10 Things I Hate About You

We are almost two years in the US (time goes by so fast!!), I have decided to write post about the things I hate and love in the US.

 

1.       The Coffee

In Israel everyone looks up at America as if it was “America”. Lol, I made myself laugh.
 As if in America everything is the best, the greatest. I’ve heard so much about  Starbucks. “Just wait you would love it! You gonna gain weight just from Starbucks pastries!”

Well guys, any coffee you will drink in Israel will be much better than any coffee here. The coffee here is basically tasteless. After two years here I still cannot drink it.

 

2.       Fill Air in Your Car Wheels

Sounds easy right? After all this is America – you can find everything here.
Sorry to disappoint you guys, but to find a gas station with a spot to inflate the tires is like mission impossible. When you find it – of course it would cost you (who pays for air?) and not only that, you can only pay with coins.
How frustrating is that? Who carries a pile of coins with him? I’ll tell you who: a wise couple with experience who have already traveled Coast To Coast and found only two gas stations with a spot to inflate the tires.

 

3.       Restaurants

For me, the food is not a culinary experience here. I was on the East Coast and in the Midwest – and it’s not really all good. It doesn’t matter how fancy and expensive the restaurant- it will be average.
On the contrary, if you find a neglected workers’ restaurant here, with employees who do not know a word in English, it will probably be good.

So eating out is cheaper here than in Israel, but in Israel the food is much better.
I haven’t been to New York yet. I have heard that the food is fantastic there.

 

4.       Salads

It’s a small niche in the food, but it is significant in my opinion.
 Salads here are basically lettuce. Lots of lettuce.  If you are lucky, 5 halves of cherry tomatoes and maybe 3-4 slices of cucumber.

Lettuce my friends is not a salad. It feels like they took a bag of lettuce, you know the kind you can buy in a grocery store, and put it on my plate. Not cool at all.

5.       Toast- Grill Cheese- Panini

This is also a small niche in food but well, I am known as a foodie person.
In Israel we have dish that named “Toast”- and it’s not the dry bread you guys know. It’s something similar (but much much better) to grilled cheese and Panini, and it’s so common!
When we got here, we set one morning in “Panera bread” and dummy me, I asked for toast- and I got a dry bread. Other times I have asked for grilled cheese and got thick bread, fried in oil with a little yellow cheese in the middle. The thing that comes closest to my beloved toast is Panini but not really (who put hummus and lettuce in a toast??)
If you’re ever going to be in Israel- sit in a coffee house- and ask for toast. You won’t regret it.

 6.       The Land Of Unlimited Possibilities

I’m done with the food, I promise.
This one is hard. I was frustrated by it for so long. In the US there is no variety of items. I’ll give an example or two and please try imagine how frustrating it is.

In Israel we have a variety of scrub sponge for dishes: colors, sizes, types – just choose.
 In the land of “unlimited possibilities” there is one sponge. You can get it in any color you want- but there is one type of it.
It goes without saying that every time something comes from Israel, that’s one of the things we are asking for.

Another example that is close to my heart these days: when Noam was born, I looked for a high bathtub like we have in Israel. One that stands on legs, and you don’t have to break your back. In Israel you can get it everywhere and it’s cost $25.
Well, you can’t find it in “the land of unlimited possibilities”. Here you have one type of baby bathtub- without legs. You should bend over and break your back or find a piece of empty counter top and put the bathtub on it. And you can find it in a variety of shapes: in the form of a whale, a frog, a sunflower, but there is no a simple bath with legs.

In the end we ordered a bath from Amazon, from Germany, paid $100 and it’s still not high enough. But hey, at least here we have like 100 kinds of pickles!

 7.       Grocery Stores

I both love and hate the grocery stores here. I will write what I love about them in a different post.
But why do I hate them? There are several reasons: First of all, the size. When you get to a new place it’s really hard to find everything you are looking for.
Walmart / Target / Woodman’s basic are bigger than any grocery store I know in Israel. So when you go grocery shopping the first few times, I recommend wearing comfortable shoes – and I’m not kidding. 

