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)

The End of Ulpan

Well, Ulpan is over and I am now free to wander Israel and a limited section of the Middle East/Mediterranean for the next three weeks. Before describing this last week, I wanted to mention that my Mom really came through when I asked for a name for the cockroach in my bathroom. She suggested I name him Gregor Samsa (which was an amazing idea) but, unfortunately, the poor cockroach was eaten by the small army of black ants which also live in my bathroom before I could name him. So I flushed his corpse down the toilet, and the ants disappeared soon thereafter (I'm not quite sure why).

This last week has been about as boring as the week before, but with some notable exceptions. The Ulpan ended with a final (which I'm pretty sure I aced) and a picnic where they served these weird Mediterranean burrito things. They were a tortilla-like circle of cooked dough (or something) which was wrapped around hummus, "salad" (by which I mean cucumbers and tomatoes), and something salsa-esque. Now, I have discovered in my time here that I HATE falafel and hummus. So, I ate it, but I didn't like it. I'm choosing to count that as personal growth on my part.

Earlier in the week, I'm thinking around Tuesday or so, I went to the beach with Arian (pronounced Areon), the Macedonian guy from my class, and Anu, an Estonian girl who is friends with Arian. On the beach we met up with Katrine and her boyfriend (both from Austria), and three Americans who all went to Ohio State University and had known each other for years. Anu and two of the Americans left, but Shivani (who is Indian, which all the Israeli guys found absolutely entrancing) stayed. At some point Arian had learned the term banana-hammock to describe speedos and he taught this new phrase to Katrine's boyfriend (whose name I cannot remember). He (Katrine's boyfriend) then preceded to use it at every available opportunity, which was rather mortifying. We all spent the afternoon sitting in the sun, drinking beer, and enjoying the water (which was a bit colder then normal so it was refreshing instead of weird). Around dusk we got involved in an impromptu game of volleyball with a group of either Germans or Russians. I have gotten pretty good and distinguishing those two groups from the greater mass of Europeans by sight alone, but since we never learned their names and they only spoke in Hebrew I couldn't figure out which they were. However, one of them, a big muscley guy with hair down to the small of his back, was wearing a speedo so Katrine's boyfriend quickly christened him "Banana-Hammock." Hopefully he didn't know what that meant. Thanks to spring break last year, which I spent on Catalina island playing volleyball a lot, I wasn't completely useless during the game itself. My ability to play was hampered somewhat by everyone but me knowing the actual rules of volleyball (apparently its pretty complicated). But yeah it was fun. Afterwards, we went for a night swim, then went to a restaurant on the beach and ate some pretty good food, drank more beer, and finally returned to the University. That was probably the best day I have had here so far, very pleasant and unhurried and fun.

After the Ulpan ended, Arian, Me, the three Ohio-ans from the beach (Jared, Kat, and Shivani) and one of their friends from Philadelphia (a guy named Dominic), went to Tel Aviv because many of them were leaving the next day and everyone wanted to have some fun in Tel Aviv before they left. The train ride took forever because of some peculiarities of the trains here in Israel. You see, here, trains fill completely. This means that all the seats are taken, and the aisle way is full of people, and the ends of each cabin by the doors are also full of people, and there may or may not be people standing in the bathrooms as well. So that was irritating. When we got to Tel Aviv, Arian and I walked to a hostel (this took about 20 minutes) and got lost. It turns out that we turned down the wrong street just before the hostel would have come into sight (of course). Upon entering the air-conditioned bliss of the hostel lobby we found out that most of the rooms were full (we had forgotten to call ahead) and so we ended up paying for a room for three people which had a TV and its own air-conditioning and bathroom/shower. I'm not going to say how much this cost, but know that I almost had a rage induced stroke when I finished figuring out how much I was paying in dollars. Especially when I saw the room itself, which was fine, but not worth the amount I payed. After we had settled in I turned on the TV (because I had yet to watch Isreali TV) and MTV was on. I immediately noticed that MTV-Europe (because apparently Israel is in Europe now, though I can't imagine what they would play on MTV-Middle East so I guess it makes sense) differs from MTV back home in that it actually plays music. I was astonished. Granted, most of the songs were about a year and a half old, but still. After a while we got bored so we went out in search of a bar. Unfortunately, this was during that short span of time between when daytime things, like restaurants, have closed and nighttime things, like bars, have yet to open. Eventually we found a place called Joey's Bar which was either trying way to hard to emulate an American bar or satirizing American bars in a truly hilarious fashion. I can't decide which. Now, having never been in a bar in America, I'm not quite sure what they are like, but this one was covered in stuff, there was literally not a free inch of space on any of the walls. There were busts of JFK, Ben Franklin, and George Washington on some shelves above the bar, a moosehead with a Darth Vader helmet in its antlers on the wall next to the shelf, the heads of several other animals native to America on some of the other walls, and more eagle related statuary then I have ever seen in my life. Also, lots of red, white, and blue stuff. It was amazing. I tried an Australian beer and a Thai beer (I'm so international), and then we had to go meet up with the remaining Americans and two of Arian's friends from Macedonia. Once we met up with them we went to a little cafe and I had some delicious kabobs while everyone else had what was apparently the worst falafel in the history of time. I guess that means that I won that particular meal. Over the course of the night we went to between 3-5 different bars and wandered around Tel Aviv for a couple hours. Then we all had to come back because I was very tired and Dominic had to leave for the airport about four hours later (he was still drunk when he woke up to leave, which I found hilarious).

