A Week Without a Post

I've gone a week without a post. So here's what you missed:

Friday:
Went to the Wadi Nisnas market in Haifa and bought some pitas and fruit. It was a good shopping trip. The Israeli who my friend and I were having dinner with that night called me while we were out and he told me all of the details for that night in Hebrew and I actually understood. When we got back to the university I changed for Shabbat and then my friend and I walked to the synagogue and met up with the family. They were nice people. They spoke mostly Hebrew to us and didn't try to convince us of any particular ideology or beliefs, as previous families have done. Instead, it was a very pleaseant meal with lot of food and good company. I think my Hebrew got a lot better because of that night. Afterwards, my friend and I walked back and played backgammon.

Saturday:
I made shakshuka for lunch and spent the day stressing about my Hebrew exam. The shakshuka was good, but the stress was not. That night my friends and I went out to a pub for happy hour. After that, we went to the supermarket and went grocery shopping. One of the things I bought was a bottle of scotch. While on the bus back, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about alcoholism and when the bus stopped the old woman in front of me got up, stuck her finger out, and said really loud "It is not good to be an alcoholic". That was a very Israeli thing to do.

Sunday:
Studied. All day. Except for when I had the make up class for Arab-Israeli Relations.

Monday:
Hebrew Exam. I got a C. Much better than last time. Hebrew is hard, but my teacher doesn't make it less hard. In fact, she makes it more difficult by forcing us to write with vowels which is not done by Israelis.

Yesterday:
Terrorism and Responses exam. Complete waste of time. All multiple choice/ short answer and only 20 questions. That class is garbage. My group did our presentation about ETA. The teacher liked it, but I wish that we could have studied it as a class.

I'm still eating from the massive pot of vegetable soup I made. One of the things I bought Saturday night was a bag of soup nuts to eat with the soup. It was a smart purchase.

Jerusalem Post Removed

I've removed the Jerusalem Post from this site. It's nothing but fear mongering drivel. Bye bye!

Thanksgiving Recap

Thanksgiving was great. There was lots of food, great people, and even football broadcast on the internet. Here's some photos.



Thanksgiving was great. There was lots of food, great people, and even football broadcast on the internet. Here's some photos.

Thanksgiving

Today is my 20th Thanksgiving, but I am not home for it. Instead my friends and I will be having a pot luck dinner. I don't know if there will be any turkey.

This week has been really rough. I was supposed to give a presentation on Tuesday but we ran out of time in class, so now it's been put off until this coming Tuesday. I have a Hebrew exam on Monday. It's going to be brutal. And I have my midterm for Terrorism and Responses on Tuesday. And I have a make up class on Sunday. Which means no going anywhere this weekend.

Tuesday night the international school held a cooking class. I learned how to make shakshuka, which is a Middle Eastern egg dish. It's made with eggs, tomatoes, onions, and peppers. The vegetables make a sauce and then the eggs are cracked right into it and simmered until the eggs are hard. It's delicious. It's become one of my new favorite foods. I tried it for the first time on Monday from one of the restaurants on campus. The best way to describe it is that there was a party in my mouth and everyone was invited. Except you. Just kidding.

I had a really bad day yesterday, so I made myself a pot of soup for dinner. From scratch. It was delicious.
It's been raining, so soup was a good thing to make. The thunder here is really loud. It almost sounds like bombs are going off.

Tomorrow night I'm going somewhere for Shabbat, as usual. Hopefully it will be neither awkward or a time share presentation for Israel or Orthodox Judaism. And hopefully the synagogue will not have people reading the newspaper during services. And most importantly, hopefully the food will be tasty.

Jerusalem

Yesterday I went to Jerusalem on a trip with the International School. There were only 15 people who came, but it was still fun. In the morning we went to the traditional site of King David's grave. It's neat, but apparently it's not where he would actually be buried. Who knows? It's still neat.
Afterwards, we went to the room where the last supper was held. It's actually right on top of King David's tomb. It was cool, but it's just a room with some stained glass windows. After that, we walked through the Jewish quarter and saw some underground ruins from the First and Second Temple periods. They were also really cool. I got a pita with za'atar on it for a snack. It was delicious. After snack time, we saw some more ruins and then went to eat lunch. I had a delicious schwarma in a laffa. It was very tasty.
After lunch, we went to the Western Wall. I went over to the tefillin table and did the usual Jewish things in front of the wall. When I got them from the table, one of the guys told me that teffilin are the best life insurance policy you can have. When I was returning them to the table, one of the Chabad guys asked me what my name was and when I am going to come to his house for Shabbat. I told him my name and that I didn't make it down to Jerusalem from Haifa very much. However, he told me that I now have a reason to come. He made me put his number in my phone. I'm not going to call him. Another Chabad guy asked me where I go to school. I told him Pitt, and he asked me if I knew Rabbi Weinstein and if I go to Chabad there. I told him I go sometimes for meals and that I usually help Rabbi Weinstein make a minyan on Shabbat if he needs men. He told me that they were friends and that I should go back to Pittsburgh and tell him that we'd met. I'll do it if I remember.
After the wall, our group walked through the Jewish quarter to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Christian quarter. I didn't go in because one of our guides from the International School is Orthodox and he doesn't go into churches. I don't want to say that I felt bad for him because he's a great guy and I like him a lot, but I felt that it would be rude to leave him outside of the church by himself for an hour and a half. So he and I wandered around the Christian quarter, bought a new backgammon set, got some drinks, and played backgammon. That was by far more interesting to me than going into the church. This was my second time in Jerusalem and I won't get that many more chances to go back, so I felt like I learned more by walking around the neighborhood than by going into the church. Plus, our tour guide was really boring and I didn't feel like standing through an hour long remedial Christianity lecture about its formation and the Great Schism and Christian theology. I say remedial because I took both Religions of the West and the Bible As Literature at Pitt, so I know what's up. While we were playing a Greek Orthodox Monk walked by and looked like he wanted to ask us if he could play. If he had asked, I would have said yes.
Once everyone got out of the church, we went to the Mahne Yehuda out door market for a bit and then we headed back to Haifa. It was a good trip and I hope to get back to Jerusalem at least once more before I leave. As glad as I am to be going back to Pitt, I'm sad that I won't get to do as much exploring now because I have to be back so early for classes.

