an important item of note

there's a guy on my roof with a flamethrower. that is all.

not so new apt

Well, after nearly a month and a half we are officially moved in to our new apartment! It took a while to set up the office/study, because until recently we had no way to bring the desks from bat yam to beersheva. In the interim, we set everything else up, found a bedframe (no more sleeping on the floor), visited Ikea for some random things, drilled about a thousand holes in the walls, and acquired more homey crap.

But now you can see our "new" home in its entirety! Check out <http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/dj_modus_ponens/album?.dir=/623are2>

It was my first visit to Ikea, and as we walked by all the furnished displays I felt like I was invading peoples' homes. That place is intense. I've never seen so large a building so full of people. And not just people - Israelis.

Also, we have some new pets. In addition to Limor's hamster, the building has a set of five geckos that hang out on the ceiling of the stairwell outside our apartment. And when we turn our kitchen light on at night, there's always one lizard on the window. We call them all "Lizzie" (or collectively "the Lizzies"), which is short for "Lizard-Breath" and not Elizabeth as you might think.

And we're trying our hand at horticulture with a window garden - basil, mint, some lemony thing, and rosemary. They don't have names, but are very tasty in assorted dishes. Limor calls them our babies, which is rather disturbing after the previous sentence (asides from the obvious reasons).

The adventure continues!

chigh cholidays

we had a good time on rosh hashanah - i was at limor's grandparents' apartment, and it was hilarious. i had no idea what was going on. limor has a close extended family (yeah that sounds like a contradiction, right) so there was about twenty people crammed around a long table, reminiscent of another holiday, which is probably why everyone kept breaking out in passover songs. they were having a lot of fun "accidentally" mixing up their songs. it was a big mess, because it seemed like it was "pick your own psalm" night or something, so everybody was singing something different in a different tune or whatever.

yom kippur was very, very different. i will say first, so you can get your "boo-urns" out of the way, that limor and i did not fast. it's too difficult for us, we both feel sick if we do, so we didn't. but at least we didn't go to the kinneret and have a barbeque, like many israelis do.

but yom kippur...wow. it was awesome, because everything stops. literally. it's so quiet once it begins that you can immediately tell the difference. all that background noise that you don't really ever pay attention - random humming as cars go by, the low buzz from appliances, faint strains of television speech - is absent, and noticeably so. for almost half an hour i had to speak in a whisper, because to do otherwise felt like shouting. i was afraid i would disturb the neighbors - the ones across the street.

so there's practically no cars on the streets for 24 hours. it begins a little before sundown, and israelis have this tradition that you MUST walk the streets. generally it's just the first night, as the next day is too hot to walk about. limor tells me that it's so ingrained that parents will buy their children bikes the week before expressly for the purpose of riding it on yom kippur. and in places like tel aviv, people take their bikes out on the highway. strange but true.

when we went out for what was supposed to be a short walk, the streets were pretty much empty of people. at first i attributed it to the fact that we were in a predominantly-student neighborhood, with most of the families (with kids) living elsewhere in the city. but, after about an hour of walking around the roads really started to fill up. limor and i ended up walking for quite a while - it was just so cool to circumnavigate the city just like a car. i even made limor stop at the stoplights and wait for the green signal (which she wasn't too pleased about).

the next day it was so quiet. i cannot stress how quiet it was. it was so quiet it was beautiful. everything was so peaceful, no honking, no speeding vehicles, no old men hollering "used junk here! sell your used junk!" twice a day. it made it very sad when the day ended with the tortured squeal of tires running the red light next to our apartment.

this year we stayed in be'er sheva, but next year i'm making it a point to go to tel aviv and walking from one exit on the ayalon freeway to another. i guess the saying now goes "l'shana haba'ah b'ayalon freeway", right?

Moving in and Such

Hey Everybody,

I keep forgetting to write down what's been going on, and it's been way to hot to remember anything. It has cooled down a little in the last week or so, but that's like comparing laying on the sun to sitting in a microwave.

But, items of importance...

1) Moved to new apartment

About two weeks ago we packed eeeeeverything up into boxes and dropped it off a couple blocks over. Well, actually, we packed everything up the week before, so basically it was like living in a kiddie fort of refridgerator boxes.

Even though we only moved up the street, it was still really difficult. Limor and I tried walking a couple things from one apartment to the other, but gave that up after one trip (you try carrying anything in 85 degree weather). The other tough part was dragging everything down three flights of narrow stairs and back up three narrow flights of stairs. But, after a couple hours of grueling work, sitting on our own couches in our own living room, with our own air conditioning at full blast, we felt it was worth it.

Then we went out to a restaurant and ate some greasy food. Yum.

Currently, we are 90% finished with the apartment. All the major stuff is set up (bed, stuff to sit on, internet, etc) but we still haven't gotten everything for the study. Like desks and shelves. So the bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and living room are all ready, and all the stuff we didn't put anywhere else is sitting on the floor of the office. We can't complete that room because the tables we're going to use are at Limor's parents house, and there's no car available that's big enough to move it.

But, because we have wireless, we really don't need the office much - we just use our computers on the kitchen table.

2) I am no longer an illegal alien

Well, technically I wasn't illegal - I was still within my 3-month tourist visa. But, about a day before it expired I got a call from the Ministry of the Interior that they had finally processed my work permit. So, now I can stay here worry-free until December 2007. And the best part is that I can start getting paid at work. They say that volunteering is good for your soul, but watching my bank account dip alarmingly kinda makes my heart ache.

3) I bought a computer and it finally arrived

Well, it actually arrived a month ago, only the stupid people at the NCSU bookstore never contacted me to let me know they shipped it the day after I ordered it. And to top that off, I paid for shipping to my dad's house, and I find out yesterday that they screwed up my order and it's sitting at the bookstore. So it's been sitting at the bookstore for more than a month.

Now I still have to figure out how to get it here...

Eilat

It's been a couple weeks since I went to Eilat with Limor's family and the families of a couple of Limor's parents' friends (whew lotta words), so the details are a little bit fuzzy right now. I did take a lot of pictures, which you can see at:
[placeholder]

First, we woke up very early in the morning for the five-hour drive through the Negev Desert. Oh man, it had to have been around five AM when we woke up. It reminded me of those field trips in highschool (ah the physics class trip...).

For a light breakfast, we stopped at the equivalent of a truck stop at Chatzevah. We ate at "Aroma", a nice sandwich/coffee chain with an odd substitute for an air conditioner (an intermittent sprinkler system in the ceiling).

A little while later we stopped at "U-tapuzim". It's kinda like Hershey's, in that they make chocolate milk and other yummy products like that. The place is actually called Yotvetah, but their logo looks like an orange (hebrew: tapuzim) inside of a green "U", so that's what I call it.

Walking in, it looks just like any other tourist trap - big displays with English explanations, and all sorts of cheesy t-shirts and other gimmicky crap. There just so happened to be a big group of American kids on a BBYO highschool trip, gawking at every little item and exclaming "oh I am so buying this for my daddy". When we sat down to eat, I noticed a table full of highschool JAPs fawning over their security guard (which, on pratically all Israeli-led trips, is a twenty-something male). I hope the only reason he all that attention was because they were buying him ice cream.

On a side note, and only because I've been reading so much Robert Jordan, the ceiling lights in the cafeteria area made me think of sar-lights. Too bad only a couple of you know what I'm talking about. Or maybe it's better that way...

After lunch, it was back to driving through the desert. I've gotta say, much as I love trees and growing things, there's just some thing so beautiful about the desert. Especially coming down a switchback and being able to see for miles all the way out to the Dead Sea.

As soon as we stepped out of the car in Eilat, BAM, the heat hit us like a fist. So naturally, we went straight to the hotel pool and stayed there until dinner. No moving about in the heat for us yet.

Of course, we made the mistake of thinking "oh it's much cooler at night because there's no sun right?" But as anyone who's been to a beach can attest, the wind blows from the ocean to the land during the day, and from the land to the ocean at night. So, instead of having the modicum of coolness provided by the Red Sea, we have wind that's been traveling across miles of desert. I could feel it literally crawling down my throat to rip the moisture out of my lungs. It was just as hot as in the daytime, so I assume that I was sweating, but my clothes felt like they had just come out of the dryer.

Needless to say, we walked outside for about five minutes and then ran back to the hotel. I felt like a slug that had been dipped in salt and then run over with an iron. The heat took so much out of us that we passed out early.

The next day, while the women went to a spa, the guys went to one of the nearby beaches. Even though our hotel was a couple miles away from the Tayelet (like Las Vegas' Strip, but right on the water) we still had several nice beaches to choose from. Unfortunately, after waiting for almost an hour for the guys to get ready (I mean, all they had to do was put on bathings suits -- what's the deal?) we couldn't find the "private beach" belonging to the hotel. So we wandered back and forth before settling on Village Beach, only to receive a phone call telling us to meet everybody else at Coral Beach.

It actually turned out better that we went there, as the water was crystal, fish were plentiful, and the snorkeling (or "shnor-KEL" to pronounce it in Hebrew) was great. Schools of fish would swim right up to you, completely fearless. I actually had a couple fish try to swim up my pants when I stood in the middle of one.

But, it was still too hot out on the beach, so we went back to the hotel pool and sat in the shade with cushions for hours.

In the evening, Limor and I went to the Tayelet and wandered around. It was much, much more crowded that when we were there two years ago. Full of travelers and tourists streaming back and forth from shop to restaurant to shop, all along the four-mile stretch. Limor and I wandered about, getting reaquainted with the gorgeous hotels (like palaces with elevators) and enjoying the new additions. We were supposed to meet up with a friend of Limor's, but her boyfriend fell asleep so they didn't join us, and we went back to the hotel.