The next day those of us who were left (Me, Arian, and Shivani) went to the beach. I managed to fall asleep while sitting under the beach umbrella we had rented (they set them up and if you sit under them then you have to pay some guy). When I fell asleep I was completely within the shadow of the umbrella, but when I woke up some time later my legs were in the sun and I had a rather bad sun burn. By that I mean my legs are little red and uncomfortable, not that I am peeling or anything. A short amount of time after I woke up we all had to run like hell to catch a bus to the train station in order to catch a train back to Haifa before Shabbat.

Which brings me the last section of my post: I hate Shabbat. Even more than I hate falafel and hummus, do I hate Shabbat. I don't have any problem with the concept of a Sabbath, but the execution here is a bit too all-encompassing. From, oh I don;t know, 2:30pm on Friday until roughly 8 pm on Saturday NOTHING WORKS. The buses stop, the trains stop, vast portions of the airport close, restaurants and malls are not open; it's like then entire country shuts down. The only place you can reliably get to during Shabbat is the beach (because a very small number of buses still run on Saturday), but I didn't feel like getting covered in sand again today. So I was pretty much trapped at the University because I didn't feel like going any of the places I had access to. It was so irritating. Fortunately tomorrow is Sunday and the country will once again be functional. I think I will need to buy an especially compelling book every week immediately before Shabbat and just read all day or else I will go crazy the next time Saturday rolls around. Also, I still can't upload photos because either this website or my wireless connection (or both) is not cooperating. Sorry.

Ok, that's it. More Later

A Rather Boring Week

Alright, so I haven't written anything for a while, but that was mostly because nothing interesting was going on. Class has been about the same and I missed the bus for the trip to the Baha'i Gardens which was going to be the basis for a post earlier in the week. Anyway, yesterday I went to Tel Aviv and learned something very important: Don't go to Tel Aviv with a tour group. I went there expressly so I could get oriented on the layout of Tel Aviv (which is supposed to be considerably more interesting than Haifa) and to get some time in at the beach. Unfortunately, our tour guide decided to tell us everything about everyone who had ever lived anywhere in the city, so while the other group got about 2 hours at the beach at the end of the day, mine got about 20 minutes. Needless to say, I was kinda pissed. That being said I got to see some interesting things, including the house where Israel announced its countryhood, two very different bazaar-type things, and the ancient city of Jaffa (sometimes pronounced Yaffo for reasons which continue to elude me). Jaffa was actually really cool. Apparently, that was where Jonah got on the boat which led to the whole whale incident in the Bible. And, in Greek mythology, the rocks in the bay right next to the city are where the princess Andromeda was chained in order to be sacrificed to the sea monster Ceto before being rescued by Perseus (who was on his way back home after killing Medusa). Jaffa was also conquered briefly by Napoleon (again I'm not quite sure why). When we had some time to wander around the city we went to a flea market which was pretty strange. You know how in old movies when someone visits an Arab country and they stumble into a bazaar with all those covered stands and merchants hawking strange and exotic wares at exorbitant prices? Well, both of the bazaars I went to were just like that, except upgraded to be a bit more modern. The stands were covered with plastic tarps instead of cloth and the merchants were selling cell phones, DVDs, and national flag-themed boxer-briefs (I saw a set of Soviet Russia themed underwear complete with hammer and sickle, it was weird). This was in addition to spices, fresh fruits, little statues and other sorts of things which one would expect to find in a bazaar. But this only accounted for half of the first market, the other half was in what appeared to be a hallowed out warehouse which had been crammed to capacity with clothing stores. There were veritable forests of knock-off handbags, brand-x jeans, and other tems of clothing which made the girls in the group absurdly happy. I was indifferent, as essentially everything there was geared towards female shoppers. Well, thats not quite true, I saw some pretty interesting daggers and old flintlock pistol looking things which I kinda wanted to buy but figured I would never be able to get them through customs. Oh well.

