Shabbos and more fun with Bituach Leumi!

So Friday, I got up at around 7am to go to Shacharit. Then I hung around Givat Shmuel for the morning doing some work on the computer, and getting to know my 2 other roommates, one who's Israeli, the other who's a law student in Chicago and was in Israel for the summer as an intern.
I got the bus to Ramat Beit Shemesh at around noon. It felt so good to be be back in RBS for Shabbos, where I spent Shabbos with my families good friends, the Schamroths.
Shabbos was awesome, you can't really compare Shabbos in Israel to Shabbos in America. Particularly when you spend it in an almost entirely religious community, and every single other person in the entire community is doing the exact same thing that you are. I remember seeing a list of "what we like about Israel" and one of the things on the list was "Shabbos, really feels like Shabbos."

I walked down to Ramat Shilo, where I will be moving to sometime next month, for Mincha and Shalosh Seudos, and ran into Dovid Gancher from the Aliyah show on Arutz Sheva. Nice guy, and he's a head hunter, and good person to know.
I had Shalosh Seudos with my Rosh Yeshiva, and had a very nice close to Shabbos with maariv in Ramat Shilo.

Today, more fun! I went down to open up my bank account at bank #1 and found that it was closed in Sunday. I went to bank #2 and found that they could do anything because of the situation with my tudat zehut. They can open up a bank account with me before my tudat zehut is issued, and they can open it up after I have my tudat zehut, but they can't open up the account after it has been issued but before I have it. I should be getting my tuday zehut today and will be able to open up the account tomorrow (hopefully will also be able to get my phone after that). Thanks to Yehudis for driving me around everywhere.
Another interesting story with my tudat zehut (which I'm hoping to pick up today from the NBN office), I got a call from Nefesh B' Nefesh saying that somehow my Tudat Zehut never made it from Ashdod to their office in Jerusalem! Would I mind if I could wait a day and pick it up tomorrow.
NO! I want my tudat zehut today because there are too many things I need to do that I can't do without it! I need the Tudat Zehut to open a bank account, and I need to open a bank account before I can get my phone!
Not to knock NBN they've been incredibly helpful throughout all of this, but if I'm going to be dealing with American's I have a right to act like an American!
I also went on trip #2 to Bituach Leumi (health insurance) today. The guy there was in credibly helpful but if I went through his office it would take close to month before I was insured (arrg, if only I'd remembered to go to Bituach Leumi at the AIRPORT!). He recommended that I go to the one in Jerusalem, I'll have a longer wait at the office, but I'll get insured faster.

So hopefully the next time I write I'll have my Tudat Zehut, and I might have opened my bank account and even gotten a phone. But I'm looking up! Because I know that it'll take a while but once everything is done all I'll have left are some great stories to tell.