weddings upon weddings

I have been pretty busy taking care of all the details of moving to an other country. I finally got my kupat cholim (health insurance and provider) yesterday. This was a difficult process. So things in Israel seem to never been open when you need and always seems to be closed at weird times. Those of us coming from the west are used to places being upon in semi-convenient hours and being able to take care of things online or by a phone call. Well not here in Israel. So to get my kupat cholim I first needed to go to the post office to pay a few dollars for I don't even know what and then take the receipt and this paper form the post office to the health provider of my choice. So after two days of trying to go to the post office to find it to be closed for who knows what reason. It then took me a few more days to get to teh health provider because many businesses here in Israel close at 1pm and sometimes open again at 4pm or don't open again till the next day. This is very convenient for the people working there since there is no Sunday here, the weekend is Shabbat and for those of us who celebrate this holy day it doesn't leave another day to run errands like Sunday in America.
So basically it took me a few days to find the time to get back to get health coverage but now I have it.

Activating my bank card was also a long process. I received it in the mail a few weeks ago but wasn't able to activate it. i tried to call the number and use the English section and then tried it in Hebrew. I even had my friend's husband call and try to do it for me, we just couldn't figure out what number's it was asking for so finally on a day I was able to get to the bank before it closed, the bank is open from 9-3pm Sunday-Thursday, I was able to activate it in the bank over 3 weeks later.

Besides these little odds and ends I have had a few simchas yay!! Mazal Tov!

Last night my friend Marna got married. It was such a beautiful high energy wedding. Marna looked beautiful and I loved her dress! Above is me, Aliza, and Rachael looking oh so beautiful and pregnant with the Rose girls minus Shiran.

So the day before Marna's wedding I became a shomeret. The bride and the groom have a few close friends serve as Shomrim (guards) for them. This is kind of the equivalent to Bride's Maids because we run around taking care of weddings details and entertaining the family member's and making sure the bride and groom don't see each other. Some couples don't see each other for the week before the wedding so the first time they see each other is when the groom is escorted in by all the men singing and dancing while the women surround the bride. This is a beautiful and powerful that always brings tears to my eyes.


In little over a week Shalva is getting married so we had a tichiel (scarf) party for her. Here I am showing Shalva how to tie her tichiel after she gets married. I don't know how I became the tichiel tying teacher but I did and I showed her a few different ways to do it.

This is the last tichiel of the night and it happened to be form me! If I do say so myself I tied it on her pretty nicely!

So many simchas...Mazal Tov yoyeh lanu v'lachol Yisrael!