The third day the men went to the spa, and we went along with them to the nearby Dolphin Reef. It's a smaller private beach with a sectioned-off area where about six dolphins live. And for an extra fee, you can swim in the same place the dolphins do, and hope that maybe they'll come by to say hi.

Limor's family was entranced by the dolphins, and we sat out on the boardwalk over the water to watch them. The boardwalk was a series of interconnected platforms floating on the water, kinda like wood-and-steel lilypads, with bean-bag chairs scattered around under umbrella-like roofs. Very pretty, it kinda reminded me of the floating cities in Waterworld. But probably way less expensive.

The beach itself was alright, not really much there, but the real coral and fish were all out in the deeper water along the netting separating the dolphins from the humans. I saw plenty of different kinds of fish, my favorite being the lionfish. And I spent about fifteen minutes trying to talk to the dolphins by screaming underwater, but I don't think they understood what I was saying.

Afterwards, our ritual way to end the day was to sit out at the pool for several hours and read a book -- and it's hard to break tradition.

After the pool, we headed into "town" to the pyramid-shaped IMAX theatre, where they've been playing the same movies for the last two years (they had the same films as when we went). After getting to the theatre, I remembered why I didn't watch a movie there the last time -- everything was in Hebrew, no subtitles. Perfect. So I bit the bullet and watched this weird flick about aliends coming to an amusement park. It turns out that it didn't matter that it wasn't in English, because it wasn't in Hebrew either. The few times the aliens spoke it was in gibberish -- literally like a very deep-voiced turkey -- so I didn't miss anything. Otherwise, it was exactly like those crappy ride-simulators you can see at DisneyWorld or Kings Domininion. Nothing special.

The next (and last) day, Limor and I spent a little while out on Village Beach. It was nice and quiet and strangely empty, considering only a few hours later the floating platform would be jammed with kids, standing room only. The beach dropped off sharply to a depth of about twenty feet, with 100% visibility the whole way down. Unfortunately, Limor isn't a fan of deep water, so I couldn't show her all the neat fish swimming about.

Back to the pool for lunch, then a quick shower and we piled into the car to drive home. The beautiful (but desolate) desert scenery flew by, and before I knew it we were back in Be'er Sheva for dinner at Nafis.

Backwards Rundown

So I would talk about the fact that the war has been going on for the last month, but that's boring so instead I'll try to run through what I've been doing...

BACKWARDS!!!!

- I rode a bike here for the first time (8/04)! I've been considering buying one, since Ulpan is thirty minutes away walking, and work is fifteen. Limor's friend Ido let me borrow his, as he's going to be gone for the summer. So, I was able to try out his bike, and asides from the fact that I have to carry it down three flights of stairs, and worry about people stealing it out from under me, it felt really good to get back on a bike.

- Since Thursday 8/03 was Tisha B'Av, commemorating the destruction of the Temple, I didn't have Ulpan, so Limor convinced me to take the whole day off. Ahh....relaxing.

First, we slept late, which I haven't really done for the last two weeks. Then, after goofing off on the internet for a little while, we went grocery shopping (we were out of cereal and milk and other equally important stuff). We decided to try a different grocery store, "Supersale", which last time we went was a really crappy place, but had since been renovated. It wasn't really much better this time, but there were less ants.

When we got back, we waited for Limor's friend Adi to come by for lunch. She was a little late because her bus broke down, so we killed time watching an episode of Futurama (great show - I miss watching it repeatedly with Mark, JK and Ryan).

After lunch, Adi left temporarily to look at apartments, so Limor and I went to go check out a bike she found online. It was kinda far away, so we took a cab. The neighborhood ended up being much better than the bike (it was overpriced crap) so the visit wasn't a total loss. Ramot (the neighborhood) is one of the nicer sections of Beer-Sheva, and the houses were all interesting and nicely built. The city also stops completely right behind it. And when I say "stops", I mean like a foot after the houses stop you have desert for as far as the eye can see, unbroken except for a stunningly aloof memorial in the distance. Unfortunately I didn't have camera, but maybe we'll go back sometime.

When the time came to leave, we couldn't find a cab to get back, so we started walking just to pass the time. We ended up walking so far before seeing one that we decided to just keep going. On the way we walked over a really nice pedestrian bridge, and through some pretty sections of the Ben Gurion Campus. We also passed the site of the Yom Student celebration, which looked very strange as it was just a big empty sand lot.

We got back, and went to Ido's to drop off some laundry, and pick up his bike. Then at home, to pass the time until the laundry was finished we watched "Get Shorty" at ate some bourekas.

- Limor visited me at work on 8/02 (finally). She stopped by for lunch, and I gave her a tour that was necessarily short (I have no idea what anything is there). It was mostly like "So, there's a hallway, and those are the stairs I walk up everyday, and there is the wonderful view of Beer-Sheva from the bathroom window." We did walk around the spaceship building, and look at some of the more interesting features like the rotunda and glass floor.

Then she left, and I went back to work. *Sigh*.

- Surprise trip four-day trip to Eilat (I'll post on that later)

- Met Amit & Amit, a couple we haven't seen for a while, and ate at sushi place in Bat-Yam beach.

- We drove to meet our new landlord, and signed off on our new apartment!. Then we went to a water park. Think "Emerald Point", only much crappier. Still, water feels particularly nice in this hot weather even if you have to stand in line for half an hour to get to it.

Other than that, I've been working really hard. Sometimes. When I feel like it. There's really nobody in the office right now, and there hasn't been for the last three weeks really. Kobi got drafted, so he's off fighting terrorists, and one of my "bosses" (Shlomo) had to serve in the reserves, so he was also off fighting terrorists, and my other "boss" decided to take last week off for vacation. So I've been pretty much on my own, and that doesn't make for good motivation. One day I spent six hours reading about comic books. I found a website that details basically the entire chronology of the Marvel universe, starting with the beginning of the universe and going to the present day.

Needless to say, I read the entire thing, and it was fascinating. Did you know Galactus is actually...well, nevermind.

NOTE: this post is actually several weeks overdue (as you can probably tell)
---------------

Not Fair

I was just informed that there is now a Chipotle's in Raleigh. I
can't believe they waited until after I left the country to start one.
The cosmic injustice is appalling.

That is all for now.

WAR! (ba-bump) HA! (ba-bump) HUUHH!

WAR! (ba-bump) HA! (ba-bump) HUUH! ...
-----------------------------------------

If you're like me, you don't really pay attention to the news. So if you haven't heard, Israel is having a bit of a tiff with Lebanon at the moment. Our good friends in the Hezbollah decided that things were getting a little too quiet up north, and so they fired some rockets, blew up some jeeps, killed and kidnapped some soldiers. Israel responded by blowing the shit out of numerous military targets (at night, making sure to minimize civillian casualties). Same old routine.

Unfortunately (besides the obvious misfortune of it happening at all) the Hezbollah's attacks seem to indicate extensive planning. Also, Israel's "aggression" -- or as France and some other similarly spineless country likes to call it, "excessive response", or as I like to call it, "not even close to the bare minimum of justice" -- probably won't sit to well with the various hypocrites in power around the world. So, we may be in for a tough time here.

I've noticed it's different how people react here -- it's a very personal thing. Asides from the fact that it occurred (at most) hours away, practically everyone knows someone who serves or has served in the area that was attacked. It's not like in America where you hear of gang violence and shrug your shoulders, because you only feel bad about it in an abstract way. Maybe the feeling people had after 9/11 comes close, but that was an isolated incident, whereas in Israel people are faced with it practically every couple months.

Everyone I've seen seems a little depressed, and nobody wants to do anything besides sit and watch the news. Aside from preventing me from going to a jazz festival with Limor's family (since they don't feel like it right now, which I definitely understand), I don't know how this will affect me personally. Hopefully it won't get any worse than that, so let's keep our fingers crossed.

Seriously, what IS it good for?

Ketchup

The last couple weeks have fairly flown by. I'm still not used to the week beginning on Sunday, although I've always felt that Friday should be part of the weekend anyway, so that was a nice change. I'm enjoying work, because I'm still not really working (at least it doesn't feel like work, even though I'm there for seven or eight hours a day).

My days are long, because I study Hebrew in the mornings. I was able to find some instruction through the people I work with (another perk, which doesn't really make up for the fact that I'm not getting paid (yet)). It's not Ulpan (intensive Hebrew learning), because those don't really start until August, but it's a good (and free!) start. I am in a small class, consisting of myself, the teacher, and four Russian students about my age. Class is hilarious, because the Russians don't speak Hebrew, the teacher doesn't speak Russian, and I just speak English.

Actually, the Russians know more English than they do Hebrew, so the teacher is able to get them to understand what she's talking about by switching between broken English and a Russian-Hebrew dictionary. Sometimes I catch myself thinking about Hebrew words with a Russian accent, which Limor assures me is a horrible idea. She already thinks I speak Hebrew with a French accent, so I guess I'm screwed.

"Ulpan" is from 0830 to 1200 Rishon through Chamishi (Sunday through Thursday). After studying Hebrew, which is about thirty minutes (walking) from Limor's apartment, I backtrack fifteen minutes to SCE to study my second foreign language (computers). After the first couple days I settled in quickly, although it took me a while to remember to bring a jacket (Kobi affectionately refers to his office as "the refrigerator"). I spent a week or two getting familiar with C# and Visual Studio .NET, the programming language and environment (respectively) that I'm using. I have since gotten about a third of the way through the main project I'm working on - writing a simulation of dioxin dispersal in incinerator exhaust. I'm only a third finished because I've basically just rewrote an existing simulator. The next step will be to figure out how dioxins behave when burned with trash, and then figure out the physics of dispersal and plug them into my simulator.

