Longest. Night. EVER.

Ok, so I know that I just posted yesterday, but last night was one of those things that you have to write down while it's still fresh. To celebrate the end of the first week of classes, several of the international kids came to my suite for dinner and drinks before going out to a nightclub or something. I made tuna rosy (thanks for sending me that recipe Grandma, it's delicious), and there was much rejoicing. The number of people kept increasing so an initial group of about 4 eventually became a group of 10-12. At this point we left my room and went down to the rooms of those guys who live next to me (Brandon, Adam, Jake, and Zach) and there was additional alcohol and the eventual decision to go to a club called Nirvana which is on the beach. So taxis were called (it took 3 of them to get everyone there), and we were on our way. However, upon arriving it became excessively clear that one of the girls had had way too much. She stumbled out of the cab and ran for a nearby grassy hill where she promptly began crying, vomiting, and stumbling towards the sea. Some of the other girls (Leah, Summer, and Baeli) went to help her out wile I stayed with the rest of the group to wait for the last taxi to arrive. When everyone got there it became yet clearer still that, not only did this girl need to leave, she needed to go to a hospital. To put this in context, she is tiny, like 5 foot nothing, and had been chugging vodka for some reason. She was almost completely unresponsive, vomiting a lot without really producing anything, and her skin was very cold to the touch. My CMC freshmen year orientation training kicked in when I noticed these things and I so I mentioned that there was I distinct chance that she had alcohol poisoning. It was decided that me, Beali, and Summer would go to the hospital with her while everyone else went to the club. I had Leah get some water and a garbage bag from inside the club just in case. This turned out to be a spectacularly good idea. We had a helpful Israeli girl hail a cab and set the fare, then I had to pick up the drunk girl (who was completely ragdoll at this point) and we left for the hospital. You may be wondering why we took a cab instead of an ambulance or something, and the reason for that is that we called the Madrichim, who are social activity coordinators/RAs, and they told us to take a cab instead. Because I was the one carrying her she was on my lap the entire time and man oh man was I glad that bag was there because she threw up at least twice more on the ride over (at the end of the night I was still miraculously vomit free). There was one horrible yet hilarious moment when Baeli had the window down in the front seat and the wind inflated the bag... it was so gross.

We got to the hospital, paid the taxi, and then got a very interesting introduction to Israeli health care. So we get inside and there is a medical guy there and he has me put the drunk on a gurney. Then, and this really enraged Baeli and Summer, he had me push the gurney through the hospital. Now, putting her onto the gurney was hard, because she was completely limp, and so her head did hit the bars on one side of it (I felt bad about that), but pushing that gurney was really really difficult. Those things are really hard to steer and I kept hitting walls. When we got her into admission and they asked us for her insurance information we discovered that the drunk girl had left her purse in the first taxi she took to the beach, so she had no money, no phone, and no identification. Also, those of us there barely knew her. So we filled in the information as best we could and Summer ended up footing the bill for the hospital stay because we couldn't get her insurance info. While this was going on I was allowed to wheel her back to where the doctors were, but seeing as how I have never been in a hospital before (let alone an Israeli hospital) I had no clue where I was going. And that is when I learned that Israeli doctors can be marvelously unhelpful at times. Picture this, if you will: it's about 2am and I, an obviously confused American am wheeling a small obviously sick girl through a hospital. I see a doctor and ask here where to take the drunk girl. The doctor responds "There" and points in the general direction of a hallway. I go towards that hallway and it splits off into several directions. So I ask another doctor where to take her and she says "There" and points in the general direction of another hallway. So I got towards "there" and it splits again. I get fed up with that crap and go back out and ask the doctors where specifically I should take her. The doctor looks at me angrily and says "I already told you." I very nearly started yelling at the doctor because, you know, she had not already told me, but then another doctor led me to a room full of people on hospital beds and we got the drunk girl squared away. I then traded places with Baeli because her Hebrew is better than mine or Summer's so we thought she should be in there with the doctors and whatnot. When I got back out to the lobby, Summer was on the phone asking the Madrichim when they would have someone there to help the drunk girl. They said that they wouldn't, because they had to lead a hike to the Golan Heights the next day. They also advised that we go home and leave the drunk girl at the hospital. This advice only served to further enrage Summer, who proceeded to lay into them about how we don't speak Hebrew, it is a foreign country/hospital, the drunk girl had no money, no phone, no ID, they (the madrichim) are being paid to help the international students and how, even if it was our responsibility to care for her, we (Summer, Baeli, and I) were not well enough equipped to help in this situation because we don't speak Hebrew or know Israeli hospital procedure. After a few minutes of this they conceded and said they would send someone in an hour. Baeli went back to sit with the drunk girl, while Summer and I sat in the lobby to wait.

