being nice, decent human beings, many mothers responded with variations of "Happy birthday." But since they're mostly Israeli human beings, the variations were varied indeed. Here's the analysis from me (green) and Husbinator (white). Translation is in blue:

How Words Work

We gave BSM a child-friendly camera for his birthday, and he's been enjoying it mightily. This morning, he asked me how to get to a particular feature, so I showed him how to select it. However, before instructing him to push the final button in the sequence, I paused to teach him something useful about that button.

"Hang on," I said, and pointed to the "OK" button. "What letters are these?"
Hurrying to get to his feature, BSM distractedly said, "Letters."
"Yes, but which letters?" Pointing to the O, I asked, "What's this letter?"

Actually looking this time, BSM said, "O."

"That's right. And what's this one?" (Pointing to the K this time.)

"K."

"Right. So what does that say?"
"Camera."
Good guess. Smart kid. Clearly understands about words being made of letters and forming abstract representations of real-world concepts. 

"Not quite. This letter's an O and this letter's a K. That's an O and a K. O-K. What word is that?"

Eyes lighting up, BSM crows, "OK!"

"Exactly! So once the screen shows what you want, you push "OK". All right? Got it?"
Reaching for the button, BSM responds "Okay," and immediately cracks up without any prompting on my part. Yay, getting jokes and wordplay!