The second market was more like the movie-type bazaar I described earlier. It was one long windy street with booths crowding in on both sides and yet more merchants yelling and exhorting, in their various languages, why their items were the best. The only downside to this place was that occasionally water (or at least i hope it was water) would drip down on you from above, where the coverings of the booths created a roof of sorts. At this place I ended up buying a disturbingly fresh carrot juice from a random vendor and a necklace with a hamsa (a hand held in a position like you would see on a stop sign with some weird patterns on the palm) on it. I was told by one of the girls on the trip that hamsas are good luck charms in both the Jewish and Arabic traditions, but I looked them up on wikipedia and it said that they just protect you from evil spirits/the evil eye, so it seems like more an anti-bad luck charm than a good luck charm to me. In either case I am pleased with it. What I am not pleased with is the fact that I forgot my camera, so I don't have any pictures of any of these things, sorry. I was going to make up for it by showing some pictures from my dorm, but the picture uploader isn't working right now for some reason, sorry (again).

In other news, the Ulpan will be over on Thursday. That means that I have been here for almost a month which is kind of surprising to me seeing as how I still sometimes forget that I am over here at all. However, it also means that in 5 days I get to begin wandering all over Israel to look at stuff. I figure I will start in Haifa and work my way out. In Haifa there are the Baha'i Gardens, Elijah's Cave, and the Sella Maris monastery, all of which I want to see. Then I'll go to Jerusalem and see what I can see there. Then on to Tel Aviv, the Dead Sea, and hopefully Petra (which is in Jordan). I would also like to try and make it to Istanbul, to see the Hagia Sophia, Ephesus, to see the old library there, and possibly Cairo, to see the pyramids, but I am unsure as to how much it would cost to go to Turkey and/or Egypt. I have spoken to some people here who are planning to go to Turkey during the break and they said that they found a deal for three nights and four days in a hotel plus airfare for about somewhere around $400. I will, of course, be looking into that a little later.

The last item for this post involves the local wildlife. My bathroom has now become the permanent home of a truly large cockroach. A friend of my Mom's suggested that I name the cockroaches so they seem less threatening, but the only name I can come up with for this cockroach is Jeffrey, and I don't want to name it that because Jeffrey was the name of my beloved pet cannibal goldfish when I was younger (I'm not kidding). If anyone has any name ideas please let me know. The only reason the cockroach in question has not been killed is that he lives under a portion of my toilet plumbing that is impossible for me to get around in in order to kill him. Also, those perfidious kittens have continued their siege of the suite, and have been partially successful. My suite mates tend to leave the doors open and the kittens have begun to walk right in and then home in on food sources. What is more, Gabriel the Greek Guy has apparently been feeding them for some time now. I personally no longer feel guilty about not feeding them because there are people all over the dorms who feed the swarm of kittens which have infested this place. It seems like every terrace of the dorm has at least one litter of kittens hitting up everyone there for food/affection. I accidentally petted on of the kittens yesterday night and it apparently felt that this constituted permission for it to try to eat my sandwich. So, yeah, I won't be petting them anymore.