We got hungry after a while and went off in search of a restaurant which was advertised as being in the hospital and still open. This when I discovered that Israeli hospitals also contain malls. Had we been there during normal business hours (it was around 3am by that time) we could have eaten at a McDonald's, bought some clothes at the Israeli equivalent to the GAP, and gotten some books and the Israeli equivalent to Borders. But it was the middle of the night so everything was closed except one restaurant called Aroma. We got sandwiches and Beali and Summer had coffee and it was very pleasant. While we were talking over food I realized two things. The first was that this was the first time I had ever been in a hospital, at least insofar as I remember. The second thing was that everyone helping the drunk girl (Summer, Beali, and I) were half black/half white. That doesn't really have any bearing on the situation, but it seems kinda improbable all the same.

Around 4am or so someone from the University got there as did Eytan (they guy I went to Jerusalem with who also happens to know this girl). Eytan said that she was going to be fine and that he would stay with her for the rest of the night so we could go home, which we did. We left the hospital and went to this sketchy little kiosk/bodega thing to see if we could hail a cab. We turned down 3 cabs because they wanted too much money for the ride (they wanted about 70 shekels), but we finally found a guy who would take us back to the University for 50. The one condition was that he wanted to pick up a friend of his first which was a 10 minute or so trip out of our way. We agreed because it was very late and we were tired. The interesting thing about the taxi driver was his voice. Do you remember in Star Wars episode I, that fat little alien hummingbird thing which owned Anakin Skywalker when he was a child? Well this guy sounded exactly like that hummingbird thing. When we got dropped off at the University (it is now about 5 am), we talked with the security guard for a while, because he is also a student and happened to know Baeli. Apparently he had warned her never to drink with Americans because something like that always happens when you do. I can't help but agree.

More Later.

Set Your Watches to Jewish Standard Time (aka The First Week of Classes)

Alright, it's been a while since the last post but that is because I have been adjusting to my new apartment and going to classes. On the topic of my apartment, it turns out that my roommate is Sebastian, the German guy from my other room. This was a nice surprise seeing as how I already knew Sebastian and we get along fairly well. It was also nice, however, because he cleaned the entire apartment, including the floors and the moldy cabinet beneath the sink, without warning while I was in the computer lab one day. He cleaned everything to such a degree that several cupboards still have a harsh antiseptic smell to them. Needless to say I felt both pleased, because everything was clean now, and guilty, because I didn't help. Sebastian also go on the housing people to get us a working burner/hotplate thing and a trashcan and he bought a great deal more cooking supplies and cutlery than I did. Of course, he is going to be in Israel for a year so that makes sense. I have also found out that my apartment is right next to the apartments of several people I either roomed with or sort of got to know during Ulpan so there are people around to socialize with. But enough about my room, on to the classes.

