Our Stuff is Here! (and other stories)

Yay! So, here's how it went: On Monday, R went to the shipping office, and Annie (pronounced ah'nee) told him that our stuff would get here Thursday the earliest, and Sunday the latest. So I called her: "It's not right, can't work like this, we really need our stuff - the kids are bored, etc." On Tuesday, she still wasn't budging, but our neighbor told us we need to call twice a day, so we did. The hardest part was that Annie was really sweet, so I felt a little bad nudging her so much, but we really did want to get our stuff. By Wednesday morning, Annie said she was not able to get a truck for us, but we would get it Thursday. At 1pm, I was at a neighbor doing laundry, when Simcha came in to tell me that our stuff was coming at 4. At 2:45, I got a phone call: "Hello, this is your mover - we just got into Yad Binyamin. How do we get to your house?" So, things were a bit hectic and crazy, but we got our stuff. Yay! I was afraid that we had used up our brownie points with that going so smoothly. Read on and see what you think.
We had an appointment this morning at 10:30 with our Absorption advisor at the Absorption Office in Ashdod. We left five minutes late, but would have been on time, if the office had been where map website said it would be. We had Bezalel, Leah, and Petachya with us, and, thanks to the kind and trying-to-be-helpful residents of Ashdod, we got quite a city tour. After stopping at the recreation office of the area, an absorption center, the new central bus station and the City Council building of Ashdod (which, by the way, is closed on Thursdays in the summer), the kids spotted a really cool park with the craziest slides you've ever seen. Since they had been relatively good during the drive, we opted to stop and let them run around. On the way from our parking spot to the park along a strip of shops, we passed (you guessed it!) the Absorption Office! We ran inside, knowing we were 1 hour late, and our kind advisor said that she would take us . . . after her regularly scheduled appointments. We decided to reschedule, and hope we'll be on time for our Monday 11am appointment.
On the way out of Ashdod, we stopped to add me as a second driver on the retal car contract. I must say, I handled myself very well - pushing in front of 4 burly Frenchmen who were trying to bargain with the woman behind the desk. That enabled me to drive to Gedera this afternoon to sign up for health insurance. The first step involves going to the post office and getting a stamp with a receipt of some kind. We did that yesterday. Well, actually, first R went to try to sign up the whole family, but I had to go again and sign up myself and the kids. Since it's socialized medicine here, the health insurance office is also a doctor's office - kind of hard to explain. That's where I went today. I spent two hours filling out forms (some that I didn't even have to fill out!) and figuring out what the Hebrew ailments were on the form to see if we have them or not. We now have our temporary health insurance cards. I just have to get another form stamped by the bank and return it to the health office, and R has to go sign himself up, since he wasn't on my form. Let's just stay healthy!
That's all for now, folks. Shabbat Shalom!