I have "taken a break" from that project several times to help Kobi and Dr. Shlomo (my other "boss") with some of their projects. Shlomo is the software engineering professor who's the other half of the joint project with Adi that I joined for my internship. Shlomo is the kind of guy who has five different projects going on at once, and if he thinks he needs something done he'll just stop by and ask you to do it. So, not one to complain, when he asked me to help Sergey (another guy in the group who works in Kobi's office) finish writing another major piece of software, I jumped right in.

It started that, as the foremost expert of English in the building, I would write the Help file for the program. So I had to first learn about what it does (and what it's supposed to do). From there it progressed to me testing the program, and figuring out what the average user would expect, to helping to write some of the code (or at least telling Sergey what to do), to writing the script and narrating an eleven-minute "how-to-use-it" video.

The reason I don't mind spending so much time at work (asides from the fact that it's fun) is that Limor is busy studying for her exams. She has eight to prepare for, and they all fall within a two-week period. So (and I don't understand how) she spends ALL DAY studying material. She's not alone, since just about every other student in Be'er Sheva is in the same boat she is. Sometimes I'll come home from work and she'll be sitting in the living room with four or five other people, all staring at thick stacks of paper.

A funny side note, multiple-choice questions are called "American questions" in Hebrew. I assume that's because only Americans are stupid enough to need to have the answers in front of them in the first place.

Because this post is getting long, I'll just mention briefly that Limor and I have been apartment shopping again, and we may have found a place we like. I'll be posting pictures online, so check them out at:
<a href="http://photos.yahoo.com/dj_modus_ponens">http://photos.yahoo.com/dj_modus_ponens</a>

Yom Student

Now I should probably fill you in on what I've done for the last month. But I also forgot to mention Yom Student (Student Day). It's a big concert / party / fair / event that Ben-Gurion University, the Shamoon College of Engineering, and the Be'er Sheva Technical Academy all throw at the end of the academic year before students start their exams. Just a chance to hang out, listen to good music, play some stupid games, and relax before cramming for finals. This was on June 5th and 6th (or 6th and 7th?), by the way. I went with Limor, and we met up with a bunch of her friends. There were some good bands in the evening, including one very good student group who played a lot of covers of American classics like "Jungle Boogie" and "Celebration".

Highlights of the evening were eating a strange South American fruit concoction called Acai, and my first ever ride on a Segway (which is a retarded invention - gimme a bike any day).

Past Meets Present

It's been a couple weeks since I last said hello (not counting my 4th of July email). Things have been pretty ho-hum here. There were a couple interesting things I wanted to mention, but every time I wanted to write something down I was nowhere near a computer, and every time I sat down I felt like playing videogames or organizing my music instead.

So, first things first, I wanted to say how much fun I had meeting up with my friends Stuart and Brian in Tel Aviv. That was a while ago (about a month, actually). They came in to Israel for their first time on the same Birthright trip (Israel Outdoors - Israel By Bike) that I went on two years ago. From what I've heard since they had a great time, and I'm very glad they did. I met up with them a couple days into their trip. They had just gotten into Tel Aviv that evening, and they were given the night off to hang out.

I hopped a bus from Be'er Sheva, and rode two hours all by myself (the first time doing so - scary...) to Bat Yam, where I stopped off at Limor's parents' place for pizza before they drove me to the hotel the guys were staying at. It was a very surreal experience for me, being there, because it was like I was watching myself from the outside. I stepped into their hotel room, and I was transported back in time. Everything looked and felt exactly like my trip - the barely slept in beds, the small bags of luggage scattered around the room, and the sense of amazement in the air. Ahhh...it was great.

It was also great to see Stuart and Brian again, especially because I haven't seen Brian in a couple years. So we hung out for a little bit, catching up and getting ready to go out to a club / bar with the rest of their group. I met a bunch of other people on their trip, and they all seemed like great people. We headed out from the hotel and walked about ten minutes to the beach. We passed a couple clubs, but since it was still before midnight they were all empty (how different from Raleigh it is!), and so we settled on a nice little bar with seating on the shore. It was an extremely pleasant night, and we spent about two hours just hanging out, sippin' some drinks, smokin' some narghillah (hookah). Around 0100, Stu, Brian, another guy named Sasha, and I were feeling restless, so we left to find a club, but unfortunately the only promising place happened to be 24-and-up only, so we just headed back to the hotel. Just like my Birthright trip, they had to wake up extra early the next day, so it worked out fine.

The next morning, I got up out of my sleeping bag on the floor and went down with them to share the hotel breakfast (yeah free food). Again, it felt just like my trip, right down to the plates of assorted cheeses so typical of Israeli hotel breakfasts. They had to eat quickly to be off on their next adventure, so Stuart, Brian and I were soon saying our goodbyes. As I watched their group walk away, I was struck by one of the most powerful out-of-body experience I've ever felt. It was like when you read a book, and you get to a passage where two of the main characters cross paths. You know that each of the characters has their own tale to tell, and even though you are following one storyline you know that the other one is just as important. I couldn't help but sit there, bemused, as I watched my friends walk out the door.

The rest of the morning I spent wandering around Independence Park, which was right outside the hotel. I did take a moment to go to the top of the hotel and take some panoramic shots of Tel Aviv. It was very cool twelve stories up. When I was wandering around the park, I did see a line of Orthodox Jews wandering up out through some trees. Curious, I went to see where they were coming from, and I came to a cliff overlooking the shoreline. Below me I could see a section of the beach that had been walled off. When I looked closer, I noticed that all of the beach-goers in that section were male, and about half of them had white dress-shirts and black pants, and I realized that I had stumbled upon a Lubavitch beach! I mean, I guess even Orthodox Jews have to have fun sometimes. I thought it was hilarious to see two Orthodox Jews, fully dressed, doing jumping jacks on one side of the wall, while on the other side a woman in a bikini was lounging in sand.

Then, I thought I heard Matisyahu (the Jewish Reggae Superstar) singing somewhere, so I went to investigate. I was very excited, because I thought I had accidentally discovered that he was playing a concert in Israel, but then I found out it was just his live album playing from a hotel sundeck. Oh well.

Cats, Crocs, and Caca

I would like to take a moment to discuss the three most common things in Be'er Sheva. You might even say these are distinguishing characteristics of the city. Asides from the dust, and the students, and the trash, and the other typical Israeli things.

Item number one: Cats

I've probably mentioned this before, but Be'er Sheva has a lot of cats. I don't mean pampered housepets - I'm talking about roving strays. They're everywhere. You see them under bushes, in dumpsters, wandering the streets, everywhere. I was on the roof of a four-story apartment the other day, and there in the corner was a cat. Before you say "well Jeremy it obviously got there the same way you did" and then wonder how I got there in the first place, I came up the stairs (which are always locked) and the cat climbed a tree (which I watched).

When evening rolls around, cats come out in force. Every street corner and trashbin has at least a couple cats lolling about. Often they are mangy, underfed streetcats. Other times they're like the ones where I study Hebrew - still mangy and underfed, but also irritated by idiots who like to pretend they're taking care of them. In any case, cats are the unquestioned lords of Be'er Sheva.

Okay, that's not true, but it looks really impressive when I write it.

Item number two: Crocs

You may have seen some people wearing these in the 'States, but I'm pretty sure they're nowhere near as common as they are here. Crocs are closed-cell foam shoes which can't decide if they're galoshes or slippers. They're a nice enough idea, I suppose - waterproof, durable, and extremely comfortable. However, not only do they look like plastic clogs but they come in the most eye-wrenching colors possible. Sure there is black, dark blue, and forest green, but there's also neon yellow, magenta, sky blue, gamma-ray lime, etc - and it seems like the brighter the color, the more popular it is.

It's especially jarring to see here, because Israelis are normally so stylish - MTV chic, if you will. So, seeing a young man in a properly faded pair of properly tight dark jeans (since baggy jeans are out), with a properly tight gray shirt sporting an appropriate English slogan, makes the set of cherry red crocs look completely absurd.

It's not just limited to one group of people either - you see kids wearing them, teenagers wearing them, tons of college students wearing them, and even adults wearing them. And not once do they look appropriate.

Item number three: Caca

I'm going to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and assume the reason they let their pets take craps on the sidewalk and in the street is because they're too busy fighting terrorism. I choose to believe that the effort required to walk a dog to a patch of grass, or sand, or something not where people walk, is so monumental that it would prevent these proud people from raising farmland from the desert they live in. Perhaps I'm missing some cultural clue, that the more poop you have in front of your house, the more your neighbors like you.

I'm assuming that after a while I'll just start taking these things for granted, and I won't notice them anymore. But you won't see me wearing crocs when I walk my cat on a leash to a bush to do its business.

the sights of be'er sheva

The other day I was talking to a friend of mine, and he asked me what Be'er Sheva was like. I've been telling everybody that it reminds me of Durham - it's got some shady places, and some nice places, and a bunch of students because of the university smack in the middle. But it's hard to describe the strange mixture of old and new. I can't really find the right words to tell you how it can so dirty and rundown one moment but so beautiful the next.

So, I took the easy way out and snapped some pictures instead. I'll try to find some more representative images in the future.

http://drzaus.zoto.com/user/lightbox/CAT.15/date_uploaded-asc/0-30

skip over the past

hey - so i just added the last couple entries to my trip from winter break. if you want to continue my current trip, skip to the blog at http://drzaustravel.blogspot.com/2006/06/not-really-so-different-than-free-time.html

Missing Post 3 - December Trip

And the last bits I apparently never got around to actually writing - they're just in note form, so even I don't know how much you'll get out of them.

