rise and shine!!

So, something that happens here periodically is testing of the air raid warning sirens.

It's only happened once (that I've heard) in the six months since my arrival...

until yesterday morning, that is.

I used to think the sound of an alarm clock was the worst possible thing to wake up to...

until yesterday at 10:05am when I was jolted from my slumber by this sound:

Here's the thing- the first time this happened Libbie graciously gave me a heads-up so that I wouldn't panic and run for a bomb shelter. But I got no such advance notice this time.

Apparently there are news outlets that let citizens know about these things, but I don't have a TV, or a radio, and I don't listen to the news in Hebrew (for obvious reasons), so the email from my school (which landed in my inbox at 8:48am) came just in time to do me no good.

Also, I was talking about these siren drills with my neighbor, Shay, a few weeks ago, and he told me that you only need to worry if the siren goes up and down, up and down. Here's the text of the email (which I didn't read till after the drill):

"The Israeli Home Front Command will hold this morning at 10:05 AM, sirens exercise in Tel-Aviv -Jaffa. As part of this exercise, Siren will sound up and down for a minute and a half." 
(emphasis mine)


Keep in mind, I read this email only after being woken up, hearing it go up and down, thinking maybe this was real, and rushing around whilst only semi-conscious with my heart beating out of my chest. My room is small, so when I jumped out of bed I tripped and hit my head on the wall and knocked a bunch of things off of my dresser.


I texted Shay "WHERE is our bomb shelter!?!?".
After an hour (and having realized what was going on by then) I got a response that said "testing" with a wink-emoticon. Oh lord.


That was how I started my day yesterday. How about you?