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>