Tips and Tricks for Israeli Grocery Shopping, by Angel Eads

Alright folks, all the holidays are behind us, vacations are done and final exams are looming, which means very little time to blog and not many interesting things to blog about, so today I will be writing about adventures in errand running!

Kind of the same but different: that describes life in Israel.  Life here looks mostly the same, but it takes some adaptation to accomplish basic tasks.  For example:  in Israel this is a mop:

Yes, I know.  It looks like a squeegee.   That’s because it is a squeegee.  (By the by: if, like me, you are confused about how to mop your floor with a squeegee, fear not!  You can google it.)

I could fill a month of blog posts with the little things that seem familiar, but are just a little bit foreign.   However, today, I will be focusing specifically on a task essential to daily living.   So without further delay, I present:

Tips and Tricks for Israeli Grocery Shopping

In order to successfully acquire food in Israel you will need to embrace a few cultural realities, which are as follows:

1.      Grocery shopping is not a routine errand; it’s a full contact sport.  No pads, no referees and no rules.  Keep your elbows out and remember: your cart can be used as a weapon AND a shield.

2.      Tiv Taam is your source for all things imported, Eden Teva is your source for all things organic and SuperSol is your source for all the things that you wouldn’t usually find at a grocery store: bath towels, throw pillows, lawn furniture, small porcupines, because why not?

3.      Grocery shopping is exhausting and you are going to need energy to carry you through.  I recommend picking up an Ice Café on your way to the store.  (Sidenote: You’re going to have a lot of life changing experiences here.  One of the more important ones will be discovering Ice Cafes.  It is a popular beverage here.  Imagine that a Frappuccinno and a Slurpee had a beautiful, caffeinated, calorie-laden baby. “Isn’t that kind of what a Frappuccino already is?”  you ask.  Yes, but this is so, so much better. )

4.      If it can be covered in sesame seeds, it will be covered in sesame seeds.  Just go with it, and don’t stand still too long.  Someone might mistake you for an inanimate object in need of a sesame coating.

5.      Get an old lady shopping cart, it’ll change your life.

6.      Fruits and vegetables can be acquired at the grocery store but are generally much cheaper when purchased at one of the many kiosks around the city.   These magnificent oases of unbelievably cheap, fresh produce are your reward for surviving the supermarkets.

7.      Fruits and vegetables can also be acquired at the shuk. If you’re not sure what that is, just imagine a really large, really dirty farmers market.  Pro tip: Wear closed toed shoes.

8.      You now like cottage cheese.  It doesn’t matter what your past feelings towards that particular dairy product were.  It is completely different here and it is amazing.

9.      No matter how much food you buy or how often you shop, you will need to allocate several hours to each supermarket trip.  “Oh,” you think, “I only need to grab a couple of things. It won’t take that long.”  Think again my friend.  Bring a book.  Be prepared to stand in line for a solid 45 minutes (remember: elbows out!) and spend another 15 explaining to the cashier that you don’t want to sign up for the stores club card because you don’t come here that often.  You generally avoid shopping at this store since, every time you do, they spend 15 minutes trying to convince you that you need a club card.

10.  You may want to sign up for a club card.  They’re actually a pretty good deal.

11.  Congratulations! You have acquired food, braved the checkout line, loaded all your food into your old lady cart and made it home.  You are now too tired to cook, but don’t worry!   That is what the falafel and shawarma stands are for.  - blogger of the month, Angel Eads

On Hitting One's Stride, by blogger of the month Seth Morrison

The shuk in Beer-sheva

Once upon a midnight dreary,

while I pondered why I moved to a foreign country,

a strange sensation struck my psyche.

Was it elation, bliss, or gladness?

Lamentation, grief, or sadness?

None of these it was,

though for them many an instance gave just cause;

Instead the passion rubbed the middle,

defied assurance, like a riddle.

My heart had gathered all peaks and vales under its tent,

at long last found contentment.

This describes my recent progression through a set of phases people often experience after moving to an unfamiliar and less comfortable place than wherever it was they came from. Although the individual durations of each vary, it is said that one progresses through four phases in total:

1) the honeymoon phase,

2) the resistance phase,

3) the understanding phase,

4) the assimilation phase.

The honeymoon  period occurs when you first begin living in your new environs. The differences in culture and surroundings are still novel and intriguing. Every day is sweetened by new experiences and relationships.

When the honeymoon period wears off, the resistance phase sets in. This is when the question “What on earth am I doing here” is a perpetual elephant in the room. Small, relatively trivial trials and tribulations of daily life compound to appear as a massive, unsolvable problem. Second-guessing the decision to uproot and move increases in daily frequency, just as reversing that decision is decreasing in feasibility. My resistance phase hit its final climax last week, when our class of 2016 was taking final exams and simultaneously a four-day rainstorm hit Beer Sheva and all of Israel. I usually enjoy rain after having lived in Washington state, but Beer Sheva has a peculiar phenomenon some students have been calling “mudstorms.” This is what happens when rainfall and the fine Negev desert sand blown up by the wind mix in the air to create a clay-like mud vapor that tinges the horizon brown and coats any object that stands in its path, as though the desert wind god had taken up abstract expressionist painting. Consequently, the mental trauma of test-taking and dreary weather blended to produce a potent concoction of gloom that made me ask that question above a few times more than was comfortable.

This week, as I wrote about in my January 14^thpiece, the final exams were a thing of memory, a fleck of dust in my rearview (provided I passed them all, some scores still pending). It was during this week that I had my midnight insight, realizing that I had passed on into the understanding phase, and thus had gained some contentment to moderate the initial highs and subsequent lows of the preceding months. It was a week of reconnections with friends, such as an evening dinner and conversation stretching late into the night. It was a week of re-enculturation, such as spending a morning shopping for produce with the locals in the shuk (market). And, this week the skies cleared and temperatures rose all week long, as if God had revealed the bright Israeli shemesh (sun) to mark a promising new beginning for our class.

Blue sky in Beer-sheva

The assimilation phase has not yet set in and mustn’t be rushed. It’s both reasonable and prudent to give it ample time and space to develop on its own schedule, for that final phase is measured by a rate of furlongs per fortnight, not inches per instant. For now, my stride has been hit, and I have some work to do.   - blogger of the month, Seth Morrison