A Foodie's Delight!

So, if you know anything about me at all, I take pictures of my food... And I was specially requested to make this post, so here it is! Some of these photos have been posted to Facebook, but they don't come with mouth-watering descriptions. ;)

The first night we were here, I went to the Green Cow (by Inge's apartment) and had falafel and grapefruit soda. Now, grapefruit soda just might be my favorite drink in the entire world (other than Guarana).  It's sweet, it's sour, it's pulpy and amazing. The falafel is also amazing. Crispy on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside, you'd never complain about being a vegetarian ever again.  They have enough people here who are, that it's heaven to eat out and keep kosher/vegetarian.

THE most DELICIOUS strawberries you will EVER EAT are right here in Tel Aviv. Even the white ones are bursting with sweet flavor! 

These are brought to the table like bread and oil in the States. Hot chickpeas that are surprisingly crisp and delicious. And, for the pickle-lovers, cabbage and carrot salad with a spicy (like, pickle spicy) dressing.  These chickpeas taste like those hot boiled peanuts every southerner loves (at least this one!). The cabbage is usually a bit too soured for me, but there have been some really amazing ones!

Schnitzel fingers and fries. What can I say? It's the healthy version of chicken fingers; a light breadcrumb coating and fresh, white meat, pounded to perfect tenderness. The fries, sorry, "chips", are tasty, but not a single restaurant serves them with salt! I've taken to carrying salt packets with me, since they don't salt anything, which makes my high salt diet difficult, to say the least!

Now, this, I've raved about before, but I can't get enough of it! Light! Refreshing! Sweet! Tangy! It's like drinking relaxation! Limonana, (a combination of limonada and nana, the Hebrew for lemonade and mint), is the most incredible drink to sit on the beach and sip. Keep your Mai Tais, Pina Coladas, Daqaris and whatever else you want. No alcohol is needed for this drink of pure delight!

We went to Max Brenner with Michele's friend, and I had the most incredible hot chocolate. Sweet, but not sugary, with excellent amounts of cinnamon and vanilla, it was perfect for the cold night. It was also served in their special "Hug Mug" which is specially designed to hold in both hands to drink.  It's sort of like a Chinese/Japanese teacup, except bigger and sort of oblong rather than round. 

Michele got a sweet tiramisu crepe... Let's just say it was gone pretty rapidly. =]

When in Israel, go for the fruit! My fruit and granola from Max Brenner was incredible, especially with their chocolate shavings and chocolate infused honey!

Gilad had the most Israeli dish - it was chocolate whip, which had a consistency between pudding and mousse. With the chocolate balls and syrup on top, it was delightful!

So, next to campus, between the main gate and our dorms, is the King George restaurant. I was feeling particularly in the mood for hot dogs, so I got the kid's meal, and look, it came with stickers! The hot dogs were cut and fried almost exactly the same as the hot dogs I ate in Puerto Montt, Chile.  They were delicious!

I have a fascination with vending machines, and I'll tell you why. Vending machines are filled with the food that the locals eat the most when they're rushing or just needing a quick snack.  Obscure, random things don't get put in vending machines because they wouldn't be bought and therefore they wouldn't make money. So I got these out of the vending machine and had NO CLUE what they were. But they were in the vending machine, so they must be good... Or at least popular...

So they look sort of like the puffed Cheetos, and they have the same texture and pretty much are the exact same thing... except they're peanut butter flavored! And really good! I didn't think there was a way to make peanut butter any more enjoyable, but the flaky, light texture of these means you can eat all of them and not feel disgusting! (Granted, it was a little bag, but sometimes peanut butter sticks all over your mouth and you feel like you've eaten a lot more than you have, but these don't do that!)

Israeli pizza... mmm, the joy! It's flat, it's crispy, it's cheap, and oh, so good. Pizza is pizza is pizza, right? Yeah, pretty much. But this is fresh tomatoes, fresh cheese, and baked when you order. Amazing!

This was also from King George. Delicious beef and mushroom pasta. They like cooking things with soy sauce. Still good, though. Sort of like beef stir fry with the wrong kind of noodles...

And now we get to the candy and stuff I've bought at the grocery store...

Don't ask me how to say it. Just know it's like a giant kit-kat wafer bar thing, and that it's delicious. 

I don't know how to rotate these, so bear with me.  These, other than their funny shape, are also pretty good. They're very similar to the Kinder Bueno or Sohno de Valsa, or for Americans, filled with hazelnut creme stuff, like what's in the middle of a Ferrero Rocher. 