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Saturday (12/31)

because i have been wanting to go outside and enjoy the great weather for the last week, we got up early so we wouldn't miss the sun. we had a quick breakfast, or rather i had a quick breakfast and limor didn't eat anything, and then we went outside to see what we could see.

the first stop on our journey was the bomb shelter behind her apartment. i climbed on top of it as i had seen the neighborhood kids do earlier. distances make size deceptive though - i didn't need a ladder to get up, and it was much smaller in person. the picture limor took of me turned out pretty cool though, so i count it a successful adventure.

then we turned back around to the main street (masada) and started walking. i figured that, since we always walk down the main street, we should cut behind the buildings, so i steered limor down a side alley to the service road behind the apartments. it was mostly deserted, and seemed like a run-down industrial park.

encounter with a mad dog
right on re'ut's st.
then another right to bialik st., instead of left to hadas'
marched along - saw freud (limor) and einstein st. (me - flagpole)
continued to the "spaceship" = part of the technological college of be'ersheva (like ncsu's harrelson building)
very beautiful and sunny - stopped to look at ants
took a left to cut through to rager ave. - stopped at a neighborhood playground (fun on a balance-beam thing)
walked by little park, then across rager ave to the justice building
stopped for a while to look around - graffitti, climbing on stuff
walked back (limor hungry) - saw birds in holes, weird tree
passed a pretty rose bush
walked to big intersection where they're building new music hall (architecture)
saw off to the right the golems - made limor take a "quick" detour to see them
walked on right side of the main thoroughfare along dirt road by nice new apartment buildings
passed the hospital and almost got to the university
turned left back down masada, took fake walking pic
got home - had big communal lunch with aviad and inbar (i had spagettim leftovers)
in the evening - went over to re'ut's for sushi
re'ut's "sushi sandwich", not enough rice - my "no rice sushi" (tasty) - then cooked up 2 more cups of rice, which we threw away (cuz nobody was hungry)
girls got ready while boys cleaned up
split up to take cabs to a house party
met zohar there?
started out interesting, quickly became crowded and fairly boring - too much techno music
mistimed new years, kissing contest went sour
called up mom and sister to wish happy new years - didn't remember anybody else's number
nadav didn't feel good, so left
nadav was sick, so rest of us watched the israeli cult classic "alex in love" or "lovesick alex" (very funny)
orly kept urging mike to take more shots
mike passed out - snoring, poke but no wake
i ate tons of re'ut's brownies while nadav continued to barf
finally got mike awake, orly helped him stumble off to bed
we left, went home, i talked to mark and rosie on im, called up family to wish happy new years (dad, eric) while limor fell asleep


Sunday (01/01)

limor woke up at 10am to study for quiz, i slept until 2pm
we ate early dinner / late lunch with inbar and aviad - they weren't going to eat with us, so we made fried breaded-egg potatoes, they ate their spagettim leftovers and told us about their new years (expensive spagettim)
limor studied a bit more, i probably read a book or played on the internet
went to the mall near the central station
went to , the same military supply store i got my shoes at in eilat - okay, limor tells me it's not the same place
walked around to just about every store
were just about to give up and get some food when i saw a mega-sport - went in, found really cheap and good shoes - trouble with size, finally found correct size, but then not right color (booo)
waited...and waited...and waited for aviad and inbar to show up so we could eat - finally had burger ranch
just before that - atm with perfect bills
went to see "narnia" at 9:50pm - good movie
went home in a cab (mall closed), aviad stayed at inbar's
went to sleep


Monday (01/02)

dimona - today i join limor
got up early - 700am
quick breakfast, dress, pack some extra clothes to get dirty
walk to a different bus stop near school to wait for free ride to dimona (normally 10 nis)
wait around, other social work students trickle in
one taxi/bus shows up, not enough room, wait around for another one
other one shows up, but still waiting on final student
first bus leaves, last student finally shows up half an hour late
quick ride to dimona, passed much desert and many bedhouin "cities" - dimona much poorer city than be'er sheva
get to community center, go inside - large group of americans there on a hillel mission trip, mixed with bunch of israeli students/volunteers/madrichim? - adi is one of the group organizers
quick breakfast of bourekas (i abstain)
randomly enough i see or, the director of unc hillel (near my hometown), had come on the trip as a member, so i chat with him a bit
assistant mayor gives short welcoming speech in hebrew, adi translates
limor pulls me aside so i can "meet" her counselor/teacher - wave hello, go back downstairs
split up into work groups - i'm with zack (tulane, knows shira, spent the semester in penn state) and liat (half israeli, goes to university of judaism in new jersey? - only 120 students there) and some other random israelis who i don't catch their names (noah, sigan?...)
walk into an apartment building and head upstairs to our designated work area - we're going to paint the walls of some dude's apartment
go upstairs to find the entire family just spending a regular day inside - one kid's even playing GTA on his slim ps2 (awesome) when we arrive
you'd think if he requested our help, he'd be ready for us, maybe straighted up a little, moved some stuff around - instead we helped him take stuff off his walls, move shelves around, clean up dishes, etc.
someone made a disparaging comment on how dirty it is and how they could have clean it before we came - i thought that was a rather shallow statement from someone who signed up to help the poor - i mentioned that maybe he's got a different set of priorities (like feeding his family comes first)
and so began a very disorganized process
after moving furniture around we started sanding and scraping old paint off the walls and smoothing out bumps
more people came in to "help" and pretty much just ended up getting in the way, especially when several large groups of people came by to check on our "progress" and just wandered around for several minutes, halting work
since everyone was concentrating on scraping and applying dry-wall to holes, i took a broom (which had been sitting in a dirty puddle of water next to the fridge, so i had to clean it off a bit) and started sweeping off cobwebs and ants and spiders from the walls and ceilings - several of the israelis looked at me strangely, demonstrating to me that they had no idea of what they were doing
after sweeping the walls, i swept the floors, trying to get most of the dust and paint flakes off the floor so we could paint the walls
while i was sweeping, people kept going back over to places i had already swept and scraped more crap on the floor, because they hadn't done it properly in the first place
also, before i finished getting everything up, whatever retard in charge decided that since we were using water-soluble paint, we would just pour water on the floor instead of laying down newspaper - and so they started making a huge wet mess. i don't know why, but they poured the water more in the middle of the floor than along the walls (where you'd think most of the paint would splash), and i started scrambling around with a floor squeegee trying to keep the water out from under the couches and pianos piled in the middle of the room
also, because the room hadn't been completely swept, dirt, dust, hair, and paint flakes were all floating around - later when i was squeegeeing the floor clean, i was told not to filter it out before dumping it all down the drain (again by the retards in charge), again demonstrating that they have no idea what they're doing - we should have spent an extra 10 minutes now cleaning it to save several hours later unclogging the drains
i avoided the painting, partially because there weren't enough rollers to go around, partially because i didn't want paint on my pants, but mostly because i realized i was the only one who cared about cleaning up - i don't think a single one of the self-absorbed people in the room thought more than five minutes ahead
after applying one coat of paint, we stopped for lunch, and just left a huge mess - puddles of water, drying paint, etc - and i realized the family was still sitting in a little side room of their apartment. i was shocked that they had not left to go outside, to a park or relatives or something, while we were "renovating". i guess i was the only person bothered by the thought of leaving to relax and enjoy food while we left the poor family with a swamp. but, since i wasn't in charge, i went with the flow.
back at the community center, i arrived to find a shortage of seats - no problem, i wasn't really interested in trying to insert myself in already formed groups. so i wandered around, grabbing food from different tables. i don't think anybody noticed i was there. i sat down on a couch on the other side of the room, next to liat, who also didn't have a seat, and chatted a little bit.
then limor came to save me, and liat left after she sat down. i talked with limor for a bit, ate some cookies (like oreos but when you squeeze them the chocolate filling oozes out of eyes in the faces on the side of the cookie), and was briefly mobbed by a group of neighborhood kids fascinated by the fact that i could only speak english. it was very funny to have twenty kids crowded around, shouting out their names and saying random phrases in english (like "ooh yair loves you"), until one of the community directors frantically shooed them out.
after lunch, back to cleaning - i kept squeegeeing while others painted, although i took a turn using the small brushes to paint around bookcases and light switches
while cleaning up, the guy who lived in the apartment came out and saw me scraping up crud before sweeping it down the drain - he seemed very embarassed, and told me that i didn't have to do it, i could flush it down the drain or leave it for him to clean (i'm not sure of which) but i let him know i was happy to do it (and i was, because that's what i came for - to help him).
all in all, the apartment did look a lot nicer, with cleaner walls and unintentionally cleaner floors.
i left with limor soon after finishing, not really saying goodbye to anyone except zack
another short bus ride home
stopped off at the central station and walked to the "cheap" grocery store nearby - like a kmart crossed with a food lion crossed with a warehouse - there were ants crawling all over the fruit-drink aisle, and someone had left meat sitting in the cereal aisle - limor said the quality changes every week, and sometimes you get lucky.
it wasn't really that bad, since you can't really ruin packaged foods
bought a lot of stuff, agonized over which flavor of pillows to buy, got a new silverware drying rack to replace the old one limor had
stuffed everything in our backpacks, walked to a bus stop and rode back to limi's apartment
made very tasty bolognese for dinner
right before dinner - walk downstairs with aviad to buy strange fruit drinks 3L = 13 nis (pomegranate, summer fruits, "toot banana")
inbar joined us just as we all sat down
showers
aviad's friends came over for poker night
we laid down in bed with window open, passed right out
i woke up in middle of night to close window