I am currently signed up for five classes: Modern Standard Arabic Elementary I, Introduction t Rabbinic Literature I, the Honors Peace and Conflict Studies Seminar, Terrorism and Responses, and a class on the Iraq War. I am probably going to drop the Iraq class in favor of a class called The Psychology of Conflict Resolution for reasons which I will get into later. The first class I went to was intro to Rabbinic Lit, and I really enjoyed it. The first half of class was kinda dry because the teacher was basically telling us about the formation of the "Jewish Bookshelf," which is to say, the various religious works which form the basis of Rabbinic Literature. After that we actually started examining some of the Midrash, which are commentaries written by rabbis about the Jewish Bible (apparently the Torah is the first 5 books of the Bible, not necessarily the entire thing). The commentary we looked concerned the part of Genesis when Cain went out with Abel to the fields and killed him. That particular passage of the bible contains a phrase wherein Cain says something to Able immediately before killing him, but it does not say what. So the commentary was from the Rabbis about what they were arguing about. One Rabbi posited that they had decided to divide the Earth between the two of them, as their inheritance. One said that he wanted all the immovable property (land, buildings, and other real estate) while the other wanted all the movable property (everything which is not real estate). This led to a conflict because one was on the other's land and the other was wearing clothes which now belonged to the first, so Cain killed Abel. Another Rabbi said that they were arguing about where to build the Temple. A third rabbi said that they were arguing over who got to have/wed one of their sisters. We were supposed to figure out which was the best explanation or if the rabbis were crazy. Now, I happen to know that Cain killed Abel because God liked his (Abel's) sacrifice more than Cain's, so I thought that this was a stupid exercise. When we started talking about it, though it came to light that the entire question was a metaphor. The rabbis were basically saying that it is ridiculous to kill people about 1. Property 2. Religion and 3. Sex/Women. So I can't be as literal as I would normally be because this class is considerably more philosophical than I had thought.

The second class was Arabic, and that was interesting. It turns out that we will spend the entire semester just learning the alphabet. There are 28 letters in Arabic and each one has about 3 different forms depending on where it is located in the word. That class was fairly straightforward, but the teacher is kinda scary looking. Around this time I became aware of something called Jewish Standard Time. When one is operating on Jewish Standard Time, one is about 10-15 minutes later than one should be, which makes it remarkably similar to Bartmen time in my family. So pretty much every class I have been to has started late. Fortunately they are all about 3 hours long each so that didn't really make much of a difference.

The third class was my honors seminar. That was also fairly straightforward and I am looking forward to the portion where we deal with game theory. The only irritating thing about this class is that it is highly Constructivist. In international relations there are several schools of thought: realism, liberalism, constructivism, etc. I mostly adhere to the varying forms of realism, which basically say that states are motivated by a strong desire for power and security and will make decisions with those two things in mind. Constructivists say that the international system as we know it has been constructed by people and can therefore be changed and rebuilt by people. I think that this is a rather useless way of looking at things, but whatever. The strangest thing about the course is that I am actually really excited to write my term paper. I'm currently thinking of examining how America constructed the image of the Soviets as enemies during the Cold War and how the process got out of hand with the rise of McCarthyism, but that's just a preliminary idea. The most interesting thing from the class was when the teacher mentioned how differently countries define national security issues. In America, the principle national security issue is terrorism. In South Africa, it is crime, which is seriously destabilizing the country. In the Netherlands it is the ocean, which is currently trying to reclaim the Netherlands as its own.

The Fourth class was probably the best, Terrorism and Responses. The class is taught by a Major in the Israeli Army who has been working in this field for 25 years and regularly advises the FBI and associated organizations on issues surrounding terrorism. We spent the entire class coming up with a definition for terrorism while he surprised us with random hypotheticals and stories from his career to drive home his points. He turned out to be a rather polarizing individual because most people either really liked him (pretty much every guy in the class) or really, really didn't (pretty much every girl in the class). In either case I am sincerely looking forward to it, but I am annoyed by the fact that I probably won't be able to win any arguments against him seeing as how he has decades of experience on me and has killed people. These two factors make it rather hard to gain any high ground in an argument because 1. He knows his stuff at this point 2. He is arguing from a position of practical authority and 3. My self preservation instinct is constantly telling me to shut up (because, you know, he's killed people). In either case, definitely the best class.

