Arrived Safe and Sound

So, we arrived to our new home and I had expected to start making beds, go shopping, get the apartment cleaned, etc., and could not imagine how I was going to do that while feeling SO tired. Imagine our (MY!) excitement when we came in and saw that Saba and Savta had set up the whole place, complete with borrowed (made!) beds, pillows, table and chairs and the best part: a stocked fridge! It was such a relief to come in and just be able to relax, BH!

After exploring their new surroundings inside and out everyone who was not already asleep collapsed into a bed and slept for a few hours. When we woke up very groggy, but happy and excited to be here (“Imma, I have finally come to terms that we are moving here, and I like it!!”) we decided to walk up to the “merkaz” (center of town) and see what we could see.


Our house is a good 5 min walk from the main stores (banks, grocery, bakeries, toy stores, restaurants, etc) but it felt like an hour in the 97 degree weather.  BAW and I were trying to be cheerful (“look at how brightly the sun shines in Beit Shemesh!” “Wow, good weather for a tan!” “See, it’s good that the ‘dood shemesh’ doesn’t work yet, cold showers when we get home! “) but we weren’t fooling nobody. It was HOT. We got there and went to Café Bagels to get ice coffees and cold drinks for everyone. Upon hearing that we had just made aliyah, the owner brought us all ice coffee on the house. Then we thoroughly enjoyed a GREAT meal, compliments of the Chaburah ladies!! Thank you!!! 

After walking around a little more, we got home and cooled off with some ices and more cold drinks. It was then that I noticed that Little Red wasn’t quite cooling down like everyone else, and I was worried that maybe he had sunstroke. For those of you who don’t have any direct dealings with the Red Headed Species, they are SUPER sensitive to heat and sun. The real problems started when I changed his diaper. The boil on his leg had somehow managed to become a huge infected sore, and was hot and hard to the touch.  He screamed if anyone came near it, and after a bath and some motrin did nothing to calm him down we started to get serious.  There is an emergency care center about 8 minutes from our house, so TPH ran over to borrow Saba’s car (remember, NO CAR!) and we left the rest of the sleeping kids in the capable hands of Uncle S.