Saturday, July 19, 2008

Thursday – Shopping

At this point the girls came to the conclusion that they have seen enough ruins for a while and wanted to see more fresh design of clothing. They had not spent enough time in the mall and now we chose the Haifa mall. This time I did not have to ask the questions: “What is taking you so long?” or “What are we still waiting for” but the girls did it for me. We had planned to go to see Natalia and Amit later in the afternoon and girls wanted as much time as possible.

I told in my last post about Olli’s jokes and this time he used joking in a place I would not have. Entering the mall means you have to open your purse and often go through the metal detector. The kids were walking ahead of me and Jukka was still parking the car. The security person was a woman and she did not pay much attention to the girls. When it came Olli’s turn she asked if Olli was carrying any guns.
Olli answered: “sorry, but I forgot to take them with me.”
The woman asked : “Are you going to buy guns?”
Olli: “Can I get them here?”
Woman: “Sure”
Olli: “I’ll let you know on the way out if I decided to buy one.”

At this point I reached the scene and did not even really look into my bag. She did say to me something that I did not totally catch but she was indicating to me that she was very amused by the previous discussion. I think this was possible because we look so much like tourists: wearing casual clothes and having the very light Nordic skin.

While we were shopping, Natalia called and told that we had to cancel the meeting because Amit was not feeling well. When we heard that, I told the kids that the only chance to see the Dead Sea on this journey would be now. The girls were even now hesitant when their shopping was interrupted. I called Igor who told us that there was not much to see in the Dead Sea and that it would take us 3 hours just to get there. Luckily the kids came to their senses and saw that seeing the Dead Sea and trying to swim in has to be done on another journey and now we just don’t have time for it. Six hours in a car just for floating on a lake that is so salty that you cannot swim would be insane!

After this hard :) decision we decided to drink some coffee. The mall had an excellent place for that with a view to the sea. We ordered coffee and something sweet to go with it and again we were surprised. Everything seems to be huge here. Here is what Jukka and the girls got:


I got this:


Olli ate a sandwich and I did not bother to photograph it.
We spent quite a while in the mall. This time it is very easy for me. I don’t have to spend any time thinking what to get the kids for presents from Israel :)

On the way back to the hotel the kids were starting to wonder what to do next and the obvious conclusion was the beach. Jukka called Anna to ask what would be the best place and got two suggestions. I don’t remember the names and which one they chose because now I had my chance to get some computer time totally without distractions (well as it turned out almost without… in the previous post I wrote what happened after they came back). I had a great time just being for myself.

Katri missed the event of the week, but I got a picture. I heard the ice cream truck coming. The sound is totally different from the Finnish one; here I find it not disturbing at all. Anyway the sound was something I immediately could recognize coming from one. The reason it was so important for Katri is that she has been driving an ice cream truck for at least two years on vacations and weekends to get some more money while studying.

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