The last class was also the worst, the one about Iraq. The subject matter seemed like it may be interesting, but the teacher's English wasn't very good ans she talked in a very boring manner. Also, she was a bit too focused on the variety of theories and opinions about why Iraq is the way it is then I would prefer. By that I mean, yes it is important to hear all those theories, but I would only want to hear them so that I could form a theory of my own to argue for, which we apparently would not be doing. The class sounded like it would just be her telling us what everyone in the field thought about Iraq, not so that we could from opinions, but so that we could regurgitate this on the final which counted for 80% of our grade. So now I'm hoping that I like that psychology of conflict resolution class. Also, since I will not be taking the Iraq class, I now have 4-day weekends every week. My life is awesome. More Later

PS: The pictures on top are two shots of Haifa at sunset, taken from the dorms.

Irritations Great & Small

Well, it turns out that the suite I have been occupying is slated to be a girl's suite during the school year, so I had to move to a new suite one tier above and on the opposite side of the elevator from where I was. This new room has proven to have both pros and cons, though at this point the cons are greatly outweighing the pros. For example, there is no one else currently living in the suite, so I have managed to rather consistently scare myself multiple times before going to bed on account of how quiet it is. Also, because there is no one else there, there are no pots, pans, plates or other cooking supplies to be found at all. The largest con, however, would have to be that the previous tenets have left the place extremely filthy. I would have posted pictures of this, but a great deal of the aforementioned filth is not of a visual nature. It is a smell of something, somewhere rotting (I have yet to find out what or where). It is the inexplicable but no less disgusting sticky feeling on surfaces which have absolutely no business being sticky. It is the thick layer of something more than dust but less than dirt which coats the floor. Above all, it is the bizarre and disturbing lump of presumably organic matter which is quickly scabbing over the drain in the kitchen sink. On the plus side, I now have two pillows (I kept my old one) and my new shower doesn't leak like my old one did (it would make a small lake on the floor every time I used it).

In light of these conditions I have begun to accrue cooking and cleaning supplies. Yet, I am somewhat hesitant to buy everything I will inevitably need because sooner or later there will be other people living there and quite frankly I do not want to pay for all the cooking utensils and all the cleaning supplies. So far I have managed to acquire 1 pan, 1 bowl, several forks, several knives, and 2 cups. I still need a skillet, a cutting board, several more bowls, maybe some plates, and some spoons before I will be able to cook with any degree of efficiency. It irritates me that I cannot currently cook in the manner to which I have become accustomed, largely because it is not a very complicated system. Every dinner I have made thus far has been prepared as follows:
1. Cook either rice or pasta
2. Take large things (meat, onions, garlic, mushrooms, etc) and cut them into tiny pieces
3. Boil the pieces in oil
4. Add an absurd amount of pepper and a pinch of salt
5. Mix it all together in a bowl
6. Eat

I also need to clean pretty much everything. I had initially hoped that I would be able to wait until more people had arrived to both help and buy stuff, but it's starting to get to me. Fortunately, classes start on Monday, so by Saturday I should have my international roommate(s). The rest of the University doesn't start till the end of October, so I shouldn't have any Israeli roommates until then. I know I had an Israeli roommate in my old room, but that was only because they are still somehow having finals (they have been having finals for 3 months now, it's starting to get ridiculous). At least they have October off. Ok, that's it for this post which, as you can probably tell, was mostly for the purposes of venting my frustrations regarding my new room. More Later

My Time in Jerusalem, The Holy City

Ok, so I spent Monday-Thursday in Jerusalem and it was AMAZING. I went with Baeli, that girl I met a week ago, and a guy named Eyton (I don’t know how to spell it, but it is pronounced A-tawn) who speaks Hebrew fluently and is the incredibly fraternal brother of Ilan Wurman, a guy in my class at CMC (they look nothing alike). I’m going to go through the entire trip by day so to begin with there was…

