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)