BEST ISRAELI CHOCOLATE EVER! This looks like tree bark, and I can't remember the name, and I've gone through two bags already, but it's the most amazing chocolate ever! It melts in your mouth and is creamy and delicious!

This is my afternoon snack... As I said, the best strawberries in the world!

So Aroma is pretty much like Starbucks or Panera or Atlanta Bread Co, but their specialty is iced coffee. Now, most people think iced coffee is normal in the states. Take coffee, pour over ice, tada! But here, it's blended with milk and sugar and ice and is like the most amazing slushy ever. I don't know how they get the consistency just right, but it's great!

Hey, look! Kinder Joy (no "eggs" or "surprise").  Since they got their own post in Belgium, they'll get their own post here... Keep your eyes peeled!

Just for reference, this is what I've been eating fairly frequently - strawberries, pasta, and cucumber/tomato salad with lemon and garlic. All fresh, all amazing!

This stuff is amazing! It's a probiotic "shot" of yogurt and just delicious. I feel so healthy having one every morning on my way out the door!

White chocolate covered graham fish... Not so good...

Chocolate covered "cookies" - AMAZING!

White and milk chocolate covered crispy things... sort of like Kix the cereal. Pretty good =]

Grapefruit popsicles! SO GOOD!!

Just to make my mom jealous... fresh BABKA! MMMMMMMMM. 

Look at that flaky deliciousness! It's chocolate flavored, too!

Vending machine popsicles!

Yes, that's the view from my room! That's a lemon tree right down there! Full of lemons!

It has sugar beads in the middle! Oh! Cherry and lemon flavored! Yum!

This was in the vending machine! Lucky me! 

This is my morning cereal. Like cinnamon toast crunch, but a million times better! And maple syrup flavored! But not too sweet. Just perfect!

So there's the food for now! I'll keep yall updated as I eat new and exciting things!

Lilah tov!

Catching up

Thursday was simply class. We had morning session until 11 and then our test at 11:15 or so. We were free to leave when we were finished, so Michele and I hit up the mall for some errands.  There's a food court in the mall, so we had schwarma and chicken skewers that we shared. It was really good.

That evening, Halley had some friends over and we all had dinner together before meeting up with her friends, two Israelis, Edan and Tal, who are in the army. We sat on the beach, looking towards Jaffa and just hung out for a while before going to a hookah bar. It was pretty chill, and we were enjoying ourselves. Three of their army buddies joined us, and it was cool to talk to all of them.

I love some of the old buildings with the new art in Jaffa! 

Such a gorgeous view!!

When we were suitably relaxed, we headed over to the WonderlanD club.  It was loud and crazy and fun. The problem is that Israeli boys are very aggressive. I was quite literally man-handled, and all four of us girls were pretend dating Halley's two friends because that made them back off - a little. After the club, we got kebaps/schwarma. It's kindof funny to me how it was the late-night staple in Belgium and here. Honestly? Super Kebap was better...

I was talking to Edan on the walk back, and I asked him how much emphasis they put on marching. It's a really weird thing to notice, but nearly every Israeli walks in a very particular way - almost like they're kicking their heels out. Edan made fun of me for noticing, but also pointed out that Israelis live around their time in the army.  I debated the pros and cons of mandatory service with Tal for a few minutes, (he was of the opinion that it was not so beneficial to developing as adults since college and moving out are delayed by three/four years, while I thought having an extra three years to decide my career and gaining the maturity the army teaches you would be a good thing), and then Edan was telling me how nearly all the slang revolves around army speak.  You don't "hit on" a girl, you "strategize an attack" - I forgot the rest, but there were a lot of army-related acronyms and stuff, too. I thought it was really interesting.

So we got back around 5AM, and I fell asleep til 8, when I got up to have breakfast, decided I didn't have anything to do, so went back to bed. I pretty much slept on and off all day, had some fun Skype conversations =] and cleaned the apartment.

I did read my Israel guide book, and it looks like I've seen most of what I'm sincerely interested in already. There are a few museums to go to that would be interesting, but I think, other than shopping and the beach, I've seen most all of it. Of course, I want to spend some more time in Jaffa and walk around some more, but I'm getting the hang of the city.  I've already decided that Tuesdays will be my Shuk days since there's an arts and crafts market next to Shuk HaCarmel every week.  My weekly groceries have pretty much come down to strawberries (they're AMAZING here!), tangerines, and some things to make the cucumber-tomato salad that's so popular here.

So that's life here in Israel, at least for now.

Lilah Tov!

Long Days and Deep Reflection

Oh, it's Wednesday! That means tomorrow is a test... and then the weekend!