DAY 1: We got to the central bus terminal in Haifa and took a bus down to Jerusalem. Once we arrived we then took a taxi to the Old City, which is surrounded by this giant medieval looking wall. The wall has several gates (Damascus Gate, Jaffa Gate, Dung Gate, Zion Gate, New Gate, etc) and we went in through the Jaffa Gate near the Tower of David (Also known as the Citadel of David). Once there we were utterly dependent on Eyton’s rather astounding sense of direction to navigate the narrow winding streets of the old city. Eventually we arrived at the hostel we decided to stay at, the Citadel Guest House. The interesting thing about the citadel guest house is that it looks an awful lot like a cave that was hewn from the very rock which the Old City stands upon (it turns out that the old city does not stand upon any rock at all, but I will get to that later). Literally everything in that place was built for very short people. I hit my head on the ceiling, on light fixtures, on the shower nozzle (which was at nose level with me); needless to say it got rather irritating. The dormitory style room we were staying in looked even more cave like than the rest of the place with a high vaulting ceiling of stone and many beds spread throughout it. We came to call it The Cave, or occasionally the Bat Cave, over the course of the trip. Baeli and I also had a hard time sleeping in there because it smelled funny and was uncomfortably warm (Eyton can apparently sleep anywhere at anytime). We still had several hours of daylight left so we decided to go out and see what could be seen in the old City before it got dark. The first place went was the Western Wall (aka the Wailing Wall), which is the last remaining piece of the Jewish Temple which was located where the Dome of the Rock now stands. The square in front of the wall was swarming with people, but it was not very hard to get close to the wall itself. I had to put on one of those little skullcap things in order to approach the wall, and because I have no experience with such things I had to hold it onto my head to keep it from blowing away in the wind. Anyway, I went up and touched the wall and said a prayer for my family, as we have been having some rough times recently. Then I went back aways and took some pictures. After we had finished up at the Western Wall, we exited the city through the Damascus Gate and went to a café on top of a hotel for lunch. The food was ok, but the view was amazing, so I took yet more pictures (overall I took 225 during the entire trip). While we were on our way out Baeli had a sudden attack of claustrophobia when she realized that every street in the Old City was narrow, winding, and full of people trying to get her to buy stuff, it was pretty funny. On our way to the café, we passed a few places where some very irritating children had left lit firecrackers near sidewalk, so my ears were ringing by the time we arrived. After we ate we returned to the city and wandered a bit until we stumbled upon the fourth station of the Via Dolorosa (which translates to Way/Street of Pain/Agony), aka the Stations of the Cross. It was then decided to go back to the first and follow the Via all the way to Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Most of pictures from the Via Dolorosa and the Church itself aren’t too great since many of the stations were just plaques commemorating places where Jesus did something while on his way to be crucified and the church itself was very dark. On our way there we were passed by several groups of people, probably church congregations from other countries, carrying large wooden crosses and singing as they followed the Via. We then went on to explore the Church of the Holy Sepulcher which was interesting but very Catholic. I couldn’t really get into it though because a lot of the stuff there didn’t match up with what I remembered from the story of the crucifixion. After we left the Church we went back to the Western Wall to see if we could get a tour of the tunnels beneath the wall and found out that we could not without a reservation. So we made one for the next evening and sat down for a while to come up with a plan of action. The sun was beginning to set so we decided to hike up the Mount of Olives and watch the sunset over Jerusalem. On our way to the mount, we passed the Church of All Nations and a Church dedicated to St Steven, both of which were very pretty buildings. The hike up the mount itself was easily the steepest hike I have ever done, but it was worth it because the sunset really was quite beautiful. Not as nice as some back home, but they don’t have enough smog here to achieve the same variety of color. Regardless, my pictures don’t really do it any justice. After the sunset we wandered back to the city through an old Jewish graveyard and returned to the hostel. It is believed by the Jews that when the Messiah comes and the dead are raised, all that stuff will begin on the Mount of Olives, so there are A LOT of graves there. At the hostel, we watched about half of the movie Say It Isn’t So, largely because it was on and in English, and then went to bed. A word of advice, never ever watch that movie. It is weird and disturbing in the extreme. Also, I discovered that it is Ramadan now (who knew?) so on our way back all the Arabs were celebrating and eating and such since they had been fasting all day. Over the course of the visit I began to feel kinda bad for the Arab restaurant owners who had to make and serve food all day while not being able to eat themselves. This was off-set by how funny I thought it was when we would pass Arab carpet salesmen who would invariably be napping on a pile of their rugs, on account of how it is easier to avoid hunger if you are asleep.

