The Laughlins

We had some complications getting our Internet set up. It turns out that there are multiple steps to the process and basically three different things that you pay for: a phone line, ADSL, and an Internet provider. This is obviously similar to the US, but it is hard to communicate as to who we need to call and what the next step is. Apparently, the phone company hooks up your phone line and ADSL. A man came yesterday to hook up the phone line, but he did not speak any English, and seemed to want information from us that we were not adequately giving him. He wandered the hallways on his phone and ended up going downstairs to the actual Bezek phone company to figure out what he needed to know. When he came back, it took him all of two seconds to connect the phone line. We plugged our phone in, but the Internet did not seem to be working. We went downstairs to Bezek, and they said that our account showed no ADSL yet, so we would have to wait 24 hours for the ADSL to be up and running. They gave us phone numbers for Internet providers, and I chose the first one that I could understand. The customer service rep was very nice, and gave me logins and passwords, and then connected me with the support technician to set up my Mac. He definitely seemed to know what he was doing. He asked me about the ADSL light on my modem, but it was blinking. He said that it was not synchronized through Bezek yet and said that I should call them again. I called, and the lady I spoke with didn’t seem to see our ADSL on there yet. She then told me the same thing as the lady downstairs, and said it would take 24 hours for the ADSL to be up and running.
Mark and I decided to go on a walk last night to the other end of town that we hadn’t been to yet. We live amongst many Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, so during busy hours, you just see floods of BLACK crossing streets, getting off buses, and going to stores. For those of you that don’t know, the Orthodox Jews are what we would think of as the “most strict” sect of Judaism. They can be visually spotted because of their black pants and coat, white shirts, long beards (generally), long ringlets in front of their ears (payot), and a black kippa (small, round flat hat worn on the back of the head) or black hat over their black kippa. Instead of a full prayer shawl, most men wear a prayer shawl shirt of sorts that has the tassels hanging down off of either side at the bottom. The women have to wear long skirts/dresses and have a hair covering. It is funny to see many of the little boys with shaved heads and then these long ringlets in front of their ears and black kippas. Since the Simpsons cartoon was created by a Jew (Matt Groening), it is especially funny to think that Krusty the Klown (whose father is a Jewish rabbi) actually looks very Jewish with his two spikey points of hair – they are like the teased/hair sprayed version of Jewish payots. Anyways, we seriously stuck out like sore thumbs