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.