DAY 2: We began day two by waking up at around 11am or so and going out to the New City because Eyton wanted to visit the Holocaust Museum there. It was petty interesting, but I had seen a lot of the stuff they had on display at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. There were also a lot of soldiers there and I still get really awkward around large groups of soldiers here for some reason. The three of us actually got into a bit of a debate about the soldiers and their ever-present guns. Apparently Eyton and Baeli feel safer with all those guns around because it decreases the chances of something bad happening. I said that all the guns imply that the area we are in is inherently unsafe so, while the soldiers and policemen with uzis may make things safer, it does not make me feel safe. We ended up agreeing to disagree. After the museum we wandered through the New City and went to a large pedestrian marketplace type thing. I bought a shirt and learned that I like three new foods. It turns that hummus is not that bad, so I now like hummus. I also tried schwarma, which is beef or lamb roasted on a spit served in pita with hummus and salsa and other random things. It was fun to watch the guy selling stuff remove the meat from the spit because he used something which looked like a power sander to grind off little chinks of it. The place went for schwarma was easily the best place I have been to thus far. The last thing I tried was gelato. I had a sample of Italian Vanilla at the museum and thought that it tasted like cake batter, which I enjoyed. When we were wandering I stopped by another gelato place and ended up getting some waffle flavored gelato, which was also excellent. Then we had to power walk back to the Old City to make our appointment for the tunnel tour. This tour goes through the tunnels underneath the old city and runs parallel to the course of the Western Wall, which continues beneath the Arab Quarter. Apparently after the Muslims took Jerusalem the Mamlukes built their city (which is now the Arab Quarter) on top of a series of arches which filled in a valley next to the Temple Mount. This means that all the streets I had been walking on were built over nothing. This thought continued to haunt me for the remainder of my time in the Old City. The tunnels which ran parallel to the subterranean sections of the Western Wall were also too low for me to walk upright in, so my head was tilted uncomfortably almost the entire time we were down there. At one point we passed a section of the wall which was closest to where the Holy of Holies was when the Jewish Temple was still standing. I repeated my prayer for my family there too (it couldn’t hurt, right?) and got a picture. My favorite story regarding the tunnels is this one: Two explorers traveled through the tunnels until they came to a large pool dating from the time when the Romans ruled the city. They waded into the foul water using doors as flotation devices and carrying torches above their heads. Unbeknownst to them, the far side of the pool opened up into the basement of the Convent of the Sisters of Zion. When the nuns who lived there went down into their basement, they found two men (gasp) riding doors and carrying torches who appeared to have come out of nowhere. The nuns believed that the explorers were ghosts and promptly proceeded to freak out. They eventually managed to get everything sorted out and the nuns built a wall to partition the pool in order to keep out further (male) disturbances. I also got some pictures in front of the Nun Wall. After the tour we went out into the New City again. We had drinks and sushi at a Japanese restaurant, then went to a pub, and later to a salsa club because Baeli and Eyton both like to salsa dance at least once in every city they visit. I ended up getting a crash course in salsa when Eyton had to take a break (he was dancing barefoot because he only had flipflops and the floor was tearing his feet apart). After all this we went back to hostel once more.

DAY 3:

