Still Working it Out

February 10, 2008 - 3:45 PM by Stephanie

You can live in a country for yeeeeeaaaaarrrrrsssss and never quite get all of the little intricacies.

Or maybe you feel you “get it” for the most part but there’s still the odd pondering. Over things. Ways of being. Mentality.

Ask any transplant and most likely he/she will say there’s the occasional moment of: Huh?

MudPies in Jaffa describes one of those moments linked to the Israeli habit of “Friday Shopping Craze”…

After 11 years living here I still haven’t managed to figure out why Israelis seem to shop on a Friday as if the shelves were going to be bare for the next 6 months. At the grocery stores shopping carts are filled well past overflowing, which would be normal for a family of 8, but when it is a 21 year old girl with a baby at her hip, you know she hasn’t had time to do the bunny act to that extent. And it is not like she is planning on having a party.

I checked out one woman’s cart and we are talking 4 loaves of bread, a dozen pita, 12 each of about 6 different flavours of yoghurt, white cheese (which is sort of like baking cheese) 3 jars of chocolate spread, about 2 kilos of yellow cheese (which is used the way North Americans use processed cheese), 4 kilos of tomatoes, about the same of onions, potatoes and carrots, 3 bags of rice, crackers, cookies, 5 chickens, 3 kilos of chicken schnitzel (pounded chicken breasts), 12 2-litre bottles of water, various soft drinks to the tune of 6 or 7 bottles, a couple of k’s of bourekas, 1 head of lettuce, and a few litres of sunflower oil, 2 or 3 k’s each of sugar and flour, a couple of packs of Huggies and of course 3 or 4 tins of Materna baby food. And you see the same woman doing the same shop week after week after week.

I dunno…maybe she lives with the extended family? Or shops for the neighbor? Or likes to entertain? Or….???

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