Tests and Hookah Bars

Thursdays are test days, so that's always fun. Today was particularly bad since half the test was things we were told would not be on the test, and, when I asked the teacher for an extra thirty seconds to read the question before I was expected to answer it, he called me an idiot.  Not to mention that I fell on my face when I stood up to turn in my test. Literally tripped over nothing and hurt my foot.

Despite all this, I did have a nice evening.  Michele and I went over to Jaffa to check out the hookah bar that Halley's friends took us to a few weeks ago. (I can't believe I've already been here for four weeks!!) I wanted to get a picture of this last time, but I couldn't, so I got it this time.  It's the edge of a crosswalk. 

The hookah bar is super chill, in an older building, and is really relaxing despite the clouds of smoke.

We ordered fries and lemon mint sheesha, along with an iced limonana (lemon mint frozen slushy-like drink). It was... interesting. Hookah makes you really relaxed, and I enjoyed sitting and people-watching. The smoke was a little strong, especially since we were sitting inside and it was all contained.  It was too cold to sit outside, but I think it would be more comfortable. I don't think I'll do it again, especially not in just a pair.  If it was a group, I would probably go but not smoke. I'm glad I went and experienced it, but I didn't really see the big deal. I'm not knocking it if people like it, it's just not something I'd care to spend money on.

Michelle and Michele =]

So it was a fun night and tomorrow we'll go shopping.

Lilah tov!

An Afternoon with Inge

Ooh, Wednesdays... I kept thinking today was Thursday, but our test is tomorrow.

After class, Michele, Jesse and I went to lunch on Dizengoff, which is the main shopping street/mall, before going to get a camera for Michele.  We accidentally ran into Jesse on the bus, so we invited him along. It was nice, but the falafel/schwarma place we ended up at wasn't the best.  Michele couldn't get her camera fixed, so she just bought a new one.

While they were at the mall, I went over to the apartment and helped Inge unpack and stuff.  She certainly knows how to pack... Her closet was full by the time I was done! Michele came over and helped a bit, and then, while Inge took a nap, we went to the Giraffe to study.  We had a study aid or two (orange vodka and cranberry vodka), and learned some slang from the bartender.

Sababa means "great", "cool" or "good", often in response to "How are you?" or "How are things?"
Yalla means "let's go!", often in groups or trying to get friends to go somewhere/leave.

After our studying, Inge took us to her favorite seafood restaurant, Danny the Fisherman, or דני הדייג. I've been there before (we went when Gabe was here), and it's incredibly good. Their assortment of salads to start are delicious, and the views of the harbor are pretty.  Inge got her usual fish, Michele had a mixture of calamari and mussels in tomato sauce, and I had chicken and potatoes. We then split a chocolate lava cake and had a lovely evening.

Inge and Michele get along beautifully, and one of my favorite comments that Michele later told me was that Inge speaks like a 25 year-old.  The stories she tells are hysterical and ridiculous and amazing.  Having dinner with her is always amusing.  I'm just glad we all had a good time.

Now it's time to sleep so I don't fail my test.

Lilah tov!

The Benedict and the Hilton

So, the Benedict is a restaurant that's open 24/7 and serves only breakfast.  It's on Rothchild Blvd, and is a tourist... "attraction." (Read: trap.)

However, Michele wanted to go, so we went.  It was actually really good, and despite being on the expensive side, I think I'll be returning.

First, they bring you fresh bread with butter, nutella, and apple butter. Delicious!

Michele got creamed spinach eggs Benedict. (It is their namesake, after all...)

I had a soft boiled egg, bacon, and a bowl of fruit. All of which were delicious!

After the Benedict, I went to Inge's and we went to meet a few of her friends at the Hilton.  As in the hotel.  It's one of the nicest places in Tel Aviv, and we met in the lobby/lounge to have drinks. The first friend I had met before, but did not know, and her son was there, and he's an almost-professional musician.  He plays the electric violin and is incredibly talented.

It was nice to experience the Hilton and sort of people-watch.  There were quite a few high-end hookers, many wealthy people going to a white-tie wedding, and then super rich Americans in jeans and cowboy boots. It was rather amusing.

Oh! I didn't have anything to wear, so I took this out of Inge's closet. It's from the 60's!  I also happened to stop and buy shoes on the way to Inge's apartment, so I had new, cute shoes, too.

Lilah tov!

A Day in Jerusalem

Whew! What a day!

We started at 7AM at the bus outside of campus.  Getting up that early was just delightful.  After waiting for people for forty-five minutes, we finally left. Our first stop was the Knesset, after driving through the Rose Garden.  They fed us breakfast on the bus, but it was Israeli style, meaning vegetable sandwiches... Most of us just kept it to eat later. Avocado, eggplant, tuna or cheese sandwiches, most with peppers, cucumbers, pickles or olives, are not really appreciated as breakfast foods to most Americans.