On the third day we got up early and went to the Temple Mount, which was only open in the mornings on account of Ramadan. I got some really good pictures of the whole thing and read some fun stuff about the Dome of the Rock in Baeli’s guide book. It is believed that the summit of the Temple Mount (aka Mt. Moriah) is where god rested after he created the world, where the creation of the world began, where Adam was created, and where Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac. It is also where the Arc of the Covenant was kept during the time of the First Temple. The summit is directly beneath the Dome of the Rock, and no one is allowed inside it. Beneath it there is supposed to be something called the Well of Souls where the souls of the dead gather to pray twice a month (this image amused me greatly). On the Temple Mount we encountered two British students who were staying in the same hostel we were. They were named Laura and Saul and stayed with us for the remainder of our time in Jerusalem. After we left the Temple Mount we went down to see the City of David, which is where King David first established his capitol in that area. However, there were a lot of stairs involved and everything cost money, so we decided to not do anything there. After sitting and trying to think of something to do, we ended up wandering through the Jewish Quarter and going to the Tower of David. Now, this is kinda interesting. The streets in the Arab Quarter were narrow and windy and smelled funny and were full of people constantly yelling and exhorting and such. But it was also very colorful and lively. The Jewish Quarter streets had the same architectural design, but were cleaner, quieter, and more sparsely populated. Of the two, I think I preferred the Arab Quarter, despite the smell and increased chance of being pick-pocketed. We also stopped at a small café, in the Armenian Quarter I believe, and had the most marvelous iced lemonade ever. It was simply sublime. I spent the rest of the day drinking lemonade in an attempt to experience that joy again, but all I got for my trouble was a horrible stomach ache in the middle of the night because of all the sugar, oh well. Back to the story, the Tower of David is one of the oldest structures in the Old City. One of the original walls which once protected Jerusalem still stands within its courtyards and the observation point on top of the Citadel itself provided an amazing view of the city. The Tower mentioned in the name is actually a minaret from an old mosque and has nothing whatsoever to do with King David, but people thought it did at one point so the name stuck. All in all it was a very pretty ruin and it contained a museum about the history of Jerusalem that was mildly interesting. After we left the British folks split off to go visit an orthodox neighborhood and we went back to hostel to rest for a bit seeing as how we had been walking nonstop for several days. We agreed to regroup at a market in the New City later. We then proceeded to meet up with them, have a small dinner, and then went to some pubs and another dance club. After all this, I was dead tired, but didn’t get much sleep due to that stomach ache I mentioned earlier.

DAY 4: We woke up, packed, and then left to go to the Israel Museum so we could see their exhibition on the Dead Sea Scrolls. I was feeling very sick the entire time, but I managed to get over it after I ate some chips (salt tends to quell my upset stomach most of the time). Because it is currently Israel’s 60^th anniversary year, the museum actually had several feet of the scroll of Isaiah on display. The scroll which contains the Book of Isaiah is the oldest complete copy of any biblical text discovered so far, and in addition to that they also had displays of other scrolls which were important to the Qumran Community, the sect to whom the Dead Sea Scrolls originally belonged. Among these other scrolls were the rules and tenets of faith for the Qumran Community as well as a number of apocryphal works such as the Book of Jubilees and the Book of Enoch. I would highly recommend looking up some stuff about both the apocryphal scrolls and the Qumran community itself as they all seemed very interesting, but I don’t have the time or patience to write down everything I learned about them right now (sorry). After we saw the scrolls and learned a bit about the Aleppo Codex (one of the oldest existed copies of the complete Jewish Bible or Torah or whatever it is called), we went back to the hostel, grabbed our bags, caught a cab to the bus station and returned to Haifa.

Now to explain the pictures above:
1. A large mausoleum in the Jewish graveyard we passed through on our way back from the Mount of Olives
2. A subterranean section of the Western Wall. The large section with the holes in it near the bottom of the wall is the largest stone in the entire structure and weighs about 500 tons. No one is quite sure how they managed to get it there or lift it into place, as even modern cranes cannot move that sort of weight
3. The Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount
4. Me in front of the courtyard of the Tower of David. The Tower itself is visible to my right in the picture.
5. People praying at the Western Wall itself

Laziness & Recreation

Well, I looked over my plan of things to visit during my break and decided that, if I actually tried to see all the stuff I wanted to see during this break it would not make for a very relaxing vacation. So, I spent pretty much all of last week doing nothing, or as close to nothing as I could. That being said I will be going to Jerusalem tomorrow and staying there for 4-5 days of sightseeing (with my camera this time, I promise). I will be going with a girl named Baeli (pronounced Bailey), who is from Portland and has entirely too much energy, and we may meet up with a girl named Ali (pronounced Alley), who is from New York and was in my Ulpan class. I am definitely going to see the Dome of the Rock, the Wailing Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchure, possibly the Mount of Olives, and maybe the museum where they keep the Dead Sea Scrolls. Hopefully it will be a good trip.

