How to Communicate?

Hello - We had a pretty good first Shabbat here in Jerusalem. We tried out a conservative service on Friday night and then headed to HUC (Nicki's school!) for Saturday morning services. Both seemed to be very similar to their respective services in the US - both rabbis spoke English, the books were the same and the services seemed tailored to American immigrants and/or visitors. And now we are back into the swing of the work week - weird to begin on Sunday!? Ulpan is going just fine - we even both passed our first exam :)

Overall, after just about a week here, although we are enjoying the process of trying to figure out everything on our own in a new place (where to shop, where to eat, where to live, etc.), we are also a bit lonely. We are anxious for September to come so that we can connect with our community at Pardes and to meet other students. And of course we are enjoying each other's company, but it's hard not knowing anyone else ... it's making this month more challenging and unique than we believe the rest of our year will likely be.

On that note, we wanted to let you all know the best ways to be in touch - as we miss you! Of course, email works well, and we are supposed to have internet set up in our temporary apartment in the next day or so.

PHONES:

We both have Israeli cell phones. We would love to hear from you although we know it can be expensive. We are also trying to set up a 1-800 calling card number that you can call toll-free from the US and that will bill us for the time - more on that soon.

When dialing from the US:
Jenny - 011-972-52-580-8782
Max - 011-972-52-899-8066

Just remember that we are 8 hours ahead of CST :) The best times to catch us are in the morning in the US.

We also have a phone in our temporary apartment for August. Usually, calling landlines in Israel is cheaper than cell phones, so if you want to try calling that, the number is 011-972-02-623-6484. We are the only ones who have access to this land line, so if we are home, one of us will answer! Of course, we will try to call too.

INSTANT MESSENGER

When online, it is VERY easy for us to talk over IM - so if you have an AOL screen name, please use it. (You can also get one for free online). We will be using Jenny's IM name, which is Jenns55. Please messege us to let us know your names - we will try to have iChat on when we are home and using our computer so we can chat with you. And if you have a MAC - we can talk just as easily as you probably know, so hopefully this will be a nice inexpensive way to hear your voices.

We are still looking into skype and will follow-up as soon as we figure out how/if we can use this.

Lots of love!