Tuesday (01/03)

the weather keeps on getting more and more gorgeous
leave for school at 12pm (skipped first class)
worked on journal during classes
during second class teacher came by and chatted with me for a bit
aviad sent a text message saying he wanted to kill anat's cat and possibly anat (their third roommate)
third class - limor had a quiz, so i waited outside in the fading sunlight to read my book
as sun went down, wind picked up, and it got cooler, until i huddled next to building on bench
aviad called to explain his earlier text message - cat jumped on counter, started eating/stepping on aviad's food, when he told anat she said it was his fault for leaving food on the counter
limor came out of quiz, we waited outside classroom with others who had finished early/on time
went back into class, i continued reading book
after class, walked over to university diner and picked up some sweet potato soup (2 for 13 nis)
walked home with soup, sat down to dinner - ate soup with soup nuts, had bolognese for dessert, i finished limor's and read book while she studied
took a brief nap, then made pudding for 2nd dessert
did something while it congealed (shower? read and finished book? nevermind - it only took 5 min)
left extra in fridge for aviad
ate pudding and watched "zoolander" on limor's computer - still funny the second time for me
went to sleep at 12am


Wednesday (01/04)

got up early - 40 min before alarm (set for 8am)
lay there in pain for a couple minutes, not wanting to wake limor, then i realized i couldn't do it for 40 min so i got up to go to the bathroom
fell back asleep so comfortably right before both limor's phone and my watch alarm went off
get up, pillows for breakfast while water heated up
read a tiny bit more, then took a shower - dressed warmly, but ready for 24 oC weather
made lunches for long day today
went to class, waited to meet re'ut, then she got left behind anyway while talking to a friend
ate dust swirling around, extremely breezy and cool and not sunny
dropped off some paper in a building, went to class (taught by a judge)
ahhhh...real desks - i could stretch out and not suffer from carpal spinal syndrome or whatever
too tired to work on journal much, tried anyway - wrote out notes for today, but still not caught up from wed.
read articles on gamespot instead during class
in between classes, while stopping off for coffee, i notice that they carry the best drink ever - they don't have my favorite flavor (pear and kiwi) so i get mango/passionfruit instead - awesome; also get egg sandwich to split with limor
head up to class - no internet, so finish up articles i still have on screen and continue journal
during third class (steep rows, english guy with tinkertoy demos) it started raining
scurried over to student center to wait for limor's perach kid
sat on a bench for 45 min, chilled, looked for club flyers
mor showed up - went downstairs to lounge - i played around on my computer instead of doing real work
hour and a half later, mor left - we went home
had dinner (random leftover soup w/ rice and spaghetti and chicken flavor)
waited around for a bit, then went to manchilla to see limor's friends one last time
cool place - everybody except adi showed up (nadav, re'ut, hila, hadas, yochai)
limi and i split burger with egg (sunny-side up) and malawach - i finished limor's malawach
just as i was thinking how nice the sparkler cake is (saw it at another table) - limor's friends had the waitress bring me one for my birthday - they all sang
ate ANOTHER cake for dessert - i decided i'm not going to eat for the rest of the month
as we were leaving we see aviad/inbar and their friends sitting outside - they were celebrating finishing their SPL paper/project (the restaurant program)
piled into yochai's car (since hadas left us early w/o paying) - i said my goodbye's
limor heard on the news that sharon was fighting for his life
we went to sleep



Thursday (01/05)

limor woke up early to go to dimona (7am) - i slept in 10am even though i set alarm for 11 (i didn't feel like sleeping any more)
woke up, played on computer - continued downloading more ebooks from yesterday (found some pretty good ones)
exercised a bit
read some stuff online (looked for ebooks, magic: the gathering)
started the sad task of packing up my stuff - double-checked i had everything on my original packing list (couldn't find red travel toothbrush)
had a lot more room in bags than i started
swept limor's room too because i had time
limor came home

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And that's it - there's probably more after that, but I don't think anybody's read this far anyway, so I'll stable my OCD tendencies and leave you alone for now.

Missing Post 2 - December Trip

Another missing post.

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Friday (12/30)

we're slow to get out of bed today, even though it's beautiful outside. it just felt very good to be in bed a little while longer. you know how it is.

(*Author's Note: I think we might have exercised at this point, my notes aren't very clear)

so we planned out our day, and then i sat down at my computer to work on the journal while limor did her weekly cleaning of the bathroom. i was interrupted by a call of "jeremy...the brush broke!" so i had to get up and find out what happened. luckily, i didn't have to fish a brush head out of the toilet, and i was able to just screw the handle back in without touching anything.

afterwards, since it was about lunch time and we were out of food, we walked downstairs and around the back of the apartment building to a little grocery store just outside. very convenient, even if they didn't sell pillows (grrr). we bought a weird grape/kiwi fruit drink, some milk, and a cereal labeled "energy flakes" (which turned out to be pretty good). there were some strange liquors there too, either with weird names or weird contents, neither of which i can remember a week later.

on the way back, i wanted to climb on the roof, but a rabid dog scared us away from the building.

back in the apartment, i helped limor prepare a brunch of avocado/egg salad. i sliced up probably the best avocado ever with surgical precision, not wasting a bit. seriously, that avocado was sooo good. i started with a bowl of the new cereal, but still hungry i ate some toast with chocolate spread, and then still a bit more hungry but more curious about the salad i spread some on more toast. ohh it was worth it.

so the past couple days i've been reading full swing - i could only pace myself for so long, and so i kept reading some more while limor continued to study for her quiz. after a while i stopped myself and cleaned up the sink full of dishes (limor loves it when i'm around). i tried to fix a loose pot handle, but it was too rusty so i gave up and sat down in limor's room to type up more journal. i was bored with typing up notes (since i was so far behind anyway) that i decided to work on the website instead. i made some more progress, which was good, but my feet were really cold, which was bad. for some reason limor's room was cold even though it was sill really nice outside.

dinner time rolled around, and so limor decided to make some sort of baked potato dish she hasn't tried before. it took a while to bake, but we ended up getting to re'ut's on time, where we met orly and mike, another israeli/american couple trying the long-distance thing. i heard that we were supposed to be some sort of model for them to emulate, although mike was canadian and had spent the last year studying in israel, so they've been having an easier time. mike was nice - he seemed like the typical friendly white guy who probably becomes a little bumbly when he drinks. orly was a bit more of an enigma - she seemed very friendly, but she also had the bossy qualities of an israeli with the disregard of consequences of an american.

later, some more of re'ut and nadav's friends came by. limor had assured me that i would hear nothing but english the entire night, as everyone there had participated in the same agency program that brought limor to the US. we were both a little shocked, and i was disappointed, when those fluent english-speakers instead spoke solely hebrew (with a bizarre spurt of spanish for absolutely no reason). even though there were two english speakers with little-to-nil knowledge of hebrew, the other people weren't considerate enough to switch languages, or even talk to us. nadav even spoke in english to them, and they responded in hebrew.

so dinner was kind of a bust. oh well. there was a very funny incident in the beginning, when after literally constructing an extra table nadav realized that it wouldn't fit through the kitchen door, and they almost had to take it back apart to get it to the living room. after some of the other people left, and it was just us and re'ut/nadav and orly/mike, i was able to have some complete conversations, but limor was getting tired so we went back home and went to sleep.

Missing Post 1 - December Trip

Here's the first of several posts I never got around to putting up from my trip to Israel back in december.

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Thursday (12/29)

limor goes off to dimona for fieldwork, and i wake up fairly late. it was really nice out, but i thought i should get a little work in on the website before heading out. however, i'm so behind i end up staying for several hours struggling with some retarded javascript.

limor comes home around 3ish, and i make a small sandwich for breakfast, which limor finishes for me because we are in such a hurry.

we rush downstairs to catch the only bus that would take us to limor's perach kid's apartment. it ended up being late anyway, so we stood around outside for a while. once there, we went upstairs and i met most of her family - her mom, some younger siblings, and a pair of nice indian neighbors with their little kids. i guess it was girls night out or something, because asides from a small boy sitting on his mother's lap, i was the only male in the apartment. everyone was very nice, and from the way the indian women were acting i could tell they were very friendly. limor says they were talking to her like they'd been friends for years.

we ate a light snack of "fricaseh" in honor of hanukah instead of souvganiot (thank you). fricaseh is a fluffy fried dough sandwich with tuna fish, hard-boiled egg, some veggies, and a spicy sauce. nothing that oily can really be called a "light snack", but it was tasty. i ate two.

as the conversation winded down - or rather the perach kid (mor) got bored - limor, mor, and i left the table so limor could help mor study. i read a book during the hour they were working, and then we thanked the mom and left downstairs to take a cab to a nearby shopping center.

the cab driver was very, very chatty with limor as we drove over, but apparently didn't really make much sense - it was more like blabby. anyway, we got there and spent about three hours browsing different shops. beginning with an outdoor/military supplier, we went on to several shoe stores and "mega-sport", where i spent an agonizing twenty minutes debating on whether or not to spend 500 nis on a new pair of shoes. i eventually decided to wait til i get back home to spend that much money, and we left the disappointed sales clerk behind to go to a romantic dinner at "spagettim".

i decided that this dinner with limor at spagettim, a moderately fancy italian restaurant, would be the "halfway" mark in our relationship. the last dinner we had together as a "full-time couple" was at spagettim, a year and a half ago when i visited her the summer she went home. so, this dinner would be the last we'd have together as a "part-time couple", and the next time i come back to stay with limor for good i thought we'd go again to spagettim to celebrate.

