Roller Coaster Ride

A day away from my entry into training, I feel it is an appropriate time to reflect on the past few months.

Starting in mid-January I had decided that I was going to exercise my right as a lone soldier and accept money to rent an apartment. I planned on living in Chaifa with my sister and brother-in-law. People in yeshiva found out where I was going to live and convinced me that it would be too difficult to get up to Chaifa every time and that I needed to be in Jerusalem. So I joined some friends and we started to look for apartments. In the beginning we tried with agents but swore them off as they were no help and just wasted our time by taking us to a place different than the one we wanted to see (always ended up being a dump, since they were trying to get rid of the hard ones).
Lets do the math. The army gives each lone soldier 1050 sheck. We had four, so that is 4200 sheck. After finding out that that was not nearly enough once you add on maintenance fees and house committee fees, we added on two more people. Six people is 6300 sheck. Seems like enough right? Wrong. Here are the following issues that could arise: Owners do not like the fact that the people renting there apartment are young and soldiers, or they do not want this many people in a three bedroom or even a four bedroom, or they raise the price originally advertised because the more people the more potential for wear and tear..... all of these problems arose. After looking at 20 plus apartments, we were ready to throw in the towel when out of no where someone emailed me with an apartment. I had emailed this place when we only had four and passed up on it because it was too much money. However now we had the people, we had the money, so we went to see it. It was perfect, furnished, center location, nice and clean and spacious. I spoke to the landlord and he (hold your breath) had absolutely no issue with the fact that we were soldiers, young, or five people (we did not add on the six yet, sorry for the incorrect info). However he did raise the price, but it was still within our price range so we were ready to sign. A month before our entry date we thought we had an apartment and were set.... we were wrong. The landlord proceeded to take us on one hell of a ride for the next month. Initially he showed us another apartment, we reluctantly agreed to see it and it turned out to be great too so we asked to see the contract. Getting the contract, the correct contract (he sent us a 'fake' one, why? I don't know) took us 2 weeks. Within those two weeks I probably called the guy four times a day. He was driving us all nuts, at times we thought we had lost the apartment and even started looking again. But none of us any will power left to make another trip through the hills of Yerushalayim only to be disappointed on the other end. So we stuck with this guy. Big mistake. He raised the price 1000 sheck, and than knocked it back down 500 to 6500 sheck. Still this was a great price because it included heat, ac and house committee fees. Then came the excuses, the landlord claimed the owner was not getting back to him, or said he would send the contract right away but would not. After wasting a lot of minutes pestering the guy he finally sent over the contract. Everything seemed fine, now we just had to meet. Little did we know there were a few conditions he would throw on us at the end. In addition to dealing with issues with him, we had some internal conflicts over the amount (3200 dollars) of the security deposit. Split between six people it came out to 533(.33 repeating) dollars (for those without calculators) a person. The amount was a steep price but we had to pay it to get the apartment. We were unable to get a commitment from everyone to pay the amount. So when we finally got the meeting with the landlord this past Wednesday, we walked there without knowing exactly what we were going to do. Ultimately, the landlord would not accept our amendments- we wanted to insure we would get the security deposit back if we did not damage anything and if we did we wanted to see the receipts, and we wanted to obligate him (he told us originally he would for sure do it) to provide us with six beds- and would not put them into the contract and he wanted us to pay him in cash. With these new pieces of the information thrown onto us, it made the internal conflicts look that much worse and after deliberating for an hour we scrapped the deal.
I have come full circle now. As of now I am in three places. The bulk of my stuff is at my friend's grandparents and my clothes and essential items are at my sister and brother-in-law's in Yerushalayim. In the coming weeks I will be transferring most of my clothes to my sister and brother-in-law in Chaifa where I will be kind of living for the next two-three months. After that I will either be continuing to live in Chaifa with them or moving in to an apartment in Jerusalem with two other guys from Yeshivat Hakotel (older guys).
These past months have been a huge learning experience. Extremely painful and definitely turned out to be a huge waste of time but we all learned a lot. I for one learned about how I react in extremely stressful situations, situations that will strongly influence my life for the next year and a half. I think although I have no definite place to live now, I came out of this situation still intact, ready and excited to start training. Thanks to my great friends and my amazing sisters and brother-in-laws, I am definitely not short on places to go for the times I am off.
Thus ends the apartment saga... for the time being.
Having asked almost every person coming from Philly to Israel that we know to bring something for me (thank you!) and last minute shopping by my Mom and Dad (:-)), I think I am set to start tomorrow.
For a lighter topic, this past shabbat was spent with my family in Israel (thats all one noun, no potential for a comma between family and in Israel) and was a great way to spend my last shabbat before the army.
I will try to update my blog as frequently as possible in the army.... wish me luck!
Keep in touch.