Outside the Knesset

The Knesset was a very pretty building, and it had an amazing mural by Mark Chegal on the main foyer.  However, it's pretty much the same as the Capital building in DC or the EU building in Brussels or the UN building in New York City. Basically what you see on C-Span.

Chegal's Tapestries

Next, we went to an overlook on the governor's palisade, which is leftover from the British rule.  From there, you could see almost all of Jerusalem.

More pictures can be found on my Facebook.  Below is one of my favorite shots, though:

From there we went over to the food shuk, where we had lunch (Michele and I got fish and chips), before walking over to the old city and seeing the Western Wall.

I would have taken many, many more pictures, and bought some things, but we were rushed to get to various places and prevented from stopping. We would get where we were going and then have to wait a considerable amount of time, which was very frustrating. I'm planning to go back and see more of Jerusalem.

We wandered around the Western Wall, saw some of the old Jewish Quarter and some of the more historical places that I haven't been before. It was pretty cool. My favorite thing was this map/mural:

Our tour guide said this: "We're on a street that's 3000 years old, sitting on stones that were put here 2500 years ago, following a map that's 1800 years old, that was found 1000 years ago, that was rebuilt 700 years ago, that we're now using today."

I think that's pretty cool.

We also went to a cool museum about the generations of Israel with all of these glass columns that were engraved with the names of the Israeli forefathers. It was really interesting, but I felt we could have spent some of the time better than sitting in the museum.

I prayed at the Western Wall and then we moved on to take gorgeous views of the city from above the wall... Our guide led us up all these steps and we ended up on the rooftops. It was really amazing.

We then went to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which was interesting. I appreciated that we went to a non-Jewish site, but there were some complaints among some of the people.  They did not seem to realize that, even though they're in Israel, not everyone is Jewish, and that includes describing our OSP group.  My patience with a lot of the Americans in the OSP is running very, very low, and I can't wait to be in classes with Israelis.

Dinner was buffet at an Italian restaurant with EXCELLENT dessert, and then we all piled back onto the bus for the drive back to Tel Aviv. We finally got home around 9, and I'm pretty sure everyone is headed to bed. Nearly everyone was asleep on the bus.  Michele and I figure that we walked at least five miles around Jerusalem.

Lilah tov!

Scavenger Hunts and a Survey (I need answers!)

Today was an interesting class since we had to go interview people around campus and ask them questions, mostly about directions and where they like to eat. It was difficult because it was early in the morning, so people were rushing, and when they did have time for us, they spoke really quickly. But we did learn some, and it was nice to actually use language, rather than listen to a lecture about how to.

We then had academic "orientation", where we learned about the procedure to register and heard from a few professors. I'm super excited for my classes, which will (for sure) be:

Scientific Revolutions - Dr. Leo Corry

Israel And The Environment - Dr. S. Fleischer 

Jewish Education The Reality And The Vision – Mr. Shaul Wachsstock

Canonical Jewish Texts - Dr. Hillel Ben Sasson

I need five classes, so I'm debating whether or not to take some more Hebrew, but it's really early and every day, so I don't think I will.

One I might take is Jews and The Passion, from Gospels to Gibson, which explores "the myth of the Jewish Christ Killer in all of its dimensions... We shall understand how - and why - the indictment of the Jews for engineering the death of Jesus took hold in Christianity of the first century.  And we shall follow the development of the Christ-Killer myth from the first century to the twenty-first, considering its response to historical change and its impact on people, events, societies and cultures." The professor spoke at our orientation and piqued my interest. But is a "casual misogynist" and warned all the girls about gaining weight, so I don't know if I really want to deal with him...

The second option is Women in Islamic Culture: Past and Present.  The class is about... well, women in Islam. From the syllabus: "Muslim women are usually described as heavily veiled, and constantly under the dominance of a male relative, their father, their brothers or husband, with limited access to the outer world. Their contribution to society is usually perceived as the mother or the wife, rather than a person on her own. The present course will address these assumptions, and challenge them. Discussions will revolve around several themes; the first will be the reproductive role designated for females, starting with Eve and ending in present-day fertility technology. Another theme will be women's education. We will examine the way gender influenced accessibility to education, general and professional, while comparing the Islamicate world to Christendom. The status of female individuals in modern Middle Eastern societies, Islamic as well as Jewish will be analyzed, focusing on gender role in nationalistic narratives throughout the Middle East."