we had a very nice waitress with about twenty piercings in one ear who was happy to practice her english for me. we were seated at one of those tables-for-two where the couple sits across from each other, but until our food came i went around and sat on the same side as limor. we both prefer to eat that way - i'd rather be sitting next to my girlfriend in constant contact than alone across the table. i guess some people think it's more romantic to gaze in to each other's eyes, but really - how romantic is it if you throw a loving look across the table, only to see a mouthful of spaghetti dangling from your partner's face? we decided they should have more tables for couples like us, maybe wider and shorter. we were wondering what term would adequately describe our condition when the first thing that popped out of my mouth was "homo...sidal?" as a measure of how great a couple we are, limor first laughed at my unintentional pun before telling me what a retard i am.

limor then presented me with the birthday presents she'd been saving up (for a month) - she had planned on making me something nice and then buying me something expensive. her made present involved the five senses, although she hadn't completed them all. "sight" was a nicely framed picture of us from when we went on a picnic during her visit, "sound" was supposed to be a cd of israeli music (which she hadn't gotten around too), "smell" was some relaxing incense sticks (which she had difficulty choosing because she knows i don't really like perfumes and such), "taste" was the dinner, and "touch" was still to be decided (shut up you perverts). i thought it was lovely, and that pretty much brought my birthday to an official close (a month later).

then the food came - limor had a slightly dry lasagna, and i had the same bolognese w/ cream dish i ordered the last time (because why mess with something good?). i made the same mistake i did last time, and that was to confuse the very flavorful israeli parmesan cheese with the bland american parmesan cheese, and i overdid it a little. i thought the result was great, if a little too salty, but limor immediately grabbed for water.

dessert was equally nice - after choosing from several displayed on the dessert tray, we went with a cream and berry dish, like fluffy cheesecake. so good i had to take four or five pictures to get it right.

on the cab ride back i think i offended the driver when i rolled down the window, even though it was cold. i couldn't help it though, because even though there was a large "NO SMOKING" sign emblazoned on his dashboard, he was puffing away like the majority of israelis. he asked me something in hebrew that i understood to be rhetorically asking me if i was cold, to which i immediately replied "i'm allergic to smoke." it's not really true, but it sounds nicer than "it pisses me off to breath your ash." i guess we got one of the rare breed of nicer drivers, because he immediately flicked his cigarette out the window (well, not completely nice), and so i rolled up mine.

at home, we tried out the incense, which i'm sure combined with the dinner and the cigarette smoke earlier to make us really, really sleepy, and we fell asleep.

not really so different than free time

My job, that is.

So it's going pretty well. I've met with my "boss", Dr. Adi Wolfson of the Be'er Sheva Technicalogical Academy (or whatever it's called). He is very laidback - he goes by his first name, and he says it will take him a minute to respond if I address him as "Dr. Wolfson". It's very casual here - I think the best part so far about working in Israel is that I can dress however I want. No fear of suits here - who would want to wear them in this weather anyway?

I first met Dr. Wolfson a week after I arrived (I was taking it slow here - I'm still technically on vacation). His building is about fifteen minutes away (a little bit less with the shortcut I found), and it's right across the street from a building that looks like a spaceship (see their website, http://www.sce.ac.il/Extra/). He came down to meet me, and my first impression was that he's a lot younger than I thought he would be. I guess between the "Dr." and the fact that he's Israeli, I expected some leathery-faced, nut-brown old man with spectacles and a thick accent. But, Dr. Wolfson (see I still have problems calling him "Adi") has a very fresh face, and speaks excellent English. He is a professor of Chemical Engineering at the Technological College of Be'er Sheva. As I mentioned, he specializes in green chemistry, and is also a strong proponent of green engineering (i.e. environmentally friendly) practices. He just recently finished his post-doc in Belgium, and said that the European scientific community is a very interesting place. I also got the idea that they're particularly stuffy over there...

So we went up to his office, where we sat down to discuss my job. Apparently Stagerim doesn't do anything really besides introductions - kinda like JDate crossed with MonsterJobs. Dr. Wolfson didn't have anything set in stone when he decided to take me on, so he kinda threw out some suggestions of what I could do. We toured some of their "new" labs, which aren't new in the sense that they're brand-spanking, but rather that they're newly converted from regular old chemistry labs. He was fairly excited about them, and I can understand why, but I am spoiled by living for the past two years in the recently-built Engineering Buildings at NCSU.

I met some of the people working for Dr. Wolfson as well, and he explained a little about what they're doing. I sorta just nodded my head at the appropriate times, but as everybody was wearing lab coats I'm sure it was all incredibly scientific.

Then we went back to his office and he elaborated on another option I had - he had just initiated a project with a professor from the Software Engineering Department, specifically the "Monte Carlo Research Center" led by Dr. Schlomo Mark. Monte Carlo is a modeling software package capable of tracking molecular distribution and all sorts of other crazy physical systems - pretty heavy stuff. Dr. Wolfson is interested in dioxins, a particularly nasty chemical side-product of incinerators, and would like to create a model of how they disperse into the environment.

I thought it sounded interesting, and it involves both computers and chemical engineering, so I said "sign me up!" We then headed over to the spaceship building to discuss the idea with Dr. Mark. About five minutes after we arrived, I had already met the grad student I would be working with, I had a workspace in his office, a computer to work on, a login-id, and offers for more help/information. Schlomo is a little more focused, I gather. I didn't have the heart to interrupt him to say that I was just thinking about this project, but I think it will be for the best.

So I've basically just getting acquainted with the tools. I did a little preliminary research on dioxins, just to find out what they are, but mostly I'm goofing around on the computer. I will be writing code in C# using Microsoft .NET - both stuff I wanted to learn anyway, which is another plus. I'm also going to be using OpenGL, a graphics library (I guess so I can draw the models...?). In the last week or two I've basically been playing with .NET to try to figure out how stuff works. I messed around with making a calculator, and when I got bored of that I made Connect 4, just to see how to draw stuff. The coolest part of .NET is that I can take the final product to my home computer to play it whenever I want - although there are some bugs with portability (but when aren't there?). Now I'm practicing physics by writing a cannon-firing program - it needs stuff like gravity and acceleration etc, which I imagine I will be using a lot of with the actual project, only to the nth degree.

Kobi, the grad student (or "2nd Degree" as they call it here) is awesome - he's one of the nicest and most personable people I've met. He's very animated, and helpful, and fortunately for me he speaks excellent english. He's been so helpful and solicitous that it's actually almost interfered with my work ("Jeremy, can I install anything for you? Can I get you a new office chair? Do you need this or this or this..."). But seriously, he's making me feel very comfortable, and glad with my decision to do the computer work.

But now it's the weekend. So no more talk about work. I'm going to continue trying to sort my music - ever since I got the iPod I've felt like all the track info needs to be correct. Incidentally, if anybody has a free video converter so I can watch movies on my iPod, please let me know, since the only one I could find makes videos with "TRIAL VERSION" across the middle.

points for the double post

whoops - i'm blaming it on the internet...

i'll fix it later.

too hot to be legal

Be'er Sheva is hot. I'm not talking about "boo hoo I'm getting a little sweaty", I'm talking about "holy shit it's hotter inside than out", "I'd really love some air conditioning right now but the power is out", "I may just sleep in the buff tonight" kind of hot.

And two of the last three statements are 100% true.

I'd like to consider myself adaptable. I usually don't like air conditioning anyway. But the prospect that this isn't a vacation, that I will be living in these conditions for the next year, makes it much harder to adjust. If I were to guess at the temperature right now, I'd say it's about 85 degrees in the shade.

The only good news about that is that I'm speaking in terms of Fahrenheit, not Celsius. I haven't made that change yet.

Okay, my fingers are starting to stick to my keyboard like my back is to my seat. Blech. Signing off.

a bittersweet symphony without the music

So I've been here for almost a week, and in that time I have:
- flown on four different airlines through three different countries
- bought a new TV so I can use the new PS2 I brought to watch movies
- drove back and forth between Tel Aviv and Be'er Sheva (twice)
- eaten a cheese-filled Shavuot dinner with Limor's family
- gone apartment shopping with Limor
- watched the entire first season of "Lost" (that's 40 min x 25 episodes = 17 hours of tv)
- seen the port city of Ashdod and toured the battlecruiser where Limor's brother Snir is posted
- played some video games
- watched as a rolling power-outage erased the first version of this post, and a second caused further delays
- climbed on the roof of Limor's apartment
- stared in horror as my brand-new iPod stopped working right after I spent two hours trying to transfer pictures

To sum it up, I've haven't really done anything productive. My access to computer / Internet is spotty, mainly because Limor and I share a single desk and it's a pain to switch all the plugs on the computers.

I have had a lot of time to sit and think. Mostly I feel a weird kind of numbness, which I attribute to both the incessant heat and the fact that I am in a transitional period. I haven't started my internship yet (I should be meeting the professor tomorrow), so I still feel like I'm on vacation. It's only been a week since I left behind all that is familiar. The happiness I feel from being with Limor is counterbalanced by a sadness stemming from the realization that I won't be seeing the familiar faces.

Haha, on a side note, what sounds like the wailing of an imam calling faithful muslims to prayer is rising from the street outside my window. However, it is actually the sound of a street vendor selling eggs. True story.

So, back to being serious. It may not have seemed like it if you saw me, but the last couple days before I left were really hard. As usual, I forgot to take care of a bunch of stuff until the last minute, and so I didn't spend my last week relaxing like I had planned. Because I was off running around so much, it didn't really hit me that I wouldn't be seeing my friends for a (relatively) long time. The last night, when I went over to Mark's house for a lovely barbeque (to which I showed up late of course), it was down to Mark, JK, and I. Looking at them, one of whom being my first friend in middle school, and the other being the brother I've lived with for the last five years, I found myself unable to express how upset I felt.