I also received the pre-registration form from the University asking me which classes I would like to take. I signed up for: Spoken Arabic, Terrorism & Responses, a class about the Iraq conflict, a class about Jewish philosophy, and an honors seminar 0n the initiation and resolution of international conflict. However, I am probably going to switch Spoken Arabic for Modern Standard Arabic, which will allow me to take Intro to Rabbinic Literature instead of the philosophy class. From what I have gathered, spoken arabic would allow me to converse with Arab people here in stores and stuff, but modern standard (which is comparable to Shakespearean English) is used in more formal situations. I am still unsure as to which would be the better choice for my time here, but considering how modern standard would allow me to take an interesting religious studies class I will probably end up taking that. Something odd about the classes here is that you only have each class once per week, but it lasts for 2-5 hours depending on the class (except for language classes which are 1-2 hours long, several times a week). We also do not have classes on Fridays. So my current schedule will have three day weekends every week with Tuesdays off as well, which is pretty nice.

Yesterday, while I was eating the delicious Nilla Wafers my family sent me in that massive care package I may or may not have mentioned already, I got a call from Baeli asking if I felt like going to a barbeque at the Technion (the Technion is like Israeli MIT) with a bunch of Germans. I said sure, because I was really bored, and met her at the bus stop near the dorms. Now, funny thing about Baeli, she has the absolute worst sense of direction of anyone I have ever met, including family members. However, I didn't know that when we got on the bus. So we ended up in one of the city centers, got on another bus, and ended up at the beach. The Technion, however, in only a little ways down from the summit of Mt. Carmel (where the university is). So we caught yet another bus, back up the mountain this time, which spit us out about a 20 minute walk from the Technion, then missed the bus which would have gotten us there in about 7 minutes. Upon entering, we met a German friend of Baeli's who was at the Ulpan in July (and who had the most stereotypically German accent imaginable) and he led us to the barbeque which was being held in a dorm called Canada Village. There were no Canadians in Canada Village that I saw, but there were a great many Germans, as well as a Russian and few Israelis. Overall it was an ok barbeque. Everyone thought that my being from California was very interesting, they had some Turkish beer that was pretty good, but the only wine they had was Cabernet Sauvignon (my least favorite type of wine). Eventually we left because Baeli got a call from an Ethiopian friend of hers who was at a nightclub called Luna (which is, apparently, the only nightclub in Haifa) and could get us in cheap somehow. So we went to this nightclub, and it was hilarious. It was hip-hop night and the place was full of these Arab guys trying to be "gangsta" and just failing miserably. It was also faintly reminescent of my high school's dances in that periodically a big circle would open up in the middle of the dance floor and random guys would break dance for no apparent reason. However, the guys at my highschool could do some fairly impressive stuff while these guys really couldn't. I wanted to laugh at them so badly, but I felt bad about making fun of them when they were obviously trying very hard to whatever it was they were trying to do. Around 3am I got tired of all the second hand smoke (they actually had a smoking allowed sign in the club, it was a picture of a cigarette surrounded by a cheery green circle), and we left. The conversation in the cab the entuire way back was some variation on this:

Baeli: My Ethiopian friend is sooo tall and gorgeous and she's such a nice person, but she looks too much like me and I like looking unique. But it doesn't bother me. Nope, it doesn't bother me at all.
Me: Obviously.

Needless to say i was very glad to get to bed because my legs were killing me.

My final thoughts concern how a lot of people I have met here who are from the US, but who aren't Jewish, don't really like Israel. They seem to feel that everyone here is unaccountably rude. Shivani (the Indian girl from Ohio) said that a lot of the security folks were racist in addtion to being rude and unhelpful. Baeli mentioned how the waitstaff in restaurants seem to overtly hate all their customers (instead of covertly hating them like in the US). All this stuff strieks me as odd seeing as how everyone here has been really nice to me. The security guys pass me right through without incident, everyone I have met at restaurants have been helpful and nice, and even random people on trains and buses have been very pleasent (as seen during my first few days here). I am so unsure why I have been having a better time with the Israelis than the other American gentiles, but I really hope that continues.

More later, possibly with pictures of Jerusalem (and sorry about how haphazard this post was, but not that much has been going on)