We're not in New York anymore.

Last night I got my new aluminum macbook! I'm so excited. As it should be, it is significantly faster than my old ibook. Webpages, wordscraper games, everything loads so much more quickly!!! I'm so excited. Unfortuantely, I had to wait until today to play with it, since my external hard drive didn't want to talk to it before it had turned on, so I transfered data from my old computer via ethernet cable. That took all night. It seems now that basically everything from my old computer is on my new one, music, photos, etc. I just need to find a couple serial numbers and the last programs will work, too! Oh well, I needed to sleep anyway, otherwise I would not have been able to wake up and going swimming with one of my roommates.

Swimming--almost all of my apartment-mates have joined the Jerusalem Pool, which is conveniently located on Emek Refiem, a 5-10 minute walk from our apartment. I swam for the second time this morning, although only swam 600m, rather than the 800m from last time because I managed to forget my goggles (and towel), so my eyes did not enjoy the swim. Also, we had to rush, since we needed to get back and change in time for our 1130AM appointments with the government to get our visas.

We got back and I drove my roommate crazy so we'd get there on time. Thankfully our taxi (once we found one) knew where to go--even knew that there were two offices and asked which one we wanted/what we were going for. Of course, we got there to wait and wait and wait.
As such, I got to learn about Israeli bureaucracy. All of the foreign students got to go to the misrad hapanim, we'll just call it the visa office.

We also discovered that the rules change regularly. Why are immigration/visa procedures so awful all around the world? How can we live in a world where people are treated so poorly. All around the world we are suspicious of each other in ways that are so often unnecessary. Where is the balance of security/liberty?

Once we finished that, it was too late to go to Hebrew class, so had lunch with a couple of my classmates who also got stuck in the office for awhile.

Almost forget, the other reason we're not in NY anymore: I went to the grocery store to buy paper towels. As I walk in, there is a sign that the 6packs of paper towels are 3 for 20NIS. When I tried to actually buy them, I needed to spend 100NIS, which I'd spent 99 already, so I got a pack of gum. The cashier took me over to another display where 2 6-packs were 20NIS. So I took her over to the giant display by the door. She examined it and said, but this expired yesterday--seeing print in size 12 font, as opposed to the sale signs and prices which were 150pt. In America, they would honor the price, since they still had the giant display up. This is NOT America. Here, even if it is a "super" store, they have different standards of what that means.

Now I'm just playing with my new toy and catching up on tv for a bit. Thanks to Apple!