So today was class first (surprise, surprise). We have two teachers for our classes. The first two days, we had Hava, who is very nice and goes over things slowly and answers questions when we ask them. Yesterday and today, we had Aviv, who is very gay, very obnoxious, and just flat mean. He makes fun of us for asking questions and refuses to write anything down. I got yelled at for using a dictionary since he said a word four times and I still couldn't understand him. >.<

So, I haven't really struggled with an academic subject in a really long time. The chemistry classes that I had issues with, I did what I needed to do to get a decent grade, relied on the curve and pretty much learned how to BS my way through any assignment. I am fortunate in the fact that writing comes naturally to me, I love arguing and research, so papers aren't a hassle, and I can usually figure out most math or logic. In high school, I was pushed to write and read and do research and put effort into whatever it was that I was doing. That drive sort of slipped away from me in college, as I bounced from major to major, career to career. I must give props to my high school for being an incredible environment - everyone there wanted to be there, wanted to go to college and do really impressive things. And most of my classmates are.

College was sort of a let down, because all of the sudden there were people who were only there for the parties, people who were simply using it as an escape from home, people who didn't care about academics, people who had a multitude of reasons for being there that didn't include anything centered on education or learning. My high school was nothing but kids who were interested in information for the sake of education, and we enjoyed learning as much as we loved complaining about the work we had to do. But I was at my academic prime. I was interested, I was excited, I thought the world was open for my exploration, and that I could do anything as long as I was willing to learn how to do it.

And then college came and I somehow got sorted into a major with very specific career options that I ended up not really being very interested in. I was slated into a group of students who were oddballs because of their love of learning, their interest in things, their ease at school because they found it interesting. People who say I'm smart frustrate me because everyone has the capability to learn things, but so few people take that opportunity to do so. Even tonight, I had an experience that makes me so disheartened with the general population. (I know, I'm skipping ahead, but my day was pretty much class, lunch, study, dinner, movie.)

This evening, we were invited to a private screening of The Wonder, and Israeli movie, by our TAU Madrachim (basically our counselors).  They have all these different activities and tours and stuff to expose us to Israel and show us around, etc. Anyways, tonight they took us to this movie.  The theater was awesome. It was in a mall with all these lights and it was decorated with really cool posters and designs and all these statues of famous movie characters. (Go check out my Facebook to see some of them!) I was taking a whole bunch of pictures. (Obviously. That's what I do.) A particular friend was making fun of me. As per usual. So I take a lot of pictures. I don't force them on anyone. I don't take pictures of people. I snap what's going on in my life when I'm traveling.  Just like this blog, I want to be able to reflect and see what things were like.

I was so excited. All these cool statues. Iron Man, Mickey Mouse, the Genie from Aladdin, Olive Oyl, Tin Tin, Sly... so many. And I was being made fun of. So I told her my favorite quote, one by Roald Dahl -

"Those who don't believe in magic will never find it." 

She kind of looked at me funny and I let it go.

The immediate preceding line is, "And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places."

I think the whole quote is something so astounding and such an incredible way to view the world. I was so enamored with these statues. They're so reminiscent of home, but thousands of miles away. I'm definitely a kid at heart. It makes me happy. And there are people standing there making fun of me. Instead of appreciating the fact that our environment is in fact global (something that's only been proven true to me time and time again through my various travels), they were of the opinion that it was no big deal, it was expected, it was blase.

And yet, they had a Spongebob, Winnie the Pooh, and Iron Man statues in Tel Aviv, Israel.  Five THOUSAND, 671 miles away from New York City, 7551 miles from Hollywood, there are statues representing the most iconic movie characters of the past decades. If that's not awe-some, I don't know what is.

Our world is so globally linked at this point in time that it's impressive that there are as many differences in culture as there are. And that should be celebrated. And those differences should be pursued for the sake of learning and exploring. Get excited about the similarities just as much as the differences, though. We're all human, we all share SO MUCH, and it's really impressive how you can have a conversation about Duck Dynasty in the university book store and buy Disney products in every country in the world. That's the magic of today's world. 

But it's also magic that we have the thousands of religions and careers and so much information. Cars and boats and planes and trains and spaceships and language and math and physics and history and philosophy and anthropology and archaeology and medicine and the body and the brain and people and trees and cats and... everything. The amount of stuff we know is intangibly huge. The amount of stuff we still have to learn about is infinite. 

