Finally I got something done! Yesterday I went to the NBN office and picked up my Teudat Zehut without an issue. They sent someone to get it for me in Ashdod and it was waiting for me at their office in Jerusalem when I arrived.
An interesting side note, it's getting to the point now that I'm (and I'm sure other people as well) are getting very jumpy around tractors. I passed a group of Arabs working on the new subway system and one of them was in the tractor starting it up and facing right at me.
There wasn't an issue, I walked right passed, but it's just another thing to keep in mind when you're out and about. The only way to go about this is to live you're life as normally as possible and don't give into the fear. The terrorists want us to live our lives in fear and the best way to fight that is to live you're life as normally and as freely as possible.
From the NBN office I went to Maaleh Adumim to see the Adler's. I met up with the Schamroths there and we all went out to Malcha Mall for dinner (Kosher Burger King-I'll start posting pictures eventually).
Burger King was interesting, in America you have inter-transliterated siddurim, where they have the Hebrew transliterated into English. Here it's the other way around. I was staring at their menu trying to figure out what it was saying (Davel Vooper?) The Double Whooper was very good.
The one issue I had that I knew I was going to have to deal with when I got here was getting my name changed so that it included both of my middle names. I was already and Israeli citizen so when I made Aliyah I had to come with my Israeli passport. So I was back and forth to the embassy in Washington a few times between December and March. When I received my Israeli passport I opened it to discover that they had left out my 2nd middle name. My middle name is "Israel" -Yisrael, someone there must have thought that I had put nationality in the wrong box so they returned my passport without the correct name.
When I told them they just told me to go to Misrad Hapanim here and get it changed, because I would have had to wait another few months if I had gotten it done in America (they mail everything to Israel) and I needed the passport in order start being processed for Aliyah.
The truth is it was the smoothest thing that I've done so far. Thank you to Yehudis for driving me around to all of these places in Beit Shemesh to take care of my documentation-it is saving me a lot of time.
I walked into the Misrad Hapanim where the security guard-that's right, the security guard-helped me fill out all of my forms to have my name changed.
They were incredibly helpful and they changed my passport and Teudat Zehut for me right on the spot. It only took about 20 minutes.
From there we went back to Ramat Beit Shemesh where I opened my bank account-another thing that went relativly smoothly. I know when I get my first bank statement all hell will break loose-but that will be for another post.
So hopefully by the end of today (if everything goes as planned) I'll be able to check 3 things off my list:
1. Name change
2. Bank Account
3. and cell phone
We should be heading out soon to go pick up the phone. Hopefully that will also be a successful trip.
I'll update the insurance situation on the next post. NBN is going to try to help me with this.
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