Shalom,

  The horrible blaring music has stopped and the silence is ringing in my ears.  Perhaps there is a prohibition on noise on Friday night.  I hope so.  It is so amazing.  The marina looked like a scene from, if not Animal House, then at least what a college fraternity party sounded like.  Loud music, beer, singing at the top of young lungs and young males acting like crazy people.  There were a dozen in the open space between our boat and Eve’s and they were just yelling and blaring their music until a blue shirt security guard invited them to leave.  The rest of the noise was on boats that belong here.  There were empty beer cartons and plastic bags floating in the water.  Just a general mess and not very amusing. 

  But now it’s quiet and lovely.  This is the story of the rest of the day.

Ru

A Library Disappointment but a Kindle Success

When we were kids we donated money to plant trees in Israel. I wish they’d spent the money on libraries instead. Like Georgia O’keeffe, I’m not so much of a tree person; but I am a library person and Ashdod is really disappointing in that department. I took myself off to the Ashdod Municipal Library today, the closest library to the marina and the only one showing on the Ashhdod map. It was a 40 minute walk but it’s easy to find your way around so that was no problem. (Well I had a tiny mix up on my way, but got lucky and asked a “Municipal Library” patron and she pointed me the right way. Turn right on Shippira and left on Herzl: go a few blocks over and there it will be. And there it was. And it was open! Sort of open as today is Friday and that means early closings and limited services. Only the fiction section of the library was open. That would have been OK if I could have gotten a library card and checked out some books. But only Israeli citizens can have cards. I had been told last week, at the Friday meeting of the English Speakers Club of Ashdod, that I could buy a membership. Nope, I couldn’t. The lady behind the desk suggested I borrow a friend’s card. She was sure that if we stayed for several months we’d make at least one friend who would lend me a card. She did kindly give me the key to the bathroom in the “not on Friday section.” I asked about wifi so I could download 2 Roanoke County Public Library books to my Kindle. She asked what I meant by wifi? Oiy! I turned on my Kindle and there was no wifi. Maybe not on Shabbas? Oiy! So I left and walked the 30 minutes back towards the boat to the Sea Mall and asked at a Kinkos like place if they had wifi or knew of a hotspot. They had computers but no wifi ;suggested the bank and then said, “ Aroma coffee shop at the mall.” Now there are two malls, but from where he was pointing, I guessed it was Sea Mall. I had not a clue how I would find the place once I got there, but I would just search the mall and hope for the best. As I walked to the security entrance I saw in huge letters

Aleph, Resh, Vav that sounds like O when in the middle of a word, Mem, and Hey that sounds like Ha at the end of a word. Aroma! Yippee for me. So I went in, sat in a booth and figured out on their all Hebrew page how to sign in and click the “agree to their terms or it won’t work” box and voila, my 2 RCPL books were down loaded in 2 minutes. So then I ordered an iced cappuccino to thank them for having wifi and to hold me for my next trial…the supermarket on Friday. But even that wasn’t so bad. I had brought bags so didn’t need a coin for a shopping cart. Using a cart leads you to buy more than you can carry. I got the essentials, diet grapefruit flavored soda, a bottle of white wine, a cooked chicken, salad stuff, 6 eggs and 2 cans of cat food because the stray mom cat and her kitten have eaten most of the can of Spam substitute we’d gotten God knows where. All that was almost more than I could carry the mile back to the boat. So now we have food and I have about 1000 pages of library books to read before June 21^st. One is Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore. The other is beach reading: Heat Wave by Nancy Thayer. I started the Montefiore book at Aroma and it looks to be quite interesting.

Randal and I spent yesterday on a bus trip to Tel Aviv to visit the “insurance pool” office to purchase insurance so we can ride our motorbike. Luckily Randal has an M on his driver’s license so he doesn’t need a new Israeli license. They have lots of rules for driving vehicles that aren’t rental vehicles. If you rent a car it’s just a matter of paying money. If it’s your own vehicle there’s lots more paperwork.

I don’t know how long we’ll stay in this marina. It is a lovely location but there is so much noise it’s truly awful. Not boat noise or even Israeli Navy noise. It’s loud music all afternoon and night until the wee hours of the morning. Pounding music and people yelling. I wish they could have a good time without making us miserable. How can think to find ways to make peace when there’s drum music pounding in your head. It may well be kids just finished with high school who are going wild before they enter their military years. I might be doing the same thing. I’m just afraid they’ll have an army all hard of hearing. To be fair, when we need help with directions, I look for a “kid in a uniform” and especially the girls are always helpful. And they are always carrying a gigantic pack and machine guns…or at least half of them have the guns. They learn how to use them and Israel has very low “gun crimes.”

So now it’s time to make dinner. I have no wifi connections so will send this later. 

It is now…later and I have wifi.

Ru

DoraMac

You can see the text of the book on my Kindle and the interior of the coffee shop.

I have to say, I was a bit reluctant to get a Kindle but now I am a true convert.