So why would you not be interested in learning just a little bit more, and a little bit more, and a little bit more? What we find out today might be tomorrow's magic. The internet was a dream, and yet, I get to broadcast my crazy rants on this page and reach out to however many people want to read it. I get to talk to my parents every day, even though they're seven hours behind me and I'm going to bed when they're going to work. You have to believe in the magic to see it, but you also have to want to participate in that magic. 

And now, after this incredibly huge tangent/rant, I'll get back to my magic.  Not the magic of the movie theater, but the magic that I had renewed in the past couple of months that is really shoving its head into my idealized plans. I've been lucky in my education that I've been interested, and I was upset that I had lost that inspiration in college. And then I figured out that my five-year-old self had the right idea in saying I wanted to be a teacher, and I got so excited about my chemistry education research. But it was still a little relaxed. Excited, but still not inspired.

Now, I'm in a class that's kicking my ass. I studied for the first time since high school. (Studied, not crammed.) I'm interested in learning Hebrew. I'm ecstatic to be here in Israel and cannot express how much it means to have the opportunity to be here. I'm learning, and feel like I'm learning. It's not regurgitation for a professor who hates teaching. It doesn't even matter if my teachers here don't like teaching. I'm learning, and I'm so excited to be learning. 

My teacher drives me insane and makes me feel like an idiot. And this is something that rightfully makes me feel dumb, which gives me so much more drive to learn it, because it is something that I can do, something that will benefit me, but is also fun. In a week, I've learned thirteen verbs. It doesn't sound like a lot, but I can communicate with a population that I couldn't interact with before. And it's a language that is international on so many levels. I'm not even going to get into the religious implications of being here in Israel. That's a topic for another post.  (Though I did have a wonderful two hour lunch discussing philosophy of religion today...) 

I'm surrounded with so many students who are here for the fun of it, who aren't appreciating the opportunity to be here. I was surrounded in college by so many masses that didn't care so much about classes as the gossip going on or the parties being planned or the idealized four years of college that is essentially very little responsibility with very little supervision. College isn't about learning anymore. But that's what it should be. Even so, the problem is even more basic - that people don't want to learn, there's no interest, and there's no excitement about the world, even the little things. 

So I leave you with this tonight - seek out the magic, and make your own. I wish that I could better express my love of learning, and somehow inspire it in more of the people I meet. 

Lilah tov!

P.S. The movie was awful. You kept waiting for something to happen, a plot twist, something. It was very predictable, and very long. But it was a fun night out. 

Exhaustion Continues

I got up, I went to class, blah blah blah. We have two teachers, so we met the second one today. He's very gay, very obnoxious, and has a very unlikeable teaching style. He refused to write down 90% of the words we were learning until the end of class, so some of us were completely confused until the last hour of class, when we started frantically writing everything and asking questions and then being made fun of for being visual learners.

After that, I went with Nessa to get a bus pass (we get 33% discount for being students if we use our pre-paid card and not cash!) and then went to the shuk. I forgot that there's an art market with local crafts every Tuesday (and I think Friday), so I browsed that a bit before doing my shopping. I got some nice produce to make little salads and stuff. On the way to the bus stop, I got some delicious cheese pizza.  (I'll be doing a food related post on Friday when I have the time and energy to accompany with pictures and write decent descriptions.  Yall know I love grocery stores and vending machines!) As soon as I got back, I crashed.

A lot of people are sick right now. Mostly with digestive problems. Thankfully I'm not having any issues with the food or water, but I've been running a fever all afternoon.  I'm pretty sure one of the girls in my class got us all sick.

Lilah tov!

Exhaustion Sets In

Whew! Today... today was Monday. Which means it's Tuesday. Which means it's only three more days of school til the weekend. This whole starting-on-Sunday-thing is still throwing me off pretty badly.

I learned some stuff in Hebrew. I felt like and idiot. Made some strides. Figured some things out. Still feel utterly and completely lost.

Came home and had the most non-Kosher meal ever: Salami and cream cheese sandwich on fresh bread.

Oh, well, I should backtrack for a moment. I went to the grocery store and now I have a JAP story. JAPs abound in this program. I don't know why. Anyhoo, I went to the grocery store and ran into two girls from the program. Perfectly JAPy, even down to the New York accent. They had TONS of stuff, and only two hands to carry it all back. My having lived abroad has prepared me for daily grocery shopping, so I had very little and helped out. I should mention that the grocery store is maybe a seven minute walk from campus, if you hit the one red light possible. After expressing their surprise at my lack of overload of food, I mentioned that I was used to daily shopping and that they could actually get better and cheaper food from the shuk. Their response was along the lines of it being far enough already and it being a hassle to even go the five minutes.

