Day 28 (Afula)

This morning, we went to Afula. Having been on the kibbutz for the past month, with one visit to Yerushalayim and one visit to Beit Shean (which feels like a city when compared to kibbutz, but is still a tiny nothing of a town), Afula seemed appropriately huge. (Hint: it's not. Feel free to look up statistics and let me know.) We spent 5 hours in a shopping center, admiring the grocery store, and spending way too long in Home Center.

We did a very good job there: we didn't overbuy at all, but we did get lots of stuff we've been doing without. I think I'm most excited about the clothespins. Ah, clothespins! You let me hang our smallclothes (which don't go through the dryer) out on the line without my having to stick a straight-pin through each and every sock. Clip! Secured! Clip! Secured! The bliss. I mean, the dish-drying-rack is also very nice, as are the sink inserts, and the tablecloth to cover my rusty desk for Shabbat will be lovely, and the immersion-blender/food processor/whisk thingy will be quite useful, and I might even use the iron, but Gosh! Clothespins! The one thing we bought that we don't have an immediate use for was WD-40. What can we say? It was next to the cash register, and was an impulse purchase. I'm sure it'll come in handy...

Happily, the one optician in our entire region who gives out "green forms" for drivers' licenses is in the same shopping center as Home Center. We stopped by there, each got a form, and took a quick eye exam. I'd like to say that eye exams in a foreign language get a bit tricky: reading off 16 digits with quick confidence is slightly harder in not-English. As is answering the question, "What do you see?" The first time I managed, "Three balls, with a red one on top, then a white one, then a blue one on the bottom," and was suitably pleased with my descriptive skills, though I wish I'd said "circles." The next picture was much, much tricker. "What do you see?" "Uuummmm..." Stymied, I held up my hands with the tips of my pointers and thumbs  respictively touching each other and all other fingers pointed down. "I don't know the word." I learned that the Hebrew word is "משולש" and the optician politely asked me for the English word. Triangle. I was able to confidently answer his question and declare that the triangle was red, though!

Other excitement of the day involved buying plastic fruit for BSM, whose favorite toy has been oranges for these past few weeks. The problem with oranges is that eventually they get either mushy, or turn strange colors, or both. Hopefully the plastic fruit will last longer. BSM seems to like it even more than the real thing, possibly because I've never put him in a cardboard box filled with real fruit before. I've never seen him play so vigorously.