step back a few days...

limor informs me that i should elaborate on the "couple other things" we did in my last post, and she's probably right. i'm just really really lazy. but here goes:

----------------------------------------------
(Friday 12/16) limor and her friends have this great "tradition", where every week they all go over to someone's apartment to share a meal, and basically hang out. it's not so much a tradition as a direct result of be'ersheva being a moderately boring city.

i have been informed that there's not much to do in the city because it's in the middle of the desert. this argument is not really correct, vis-a-vis las vegas. however, besides the university, be'ersheva hasn't really developed to the point of, say, tel aviv, so i understand why people say it's a boring city. so to find fun, students naturally turn to the "only" interesting thing there - other students.

i really like the fact limor and her friends hang out so much. even though it's a (gasp!) ten-minute walk between apartments, rarely a day goes by without someone dropping in. maybe i'm just lazy / don't get out enough, but it seems like we don't do this enough at home. something to think about...

anyway, back to hadas' apartment. so limor made the alfredo, and i carried it. we met up with more of limor's friends on the way over, and the five or so of us walked over together. hadas' apartment is very nice - the same simple, almost austere decoration common to the other (i.e. three - i have so much experience here, haha) apartments i've seen in be'ersheva - but on a slightly more expensive level.

oh yeah, and her oven sits on top of the washing machine. because the buildings are often older, they don't come with built-in space for our more modern appliances. also, because much of the city's occupants are students (i'm guessing here), not everyone can afford the same stuff you see in practically every apartment in the us. so, in some places you'll see a modular dishwasher sitting on a counter (re'ut's apartment), or in others the aforementioned oven-on-top-of-washer arrangement.

so i was introduced to a bunch of limor's friends (whose names aren't actually that hard to pronounce), and i sat back to listen to the sounds of hebrew conversation. i've learned not to expect much english, and while on one level it's kinda boring not knowing what's going on, on another level i enjoy watching other people have fun. it's much the same at most parties i've been to elsewhere. language is a superficial difference - i may be able to understand the conversations going on, only i still don't because it's too loud to hear anything.

dinner and dessert were a pleasant affair, and i had fun watching this "news" program on tv with everyone else (even though it was in hebrew - the mannerisms were hilarious). i say "news" because the show was kind of weekly cross between "the daily show" and saturday night live's "weekend update". there's a deadpan anchor who discusses current topics, broken up by sketches and parodies of the week's main events. i will point out one sketch, or series of sketches, as particularly funny. i guess recently a semi-famous and totally vapid beautician was temporarily elected to the knesset (israeli parliament). so, of course the show proceeded to make fun of her. even though i couldn't follow the mock interview, it was still really funny because the (male) person portraying her periodically burst out with some really ditsy antics.

good times.

----------------------------------------------
(Saturday 12/17) hadas - who has a car (xander, you moron) - picked us up, and we headed over to . the girls' outrage at the expensive entry fee was not mollified by the 20 nis* drink coupon we each received. the bar / tiny dance floor / pool hall was pretty empty while we were there (maybe because of the high cost?), so we were able to pick a decent table. i did see probably the biggest pool table ever, which was nearly chest height and about one-and-a-half times as wide/long as a regular table. i've never seen a giant bedouin before, but presumably this table was for them.

* nis = new israeli sheqel = money. 1 sheqel is about 25 cents.

after two lousy games, two fruit drinks (for me, the girls had beers and other stuff), two hours, and eighty nis later we were ready to call it quits. it was fun, but we should really practice pool first.

----------------------------------------------
(Sunday 12/18) bright and early (7 am) limor woke me up so she could work on a paper with adi, another of her many friends from school. they co-opted the room (spilling coffee all over their papers by accident in the process), and may or may not have accomplished a lot of work. then, around 10am we walked with aviad and his girlfriend inbar to class, taking aviad's extremely circuitous route behind the apartment, through an abandoned strip mall and the adjacent dirt lot, and around some fences.

i was really impressed with my first impression of her school. sitting in the middle of the negev, ben-gurion university is an unexpected jewel. it boasts some of the most nicely manicured lawns i've seen, palm trees, and a very cute little artificial stream. also very nice architecture. i didn't take pictures, but i will at some point, as well as climb said architecture.

sitting through her first class wasn't bad - i just read a book - and afterwards we took a break to enjoy the nicely manicured lawn i just spoke of. limor tells me it's pretty unusual for it to be so warm this late (december, he-LLO? *roll eyes*) but it was at least sixty and sunny. we parked it under some palms to bask while enjoying lunch (mmmmm cheese sandwich) and dozed a bit. lots of other people had the same idea, including a very friendly alley-cat, with whom i shared my lunch.

i will digress here a moment to mention these ubiquitous felines. according to someone i heard once, back when israel was formed, a bunch of the arabs living here (freely / fearfully / arrogantly / etc) abandoned their homes, and in doing so turned loose their pets. i guess the arabs must have been cat lovers, because just about every city is swarming with them. the weird thing is, most of the street cats look healthier than many housecats. an affectionate one actually curled up around my ankles earlier when we were on our way to hadas'.

so after our brief but pleasant interlude, limor and i journeyed deep within the student center to a student lounge, where we (more like i) languished away from the sun so limor could study with adi / hila / re'ut / probably others. i read my book some more, wrote the first post, and did a very small bit of work on the webpage i'm being paid to write for a professor (which is what i should be spending my time on).

after about four hours, we emerged forth into the world only to discover that the sun had nearly fled. alright, alright, enough poetry, time for one more class (limor planned to skip her last one). in this one, the teacher actually noticed that i wasn't a regular student, and came by to investigate.

finished at 6pm, limor and i made our way back to vege-out at the apartment.


----------------------------------------------
so that about wraps up the addendum to the first post. i guess i should get started on the last two days now, before i forget them and events pass me by.

[the previous message was brought to you from the classrooms of ben-gurion university]