I don't really get why people travel or move just to be exactly the same in a different place.  In Belgium, you go to the supermarket literally every day and eat at home, go to the bars around 8/9, and then catch the metro home by midnight. In Singapore, you don't really party out anywhere, eat every meal at a stand and pass time hanging out in malls. Here in Israel, you go to the beach, you hang out, you eat super late (dinner's at 9/10), you go to the shuk to get fresh food. In Clemson or Charleston, I go to the grocery store once a week, never walk anywhere and leave to go out at 11 or midnight. Why I would take that mentality anywhere else is beyond me. That's not learning anything about another culture, that's just changing the scenery.

Speaking of which, I got into an interesting conversation at the bookstore today. I'm one of the very few southern people on this trip (the other person being from Tennessee). I don't really have an accent, nor do I ascribe to some of the more common southern traditions. I was talking to a friend and mentioned that some of the people I went to school with in Clemson were essentially on par with the stars of Duck Dynasty.  Surprise! Israelis know what Duck Dynasty is! So I was talking to the clerk, and he was asking if people really spoke like that or acted like that or whatever. He seemed surprised when I said yes. He was even more astonished when I told him I knew people who had never been on planes, who had never traveled, and had no desire to ever leave their hometown, except for family and southern traditions like football and college. There were other people in the room that were following our conversation, and I was overwhelmed with the general response, and eagerness, of people to travel. I was speaking in English (since I'm not exactly capable of Hebrew yet), and at least six people joined in - all of them Israeli, all of them fluent in at least English, if not English and another language.

There are people here in the Ulpan program who are from Germany, Panama, Argentina, Norway, France, and other non-English speaking countries. They not only are learning Hebrew, they have to learn it from English, since that's the predominant language. So they're learning a third (or sometimes fourth, fifth or sixth) language in reference to their second language. It's mind boggling. I am so impressed and so jealous, and now have a reasonably substantial goal in life. Maybe not the eight languages of Marion and Inge, but a good, solid four or five would be nice. Of course, keeping them straight might be difficult, as I definitely answered all the Hebrew questions in Portuguese today... Answered them correctly, as in understood the Hebrew, but said all the answers (also correctly) in Portuguese. That was a fun moment.

So after all this, I finally got a blanket from the apartment, spent the afternoon hanging out with my roomies and doing homework. Now it's time for bed.

Lilah tov!

On the Importance of Vowels

My brain feels like it's been doing gymnastics all day... I had four hours of Hebrew Ulpan today, and just finished with my homework.  The next month will suck, but I'm fairly confident I'll be able to read, write and speak by the end of this nightmare.

I like languages, don't get me wrong. I just can't seem to wrap my head around no vowels and the very, very odd grammar structure. In Spanish, Portuguese, English, German, French, and Italian (all languages I've at least been exposed to, if not actually spoken), there's first person, second person, and third person, singular and plural, so you end up making little charts with six sections for each verb. Adjectives pretty much stay the same, other than gender or the addition of s. In Hebrew, the subject, verb and adjectives all have the same ending, and it's based on gender and singular or plural.

So, "Sally studies a lot" translates almost directly into, "Sally estudia mucho", while "Henry studies a lot" translates into "Henry estudia mucho". Also normal is "I study a lot. You study a lot." -> "Yo estudio mucho. Tu estudias mucho."  The only thing that changes is the verb.

Ready for Hebrew? "Sally lomedet gadolet." "Henry lomed gadol."

Maybe that's not the best example, but it's the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the language. It's going to be a rough couple of weeks.

The second part, and the topic that gives the title to today's post, is that there are no vowels. So, in reading, I sound out the consonants with mostly schwa sounds until I can figure it out. It's like a really bad game. "Florida" was "fa-loh-ra-dee" and "university" was "oon-yoh-rah-sa-teh" until someone figured it out. If you think it can't possibly be that hard, try this on for size:

Spkng wtht vwls s s mch mr dffclt thn y thnk. Nd nglsh s trmndsl sr thn hbrw.

Get it? Here's what it says, with vowels this time:

Speaking without vowels is so much more difficult than you think. And English is tremendously easier than Hebrew.

Oh, and everything in class is in script, not print, so that's been a ton of fun, too.

So after class, I went out to lunch with some friends, then went to find the school store. I got some cute tee shirts before heading home.

Our homework was to write three separate paragraphs using the verbs we learned today (study, work, live and speak), with different subjects to practice the different genders and numbers. I had popcorn for dinner, and now it's time to relax before bed. I get to do all this again tomorrow... yay.

Lilah tov!

PS. I added photos into the previous posts, so check them out!