More Later

Cockroaches, Land Crabs, Kittens & Other Pests

Alright, so I went to Cesarea yesterday and it was pretty awesome. Cesarea was either the largest or the second largest port in the entirety of the roman empire and was an important trade stop and thriving city for about 800 years. The it got destroyed by the Muslims (I think). Then the Crusaders came up and built a fort there. Then the fort got destroyed by the Mamelukes. Now there's an archaeological dig there. It has yet to be destroyed. We got to see a lot of cool stuff, like the hippodrome (where horse races were held, which, much like NASCAR, were primarily watched for the crashes), the theater (which still hosts concerts), and one of King Herod's palaces. The above pictures are, in order, 1.some ruins 2. Areon (from Macedonia), Sarah (from Denmark), and me on a statue of a chariot at the Hippodrome and 3. the remains of King Herod's freshwater indoor swimming pool/enemy-drowning pit (apparently he needed to drown a lot of enemies). Again, the issue of water was addressed a lot on the tour, in this case they talked about how the people of Cesarea (Cesareans?) built massive aqueducts from the Carmel mountain range to the coast 15km away to carry water to the city. They also imported an entire tribe of people from the Sudan to clear the nearby marshes because they were resistant to malaria. This tribe still lives in this big city in that same area which we passed on our way to the ruins. I also got to go to the beach and swim for a bit (my first time to the beach since I got here). Now, here's the thing about the Mediterranean: its warm. And not nice warm, more lukewarm like old bathwater. The mental image I got the entire time I was in the water was this one: you know when you're in a pool and you wander into a warm spot and you wonder whether its warm because of the sun or something or because someone just peed there? Yeah, the entire sea feels like that. It's also so salty that it burned my eyes a bit. That being said, I enjoyed the beach and will probably try to return there once I figure out the bus system.

Now, for some random things I have been meaning to mention here but kept forgetting. The first is that salad here is comprised entirely of cucumbers and tomatoes. Sometimes there might be cabbage, but not often. I don't think I have seena head of lettuce since I got here.

Then there are the bugs. There is some kind of spider here which is both huge and terrifying to me. I only ever see them from a distance, but there front legs always look like pincers to me and thus I have named them Land Crabs. Every time I see one I am torn between wanting to run away and wanting to smash it to death. So far I haven't done either. There are also massive (or possibly normal sized, but bigger than I've ever seen) cockroaches which live around the dorms. My morning today was ruined when I walked into my bathroom and looked into my shower and saw two of them scurrying about. I went to get a shoe to smash them, but I returned just in time to see them escape down my drain. So I turned on the water in the hopes of drowning them (or at least washing them away from my room). I came back into the bathroom a little later and saw a third cockroach on the floor. This one scurried into the tile of my shower somehow before I could squish it. As near as I can tell, they have some sort of network of tunnels around my bathroom which they use to get from place to place. My response to this invasion will be overwhelming and poisonous.

On the topic of pests, my dorm is currently under siege by four highly motivated and tragically adorable kittens. I don't know where they came from, but they REALLY want into the suite and, of course, I can't let them in. So I have to shut the door in their faces and then listen to them meow piteously through the windows. They don't appear to be malnourished and there are cats everywhere around here so there must be a food source somewhere... hopefully. I still feel like a jackass every time I have to dodge them on my way in or out.

On a completely different topic, I was talking to Washti (my Israeli suite mate) about how the Israeli students here are still taking their finals even though it is summer. Apparently this has been the case for the entire time Washti has been at the University. This year (his junior year) the teachers went on strike for about two months at the beginning of the semester, so they have finals right now. His sophomore year the students went on strike to protest a raise in tuition, so finals got pushed back until summer as well. His freshmen year, Syria decided to start shooting rockets into Haifa, so school got canceled until they stopped and, you guessed it, finals got pushed back into summer. He fears that he will never have a summer to himself at this rate. Personally, I hope no one tries to pull any of that stuff while I'm here because I don't have the time to make stuff up later.

The last thing I want to mention is that nearly everyone here is either two years younger or minimum 4 years older than me. For example, the two other students in the picture at the beginning of this post. Sarah is 23 and Areon is 27. So now I feel very, very young. Oh well. I'm going to the Bahai Gardens on Sunday after my Mid-Term so I should have some good photos then. More Later