Oy!
We dropped out of Ulpan, not because it was hard and we were behind, but because our project coordinator had us enrolled too soon. Everyone else in the class had been in the country for up to six months and had all their bureaucratic stuff settled. Studying at Ulpan is a full time job, Sunday-Thursday, from 8:15am to 12:45pm. In places like the US you could deal with government issues in the afternoon and use the weekend for apartment hunting. As you may have guessed, it doesn't quite work that way in Israel.
Many of the government institutions close down in the afternoon, and that includes the banks. On Friday afternoon almost everything else shuts down until Saturday night, even the malls and grocery stores. Rather than taking care of business on Friday morning, it is essential to go to the market and pick up enough food to last until Sunday lunch. Keep in mind our kitchen is limited and we are not able to stock up a week's worth of food earlier in the week.
You must understand that Israel is part of the Middle East where the operative term is, "Manana." Oh wait, that's not a Middle Eastern term but it should be. The operative terms are: five minutes-10minutes!, slowly-slowly (although people, including bus drivers, drive like hellions), two weeks. Even though the bank, the insurance, and other institutions will tell you that they will mail your bank card, checks, insurance card, grocery discount card, etc. -- and you should receive it two weeks -- your card never arrives. You have to go pick it up. What we don't understand is why don't they just say come pick it up instead of insisting they will mail it.
Ulpan was interfering with our ability to deal with the government and bank problems that never seem to get resolved. What's more, David and I both had to miss Ulpan during week 1 and week 2 because of doctor's appointments. One for him and one for me. Like the government, or possibly because of socialized medicine, many doctor appointments are only available during morning hours.
I made my first appointment before Ulpan started. There are four insurance carriers in Israel and you should have one picked on the day you arrive fresh off the plane. David, the excellent researcher that he is, discovered the providers were all similar. We decided on the plan that advertised themselves as being olim-friendly, they even had a website all in English.
In spite of their website, when I made an appointment, no one spoke English very well. I was able to figure out date and time, and was told it would be an English speaking doctor; but was given no further information, like where to go and what would happen and what to expect. I was expecting an American-style doctor's office: you arrive on time, check in with the receptionist, she confirms you have an appointment wants some insurance/payment information and then you sit and wait...and wait...and wait. It wasn't like that at all.
Instead of a modern glass or brick building that has the look of professional medicine, the Lumed -- the name of our insurance carrier, which also provides the doctors -- building is about 70 years old and looks like one of those creepy insane asylums like what you see in the movies. We arrived early knowing we would have some struggles figuring out where to go find the doctor. The pharmacy, appointment makers/money takers, and nurse are all situated on the main floor or ground floor -- which in US is also called the first floor. In Israel, the first floor is the level above the ground floor. So if you are told an apartment is on the second floor, you think you would only have to go up one flight of stairs. Wrong. The first flight takes you to the first floor and upward.
Going to the doctor for the first time and not speaking the language, David came with me. We were told to go to the third floor, and didn't know that in American lingo they meant the fourth floor. I don't like taking old, decrepit elevators and suggested using the stairs. On the third floor, we found ourselves in a small dimly lit hallway with one locked door. Back down the stairs, "Third floor, Third floor." We took the elevator this time, and were squished in with two other people. The elevators are maybe 3x3, and we push #3 and now end up on the 3rd floor which would be the fourth floor to everybody else in the world.
I shouldn't fault Israel for this, because the United States is notorious for not having a "13th" floor in many of their high rises.
We entered this large L-shaped room which appeared to be a waiting room due to the fact there were people sitting in chairs waiting. The room was windowless and painted a dingy green color and the 3rd floor had the look of the creepy insane asylum and feeling of a communist bread line. Most of the people waiting were older Russian woman.
There was no receptionist, just a bunch of closed doors and people sitting in functional green chairs waiting. Fortunately, there was a young girl from India who spoke English and seemed to know we had no clue what to do. She helped us figure it out.
So here's what you do. On the outside of each door is a list, written in Hebrew letters, and you find the time you were scheduled and see if your name is on the list. If not on that door, go to the next door and continue until you find your name. My name was written with my first name as my last name: Jona, ET. At least it was there. When your time comes, you simply go into the office. No one calls out names, and if you miss your turn -- too bad. As typical of most doctors, they do run late.
If you happen to speak Hebrew or better yet Russian, you can ask the other people waiting who's next and figure out who to follow. A man from Britain who spoke Hebrew quite fluently was able to do that for us. Apparently being a sci-fi fan, he was amused by "ET," and found out which woman was right before me. But there was an old lady waiting who didn't have an appointment and, "only needed a refill on her prescription and would only take a few minutes." Being the sweet, kind and gullible person that I am, I let the old lady go first and a few minutes turned into half an hour. Finally, it was my turn and I rushed in before somebody else could get in before me. The doctor spoke only Russian and Hebrew and was only interested in seeing my ID card. She called downstairs and made me reset another appointment with a doctor who spoke English. All that, so I could make another appointment.
The next appointment was after Ulpan started, but we were able to set it for around 6pm. The English speaking doctor was an Arab with a small and dingy office. At least he had a window, covered with battered mini-blinds with bent slats. Again, he was more interested in my ID number, took a quick look at this absolutely, disgusting thing growing out of my head and told me I needed to see a dermatologist. He printed out some paperwork that he stamped and initialed and had me go downstairs to set the appointment.
David and I set the appointment through a nice young orthodox lady -- hair covered -- who spoke a modicum of English but tried very hard to communicate with us. She found us an English speaking dermatologist and set another appointment. This appointment could only be in the morning so I would have to miss Ulpan. It would be in a blue building, and as typical with directions here, she pointed vaguely in the direction where it was located. The problem was, once outside there were two blue buildings.
The blue building is a modern structure more associated with a professional building like you might see in the US. Because I am seeing a specialist, I had to pay an additional 21 shekels for three months worth of service. That's approximately $5.50 -- not too bad. The system for waiting and finding your doctor was exactly the same as in the insane asylum building, and I now knew not to let anyone go before me for any reason. The dermatologist looked at the disgusting thing on my head, said it didn't look bad -- I'm taking that to mean it didn't look like melanoma -- and told me to schedule an appointment with a plastic surgeon to have it removed. Then I need to go back to her and make sure the surgeon, "got it all." She printed out some paperwork, stamped and initialed it, and sent me back to the appointment/money takers to schedule yet another appointment.
David saw all that I went through, and he takes some medication for high blood pressure. He become concerned that based on the way Lumed manages their appointments, he could end up running out of pills. He went ahead and made an appointment for a prescription refill.
Old pro's now, we got the English speaking Arab doctor, and he threw a fit when he saw what David was taking. He wants to change David's prescription and says 100mg of whatever he is taking is too much, too dangerous and it's not doing much good anyway. David has to go back and have his blood taken along with some other lab work, and of course, the appointment for the blood work would involve missing more Ulpan.
We still haven't found an apartment. When we first arrived, our project coordinator told us not to worry we had plenty of time. Yesterday, she told us we needed to be out in February. Uh-oh.
Apartment hunting has its own travails and we decided to focus all our efforts on finding a place, then resume Ulpan in February or March. So we have officially dropped out of Ulpan.
Oy.
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