Haifa Apartment

After orientation, I hopped back on the train and head back to my new home (if you’ll remember, I had “officially” moved in, but had only slept there one night before leaving for almost two weeks). Got home pretty late and slept quite nicely.

The next two days were spent getting settled in. The owner of the apartment had given my roommate permission to get rid of anything in the room, and the room I now live in was filled with books (mostly in…was it Russian?). So, I spent the morning boxing up books and taking them out to “the bin”. Oh...the bin...

A few weeks before, my roommate had hosted a dinner and one of the girls came in a cute top. When complimented she said, “Oh yeah, isn’t it great? I found it in The Bin.” And my roommate responded, “Oh yeah, I love The Bin! I have two great dresses I found there.” And she went on to describe the dresses and talk about how they were not quite exactly the right size, but well worth getting and hemming, or whatever. I was so excited, “Is The Bin a good thrift store, or what?” I couldn’t wait to go see this place. And then the first friend turns to me and in her quite cultured-sounding British accent says, “Oh no. You know, those bins on the street.” “What?” And my other friend clarified in her American accent, “The dumpsters.” And then as I stood there with my mouth open, they went on talking about all these great clothes they’d found in the bin. When the conversation lulled, I had to ask, “Wait, so you just take clothes out of the trash??? Like, you dig around in there, or what???” “Haha, nono…”

And they explained to me a totally foreign concept they have here…that I love! In the states, when you have things that are still in a good condition, but you don’t want it for whatever reason, you may sell it on the internet, or donate it to a charity, or so on. Here, you put it in a box and set it *next* to the dumpster on the street. Then, as you walk home from the bus, you keep an eye out for such boxes and when you see one, look through it to see if perhaps someone else’s “trash” contains a treasure for you! So much more convenient and financially efficient!

So anyway, I packed up the seven or eight boxes full of old books and put them out in the bin…and viola! On my third trip out there was a man looking through the books. We conversed a bit (in my best Hebrew: “Ken, rak sepherim.”) and then he ended up coming back with a younger guy and they took them all! Hey presto, empty room for me! :-)

So, to the apartment. It is a great little place. One of those old, quirky, lots-of-character places. I love it—it’s like being in a secret club, knowing how to make this socket work, or get hot water from that faucet, or how to open the blinds. The kitchen window is next to the sink, so in the morning as I’m washing breakfast dishes and filling up the Brita filter, I get to have the breeze flowing over me from the backyard. Often I can look down and see the wild boars or mongoose (mongeese? mongooses?) playing around—and chasing away the many many neighborhood cats, which amuses me. :-P

I usually eat breakfast at the table in the kitchen, but we also have a nice little dining room.

And through the living room on the other side, the openness of the balcony that daily brings us lovely sunsets.

Then I feed the indoor cats, open the blinds on the balcony, and take down food for the neighborhood cats that have adopted our apartment complex. Grin. Yes, we are those ladies. But our neighbors seem to appreciate it, even asking my roommate concernedly who will take care of the cats while she’s out of town, and donating food periodically! Excellent community.

My bedroom is at the back of the apartment, looking out a third side of the apartment down toward the wadi, which has a trail that runs along the bottom of it toward the beach (but of course, you can’t go straight down the side of the wadi—it’s basically a cliff…have to walk up the hill to the park by the zoo and take the path from there). From my window you can also see the apartment complex’s compost pile. Cool, eh?!

We have our own washing machine, but hang dry it all on our lovely balcony…it will be interesting when my roommate gets back in December and we have twice the laundry. ;-)

Sometimes on weekends I get to go biking with our next door neighbor. One of her friends moved and left her bike behind. Usually my roommate and she bike together, but while my roommate is out of town, they’ve lent the bike to me. It is so great to be on a bike, again! And a very good workout, seeing as we live on the side of a mountain! Anywhere you go, there must be an up and a down, it’s just a choice of which direction to go first. Down toward the beach and then the steep hills back up, or up to the university and a wind-in-your-face coast back? Chetsie vechetsie. :-)

So, that’s the apartment. Bruchim habaim. :)