You would think that not hearing JK randomly scream about World of Warcraft or repeatedly quote a one-liner would fill me with relief, but in fact, it seemed to sum up all that I would miss about my friends.

And yes, that's not really representative, but at the time it felt like it was.

Then there's my family. I may complain about them, but ever since I moved into an apartment I've really enjoyed hanging out with them more frequently than before. And now that the new edition to my family is recently official, and both parents are settling in to their new(ish) homes nicely, AND my grandmother just moved nearby, *AND* my sister is starting school at the university I just graduated from, I move out. Go figure.

In conclusion, I miss all of you, and I hope your next year is fruitful and fun. I'm pretty sure mine will be.

NTSC --> PAL = myth?

So I really want to buy a slim PS2 for when I go to Israel. Only one problem: a US machine doesn't play on a European TV (generally).

I've looked around for signal converters (US = NTSC, Europe = PAL), and I can't seem to find any for the price I want. However, I think that a lot of the newer TVs in Europe are multi-system, i.e. they can play both signals. Also, I've read that some regular PAL TVs can play NTSC signals just fine, only they're in black and white.

So...do I buy the PS2 and gamble that it will work when I get there? I guess by the time I buy all the stuff I want, the $30 - $50 for a converter won't seem like much anyway.

What do you think? Let's see if anybody actually reads this...

hmm...it seems something is missing...

I just noticed that the last week or two of my trip isn't up here. I
have no idea why. Did I forget to type it up? I could have sworn I
had everything. Maybe I did type it, but never posted it.

I sure hope I didn't lose it. That would make me one sad panda. I'll
look around, because I'm sure you don't want to miss a single second
of my trip!

First I graduated, then I got a J-O-B!

Hello there, it's been a long time.

Fortunately, now that I'm traveling to Israel to live with Limor until she graduates, I'll be in "travel mode" for quite some time, so I think you can expect to hear from me more frequently.

I just received notice from the "Stagerim" <http://www.israelprograms.org/Stagerim.htm> program that they found me an internship! I don't know the details yet, but I do know that I will be working for Dr. Adi Wolfson of the "Sami Shamoon College of Engineering" (formerly the "Negev Academic College of Engineering").

I don't know too much about either Dr. Wolfson or the SCE, but what I do know I got from a Google search and Limor's translation of their Hebrew website:

http://www.sce.ac.il/Extra/
http://www.matimop.org.il/newrdinf/company/c6119.htm
http://www.hait.ac.il/jse/organizations_list/nace.html

Dr. Wolfson is involved with "green fluids" (that's the translation, I think it means "green solvents" or possibly "green chemistry"), and I think read somewhere that he was instrumental in developing an environmental engineering course in the SCE, much like those taught in the US. Sounds like he's doing what I like, so I think this should work out nicely.

More coming soon...

--
jeremy schwartz
unity: [jrschwar]

tell aviva i'm going sightseeing

Wednesday (12/28)

limi and i had planned on getting up early so we could get out and do stuff, but we just couldn't get out of bed. i hate it how twenty minutes before the alarm goes off it suddenly becomes soooo comfortable under the covers that you can't leave. fortunately, limor's dog kessem [magic] invaded the room and started slobbering over everything, so i felt compelled to leave.

for breakfast i finished the last of their pillows. mm mmm good, breakfast of champions and all that. we packed up our backpacks, and i stuffed a number of extra items we hadn't been able to bring back the previous weekend - like a really heavy bag of potatoes, among other things.

we left the apartment and went downstairs to catch a bus to tel aviv. we got off at rothschild st., because it was a really pretty day for walking, and yesterday i had seen some cool statues i wanted to check out.

like the wolves in downtown raleigh a couple years ago, or the lions i saw while in france, tel aviv had commissioned some artists to make statues of animals. limor tells me it used to be penguins or dolphins or something, but this year it was bulls, representing a prospering stock market. so limor and i wandered up and down the street, admiring and taking pictures of each of the statues. they each had some theme or another, but i only paid enough attention to limor's translation of the informative plaques to line up my camera for a photograph. i'm sure once she reads this she'll kill me, but hey baby, you know i'm kidding, right? right???

during our promenade we came across a tour bus - not just any tour bus, but a taglit (birthright) tour bus - and not just any taglit tour bus, but a kenes tlalim (israel outdoors) taglit tour bus. i thought it was really cool and coincidental that of all the possible groups i could come across, i happen to see the same trip i went on a year and a half ago. so i start taking lots of pictures of the bus to try to get a good shot, and i think i freaked out the bus driver because he left the bus and went across the street. i felt bad, so to try to reassure him i had limor explain that i had been on that same trip before and i was excited to see it again. i asked him (through limor) who the tour guide was, in hopes that it would be the same one from my trip. sadly, it was not. i was ready to say hi to the tourists as well, but they were inside a museum at the time, so i missed my chance.

since it was pretty warm, while we were walking a couple blocks over to the artists market and shenkin st. i stopped limor so we could get some ice cream bars. i really love this one company's ice creams, especially their "magnum" bars, so we go some of those. as a side note, the company has a very distinctive spiral heart logo. whenever i saw it, i'd say "hey look there's miko!", meaning the name of the company, but limor had no idea what i meant. she said the company was called "strauss". later i went online to clear up the confusion - it is indeed "strauss" in israel, but apparently they are also very popular in europe under the name "miko".

we passed through the ever-present security check to get into the artists market. usually they are only there on certain days of the week, but they must have changed their schedule since we last went. it was cool with me, because they have some really neat crafts. i think i asked just about every artist there what was "roman glass" (which my mom still bugs me to get) but not only do i still not know what it is, but neither does anyone in israel. as for the crafts, there were a lot of pretty touristy stuff, like hand-made mosaics or mezzuzot or those good-luck hand things (the name escapes me at the moment). we also saw a very fancy palace-like building under historical renovation. well, it will be fancy when they're done with it, because at the time it was so old as to be falling apart.

my bag was getting kind heavy (those damn potatoes) so we figured we should head over to the shenkin st. on the way, we stopped at the street market. if you've ever seen an arabian market on tv, that's basically what this place looks like. it's like a very narrow (and long!) alley with shops on every side, and swarthy men shouting out stuff like "fresh meat here!" or "batteries! one sheqel!" or "get your human organs here cheap!". well, maybe not the last one, but they could be saying it for all i know.

it must have gone on for nearly a mile - a mile of closely-packed, shoving pedestrians, vegetable stalls, and random crap. it was great, if a little claustrophobic. we stopped at a couple places, like the "everything for 1 sheqel" shop, and a shoe store (where i bought slippers because israeli floors aren't carpeted).

we finally escaped the market, after moving out of the way for an idiot who thought it would be a good idea to transport his wares by driving his car to his stall (even though the street was little wider than the car). we then wandered up and down shenkin st, which is a trendy place in tel aviv that all the kids go to hang out. something like that. they have a lot of fashionable clothing shops lining the avenues. limor and i had a nice debate over "old" vs. "new" memories when i started taking pictures of the places i had been to been to on my last trip. limor thought i should take pictures of new places, so i could have new memories, whereas i thought that i would enjoy the nostalgia more. what i should have said was that it just so happened that the things i took pictures of the first time were still the most interesting things to take pictures of anyway.

while walking along the street, i noticed graffiti in several alleys. i wasn't sure if they were intentional (i.e. advertisements for shops, or trendy artwork) but the graffiti was cool nonetheless. we also saw a very intriguing poster strung up on a building facade. it was a speciment jar labelled "peace" containing a preserved dove, with the title "israel/palestine" and some hebrew. at the time we were too tired to speculate on its symbolism, and right now i'm too lazy.

also while walking, we stopped at one of the many lottery booths. at these kiosks you can purchase tickets for different games of chance. limor's favorite are the scratch-and-win variety, particularly the kind that cost 5 nis per ticket and feature different zodiac symbols. limor picked mine (scorpio), and we won 20 nis! feeling lucky, we picked another, but it didn't work. still, up 10 sheqels!

as our last sight to see in tel aviv for the day, we stopped at a small park, where i saw a very cool graffitti on the ground - it was a can with the label "enlightenment" (in hebrew). i saw it again on a wall nearby. it just struck me as clever (englightenment in a can - get it?).

on the bus ride back we sat in front of an israeli soldier whom i'm sure was deaf, because we could clearly hear his music - and he was listening to an ipod! do you know how loud those speakers are? for us to have heard it that clearly, the volume must have been all the way up, and for him to survive he must have had deviated ear canals filled with wax and sound-proofing foam. after a while we asked him through a series of hand-signals if he could turn it down, which he did to a dull roar. i read my book for the rest of the ride home.

at home in the apartment, we found the apartment to be a minor mess - food and poop everywhere. okay, the poop wasn't everywhere, but it might as well have been. since aviad had stayed at his girlfriend's to work on homework the last couple days, blame fell squarely on the other roommate. since she doesn't clean out her cat's litter box, and so smells like cat shit all the time, we didn't find the scenerio too far-fetched.

we only had time to drop off our bags and complain for a couple minutes before walking to hadas' apartment to see her new puppy. it was very cute, and limor made many exclamations over it. apparently the puppy is "shared" by the whole floor, and everybody takes turns taking care of it, presumably because it is so cute. i finished a giant pretzel i had bought in the market while i sat down to watch "xena: the warrior princess" on tv. of all the things to be on tv, that was probably the last thing i expected.