Another one that I might take is Screened Ideas: Thinking Through Film And Television, in which we watch "movies and TV shows to focus our discussion on some of these longstanding philosophical
questions. These include, for example, ideas about such perennial philosophical subjects as reality and appearance, good and evil, and knowledge and skepticism. We will be reading a variety of philosophical texts, both historical and contemporary, with two fundamental aims: to understand what these authors were trying to say, and to attempt to form reasonable opinions about the problems and puzzles they were writing about."  Movies for this course include:

A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick, 1971), A Serious Man (Coen Bros, 2009), Avatar (Cameron, 2009), Bicentennial Man (Columbus, 1999), Crimes and Misdemeanors (Allen, 1989), Dogma (Smith, 1999), Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick, 1964), Extreme Measure (Apted, 1996), Fight Club (Fincher, 1999), Groundhog Day (Ramis, 1993), High Noon (Zinnemann 1952), Inception (Nolan, 2010),
Intolerable Cruelty (Coen Bros, 2003), Memento (Nolan, 2000), Minority Report (Spielberg, 2002), Monty Python’s the Meaning of Life (Jones, 1983), Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg, 1998),
The Matrix (Wachowski Bros, 1999), The Prestige (Nolan, 2006), The Third Man (Reed, 1949),
Total Recall (Verhoeven, 1990)

As well as selected episodes from the TV shows:
Family Guy (MacFarlane, 1999-), Lost (Abrams, 2004-2010), South Park (Parker & Stone, 1997-),
The Simpsons (Groening, 1989-)

So the question is this: which one should I take? Let me know down in the comments!

By the way...

Click back to see missed posts! I've been posting a few days at a time, so sometimes it rolls over to the second page! Hope you're enjoying!

Saturday in the Sun

This morning was rough getting up, but once I was, I had a great day.  Michele and I went to the Eretz Museum and spent several hours wandering the exhibit.  It wasn't really much to write home about (no pun intended) but was a lovely way to spend the day.  The most interesting parts, to me, were Jotam's Parable Garden and the Ethnography and Folklore Pavilion.

Jotam's Parable Garden was essentially just a garden with the native trees and plants of Israel labeled and a mini history.  The problem with the history was that it was only in Hebrew, so I missed most of the info, but it was cool to know the names of the plants you see everywhere.

With a gorgeous olive tree!

The Ethnography and Folklore Pavilion was actually a little museum of Jewish tradition and history, and it talked about the holidays and the symbols of Judaism and how they came to be. I thought it was really interesting.  The most incredible part was the room with Kettubim, or marriage documents, that dated back to the 1700's and came from India, Iran, Iraq, England, Spain, Netherlands, Denmark, and, of course, Israel. It was fascinating to see the breadth of the Jewish community around the world.

We also saw some cool archaeology and some traditional buildings for wine and olive oil pressing.

The old oil press building

Inside the oil press

Archaeology dig

I love the contrast of the archaeological site with the surrounding skyscrapers and modernization of Tel Aviv.

Hey, look! I learned something new and cool!

After the museum, we walked down to the pier. It was super crowded. We learned that coming on Shabbat is not the greatest idea. We couldn't hardly move. However, we did enjoy some tasty ice cream and I even found a spiral potato to nosh on!

YUM!

Oh, a word for the wise. Don't try to drive in Israel! I've never heard so many horns honking or so little space between cars. I was scared as a pedestrian. It was also faster to walk - we would be walking and the cars would go past, then we'd catch up and pass them, then the light would turn and they'd pass us. We did this with one particular car seven times... We beat him to the parking lot, where he then sat for probably a ridiculous amount of time. I was glad we were walking.

Classes start back tomorrow, so it's time for homework.

Lilah tov!

A Day in Jaffa!

So, if we're friends on Facebook, you've already seen the pictures, but I spent the day in Old Jaffa/Yaffa/Yafo.  Yes, they're all correct spellings, it just depends on who you ask.

I met up with a few friends and we hopped the bus to Jaffa, where we ended up walking around and exploring. I've been there before, but it was nice to see it again, and this time during the day!

Gabe and me in 2010

Michele and me in 2014

We stopped in several little shops, which all had some fun things, and even ended up in a "museum" of Yemmen silverwork.  They served us ginger coffee (SO. GOOD!) and we watched a little movie about the immigration of Yemmenite Jews into Israel.  The video was interesting, and the jewelry was gorgeous!

After some window shopping, we had lunch at Aladdin, which is a restaurant that I'd been to before. The views are unbeatable!

After lunch, we walked north along the beach towards campus. It was a nice walk, though it got a little chilly in the late afternoon.

Dressing for weather here is sort of ridiculous.  In the morning when you wake up, it's a comfortable 60/65, then you go outside and it steadily warms to 75/80 by about 2PM.  By the time you're headed home at 4:30, it's back to the mid 60's, and then around 7 or 8, it's in the 50's.

It was a really lovely day!

Lilah tov!