When we first got here we went grocery shopping and we lost each other. I have a tendency not to take my cell phone with me when I am out with Dima. So we searched for each other for 15 minutes between the aisles.

In addition, the Americans have a different logic than us. Honestly, I have no other way to explain this.
For example, the shampoo and conditioner will not be near the body wash items. Or the marshmallow would not be with all the candies, you would find it in the department of flour and sugar. It doesn’t make any sense for me. But it is what it is.

 

8.       Driving laws

This is a subject that really bothering me. Excluding California and New York, It’s legal to talk on the phone and text while driving. That’s scary.
You can see on the high way a 17-year-old girl drives an SUV (cause that’s the safest right?) while taking selfies and texting. Frankly, it’s like giving her a gun and telling her to start shooting everyone around her.

To see the truck drivers, talking on the phone and looking down to their phones frightens me. That is why I always choose to drive sideways, alternative roads, where the speed is low.

I remember that before I drove alone to California for the first time some people told me it was really hard to drive there.
The truth is that there was more traffic, but I felt safer knowing there was a law that forbids holding the cell phone while driving.
Another example of weird law: in Arizona it is allowed to drive without a seat belt. And a policeman cannot stop you for that, unless you’ve made another traffic violation. If you have made another traffic violation and in the same time you would not have been strapped, then he can give you a fine on that too. It is really the wild west.

 

9. Service providers – What Happens If You Don’t Smile 

In the United States people are very nice, kind, patient. I love it.
But, when you’re not smiling, I’ll be more specific: when you’re crying or angry – they do not know how to cope with you.

I had a very unpleasant experience when we got here.
We rented a car, paid a fortune for car insurance that both of us could drive, but the man forgot to put my name on paper (even though I was on the computer)- and we didn’t notice that. I went to the DMV to get a license and they said that I could not do a driver’s test  because I didn’t have insurance.

I was alone, without a cell phone, in a foreign country. I had just arrived two or three days before, with a vehicle that was in real danger to drive in without insurance, and I did not know what to do. I burst into tears. The woman at the DMV looked at me in shock. She did not say a word. She did not ask if I wanted tissue, water, or a phone call to call my husband or the car rental company. She was just waiting for me to get out of the line and let her get the next person.

I was shocked. In Israel, the mentality is so different. A person who cries, or in distress – will always be served a glass of water and offered help.

That day, I drove with great fear to pick up Dima from work and from there we went to the rental company. They explained that I was insured but it just did not appear on paper. I was furious. Why the hell didn’t it appear on paper? I just missed the DMV test for nothing?

Again I encountered a blank stare that did not understand how I did not smile, despite the anger. It’s really rude of me.

 

10. Health insurance

I kept the most hated for the end. Health insurance in the US is a complicated- unfriendly-expensive thing. And if you are not a homeless or illegal immigrant, even Obama Care won’t help you.
When friends from Israel tell us they have been offered relocation, the first question we ask them is “What about insurance”? And people, innocently answer us, “We will get insurance.” Obviously you will get insurance – the question how many thousands are you gonna pay for it.

I will explain briefly how it works here because we surely didn’t understand what it means when you get insurance before we arrived here.

 The employer pays on health insurance a lot of money. You as a private person pay monthly amount from your salary- all just to be part of a insurance group.

Beyond what you and the employer pay every month there is “Deductible”. The deductible is the annual amount you pay for insurance. After you reach your deductible amount (ranging from $ 5,000 to $ 12,000 a year), you get the rest of the treatment free of charge-or at least what’s in your insurance promise to cover.
We had no idea that things work like that here. If you’re not near dead ypu don’t call an ambulance cause it would cost you thousands of dollars. In Israel it costs about $200 and if your doctor says it was justified to called an ambulance, you will get your money back.

One more thing we learned the hard way – if you are not about to die, do not go to the ER in the US.
 When we first got to the United States, Dima was really sick. We did not have a doctor so I took him to the emergency room- cause that what I would do in Israel. It was very beautiful, and empty. And he received immediate treatment. They gave him an IV transfusion, took a blood test, and we received a bill of $ 7360 for half an hour there. Not cool at all.