so we hopped in hadas' car and drove off to the mall to watch the fourth harry potter movie. i resisted hadas' repeated efforts to pry some plot spoilers from me, insisting i would let her form her own opinions of the film. i didn't want to ruin it for her with my negativisms. possibly in revenge, hadas parked her car right next to a pillar, so i couldn't open the door.

in the mall, we met limor's perach "kid" (she's actually 18) and her little sister, and we went in to watch the movie. like the other films, i enjoy them more the second time around, but i still think they should have followed the book more closely. the theater was more cozy than small, like the theatre i went to on the champs d'elysees than the raleigh grande. i had forgotten about the european practice of intermissions, and i'm still not sure if i like it or not (bathroom break vs. continuity break). unfortunately, we had to deal with some whispering idiots during the movie, and if hadn't been sure of the language barrier i might have told them to shut the **** up instead of just shushing them. and they were kids.

after the movie, we had a little difficulty with the exits - they opened up to some confusing corridors somewhere outside of space and time, where we wandered around for a couple minutes before finding the way out. we were walking up some stairs in what we thought was the correct direction when i noticed some people walking back to where we came from, and then we found out it was because the exits were locked. so we turned around, only to confront another group of people about to make the same mistake we did. fortunately i remembered the directions to an israeli card game, and so could say the word in hebrew for "closed" [petuach], because they ignored my hand-signals to "go the hell back".

finally back in the mall proper, we parted ways and went home.

hanukah with the family, food

Tuesday (12/27)

limor and i woke up and went to class. it would have been the same as most other days, except we both had brought our overnight bags so we could leave directly for rishon l'tzion, where we were meeting limor's extended family for the third night of hanukah.

we left class around 3 o'clock and rushed over to the central station so we could catch an egged to rishon. the route was about the same, but slightly longer. i still hadn't recovered from the other bus rides, so reading books didn't last long before i started feeling sick again. i think i napped at some point, and there was a very blazingly red sunset.

in rishon our stop was at a mall, where we waited about fifteen minutes for itzik to come pick us up (he forgot to leave earlier and was going to the car when we called). during that time, limor and i wandered around the outside of the mall, because getting inside would have involved a bag search, and mine was too fully packed for me to want to open it up. i was kinda surprised to see a large blockbuster among the stores - i guess i just didn't expect it to have the same kind of international clout as say, mcdonalds, in that it would be able to replace or out-compete local video stores.

speaking of video rentals, they had a dvd-vending machine outside. i think those are the coolest idea - i've seen them before a lot in england and france, and i think this was the first time i've seen it in israel. maybe the first time i noticed it or something. but as i was browsing titles i noticed they had a porn section on the far left. there was no attempt to hide or disguise the selection - titles like "hot horny teen spanking action" and the ever-classy "dripping wet cunts IV" were just as brightly lit up as disney kids movies on the other side. my favorite though was "pubic policy", with a stripper only vaguely resembling some sort of lawyer on the cover. at first i thought the name was strangely out-of-place, until i noticed there was no "L".

after limor's dad picked us up, we drove over to his cousin's (uncle's?) apartment nearby, where over the next several hours i met about twenty more extended family members on limor's dad's side, and like all large family gatherings i had no idea who half of them were and i forgot the names of the other half about thirty seconds after hearing them.

food was great, as i've come to expect from limor's family. there were homemade souvganiot, avocado-spread sandwiches, veggie pizza, cakes, etc. i enjoyed finally seeing limor's brother snir again - he's been away from home with the navy. he wasn't as comfortable with english as last time, so limor translated for us.

every nuclear family brought a menorah, so five or six sets of candles were sung over by about thirty people orchestrated by two grandfathers - candle lighting was quite an experience.

after the blessings we were ready to go, so limor and i wandered around the apartment while her parents finished up their conversations. it was kinda cool to see a smaller (and redder) version of my sun and moon tapestry hanging in one of the kids rooms. we walked outside to the porch, which would have looked over a nice mall if the trees hadn't blocked the way.

on the walk back i really wanted to climb some lightpoles, because they were perfect for it, but i had on a thirty pound backpack at the time so i thought "maybe later..."

back at limor's parent's apartment, snir presented me with his naval hat. we had discussed smuggling out various tzahel gear, but decided against it. the hat was his though, so it was cool. it's a dark blue baseball cap with the emblem of a battleship flanked by two sharks and his division number 916. it's actually one of the few hats i've found that actually look decent on me (i'm not a hat person).

because limor's parents have cable, i had to sit down in front of the tube for a while. i didn't used to watch tv so much while i lived in the dorms (we didn't sign up for tv) but in the last year and a half in an apartment it's regrown on me, and now i feel more comfortable with it on. i came across the history channel, which was airing "the biography of foods". it was a very cool program which detailed the histories of some pretty unassuming but important foods. i missed most of chocolate, but i did catch several others. some of the most important facts:

- snackfoods involving sugar directly caused the slave trade (sugar is very work-intensive)
- chef boyardee was a real person who is single-handedly responsible for the fact that we have italian restaurants in every city. his name was actually spelled "boiardi", but he was so proud of it he wanted to make sure people pronounced it correctly, so he spelled it out like it sounds.
- barbeque is the only real american food (hamburgers are from germany), and it was the celebration of choice for such important historical events as the revolutionary war and the civil war. george washington himself threw a victory barbeque in washington dc after winning the war of independence.
- a trapper and taxidermist named "bird's eye" came up with the idea for flash-frozen foods, which revolutionized the way we store, prepare, and eat foods. before he thought of his idea while seal-hunting in alaska, practically no-one could afford or had a use for a refridgerator, and the only way you could enjoy "fresh" foods was if you lived on a farm.
- mexican restaurants don't actually serve real mexican food (no surprise), but rather an americanized version of what entrepreneurs thought americans would expect mexican food to taste like. "chimichangas" were created when a waitress accidentally tripped and dropped a burrito in a deep-fryer, and nachos were invented when wives of several prominent businessmen came into a closed mexican restaurant (owned by a guy nicknamed "nacho") and asked for "something quick and cheap" (they now outsell popcorn and peanuts at baseball games).

the show went on for a couple hours, so those are just some of the highlights i remember a week later. maybe because it was so late, or maybe because i haven't seen much english television in a while, but i was fascinated. finally around midnight i left barak watching in the living room and crawled into bed. i slept very poorly, probably a combination of too much food (both ingested and watched) and a rock-hard mattress.

meetings and meetings

Monday (12/26)

like every other day, i could have gotten up early with limor, but i chose to sleep in. this time, i only stayed under for an extra hour. i got up, ate breakfast, read some book (i need to pace myself better, i'm already two-hundred pages in), and finally got caught up with my journal / blog / whatever. i also managed to upload all the pictures i've taken so far - unfortunately i'm not as attentive as i used to be, so there are gaps here and there.

i did take a break to make myself a sandwich - again, using everything in the fridge. mmmm mmm...so tasty. i was cold today, so in addition to getting fully dressed, i wore an el al airline blanket wrapped around my waist like a kilt, and i wore my fleece airline blanket wrapped around my head and tucked into my jacket like a scarve. my feet were cold too, so i wore limor's pink slippers. all together i probably looked like a little old lady - which is what limor's roommate saw when she walked by the kitchen while i was making my sandwich.

eventually, limor came back from fieldwork, and we watched some of the neighborhood kids playing around on the first-story roof of some abandoned buildings behind her apartment. even though it was freezing cold, the little kids (who probably ranged in age from four to ten) were skipping barefoot through puddles on the roof. limor surmised they could be bedhouin children, and so were used to being outside. i wondered how they were going to accomplish the feat when their mother (or some random woman) called for them to get down. i was soon to see, however, for the clever children had brought their own ladder, and had pulled it up to the roof with them.

having had our entertainment for the afternoon, it was time to eat. limor felt like soup, and so soup it was - tomato with rice. i skinned the tomato (which i didn't realize was possible), which limor combined with tomato paste, hotdogs, rice, spices, oil and water. i added some creamy "white cheese" and extra za'atar to round it out. oh, so satisfying.

next we went to bgu (ben gurion university) around 7pm so limor could attend her biweekly perach business meeting, where all the participants/recipients in the work-study program could get together to discuss their progress or whatever. i brought my computer, and so didn't really pay attention. however, i did notice in the very beginning of class another quirk of israeli society. there weren't enough chairs to go around, so latecomers had to bring in extras. instead of taking them into the room and finding a place to sit, or asking people to slide over, they just put their chairs in the gap right in front of the door. then, when the next people came in, they did the same thing. i would think rational people would try get out of the way, but nobody made a move, and people just kept piling up in the doorway like a circus. this probably would have continued if i hadn't nudged the person next to me and suggested they tell everybody down the line to move over. it was very strange that i was the only person to consider this obvious solution.

anyway, so after the business meeting concluded, limor and i met hadas and adi outside of school, and hadas drove us a little outside of be'ersheva to a town called omer, where we searched for one of their friends from school. we found her house (well, her parents house), and like all israeli houses i've visited it was very nicely decorated. i like the layout of the house as well - it was basically a large ring with an outdoor atrium of sorts in the center with multiple accesses from all around the house.

we sat around with maybe twenty people and chatted, and ate various foods (i stayed away from the souvganiot), and waited for the pizza to arrive. unfortunately, most israelis seem to like the green olives better than the black, but i didn't mind too much. we sang the blessings over the candles, and hung out some more. the girl's very affectionate (and large) dog jumped on me several times, and i continued to be the center of attention for a while when lots of people came over to speak to me in english.