Outlying Statistics on Shabbat

Friday night my friend and I went for Shabbat dinner with another family in Haifa. The food was declicious, but the conversation felt like a mix between and interrogation and a time share presentation for aliyah. The parents came in the late 1960's after the 1967 war, and so naturally, they were big proponents of all Jews returning to Israel. It got to the point where the conversation became uncomfortable because all the was discussed was aliyah, military service, how much "better" life in Israel is, and how every Jew should find his or her own connection to not just the recognized State of Israel, but also the occupied territories. One of the sons offered to take me on a tour of different places in the West Bank. My response to him was that I have no business going to the West Bank because there is nothing there for me.

I have no plans to make aliyah. I have nothing to gain and I certainly do not believe that it is my divine right to move into the occupied territories. I guess I'm the outlying statistic. Some of my friends in my program are planning to make aliyah after college. It's cool, but it's not for me. The ultimate goal of MASA, an organization that gave me scholarship money, is to get Jews to make aliyah after spending a year here. Again, I am the outlying statistic.

And don't tell me that I'm paranoid about them and their intentions. When they gave their presentation to us, they said 5 times that they were not trying to get Jews to make aliyah, however the very next day I went to their website and saw that they were having an aliyah fair. Similar to a career fair in America. WTF? They also said that they were trying to encourage dating and marriage within the Jewish people and to get people to go back to their home countries and tell Israel's side of the story, whatever it may be. So to sum up, they want people to blindly defend Israel publicly, have lots of Jewish children, and move here. I'm glad I gave the money back. I like thinking freely and standing up for what I believe in, not what people tell me to. I like being the lone outlying statistic. It makes life more interesting.

Concert in Tel Aviv

Last night my roommate and I made the trip from Haifa to Tel Aviv to see the Abyssinians and Black Uhuru. They may have been old and way past their heyday, but it was still a great show. It was the first reggae show that I've been to where there were actually real Rastafarians and not the poser white kids who are only in it for the sacrament. The Rastafarians consider themselves to be an offshoot of the Jewish tribes that migrated to Ethiopia and they worship King Halie Selassie, who was the last king of Ethiopia. They also consider Marcus Garvey, who led the Back to Africa movement in the early 20th century, and Bob Marley to be their prophets. The Rastafarians believe that God created the world from Mt. Zion, like the Jews, and so they come and hang out in Israel. Not to mention, there were a lot of Ethiopian Jews there.

I must say that it was probably the first reggae show I've been to where white people were outnumbered. It's about time. There's too many casual Bob Marley fans who go to shows in the states and think that they're so cool. They're just posers. If you're a real reggae fan, than things such as Trojan Records, Toots and the Maytals, The Skatalites, and Peter Tosh mean something to you. Owning the Bob Marley greatest hits album or one Matisyahu album does not make you a fan of reggae. Branch out. Listen to lots of it. If you need to start slowly into getting into reggae, listen to the Blues Brothers' "Briefcase Full of Blues" album. They cover King Floyd's "Groove Me" which is a great start for getting into real reggae. Not commercialized pot smoking music like Matisyahu.

Anyways, the show was great. Both bands were great and the show actually started on time. After the show we went straight to the train station and got a train back to Haifa. We got back here at 3:30am. It was worth the trip to Tel Aviv for the show. It's really unfortunate that most of the really great reggae acts are old and their days are numbered. The next act on my list to see is Toots and the Maytals, although I have no idea where.

New Friends

Yesterday was a day of new friends. While watching the concert and drinking free beer, two guys from the Haifa student union came up to my friends and I and talked to us. They told us about how the Arab student group in Haifa is putting out propaganda comparing Israel to Nazis or something like that and that they're protesting. However, after we got off that topic, they started telling us about the night life in Haifa. They gave us their phone numbers and said that they could get us in to any club or bar in Haifa and get us free drinks. I don't remember their names, however one looked like Lenny Kravitz and the other looked like Donald Sutherland. That's really wrong, but I can't remember their names. I feel bad. They were cool guys.

I made dinner last night with my existing friends. We made beef stir fry and it was delicious. We ate the stir fry, drank some wine, and had some delicious pancakes with nutella on them. Afterwards, we broke in my new hookah, which works wonderfully. Thanks for asking.

While we were smoking, an Arab guy named Nasser just walked up to us, said he was bored, and asked if he could join us. He seemed like a nice guy, but my roommate Evgeni was there and he was not too happy. Not because he's anti-Arab or anything, but because he feels cheated that he spent 4 years in the Israeli Navy while Nasser, who I'm guessing is named after Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian Pan Arabist leader, was able to go straight to college without doing any sort of community service. I completely understand Evgeni's frustration. I would be pissed too. There's a bill in the Knesset right now that would mandate a year of communal service for all Arab youth in Israel. It seems like a good idea, and I support it and think the US could use something like that (NOT MILITARY SERVICE), but who am I to make that call for Arab youth in Israel. It seems like a win-win situation. Arabs would get full military benefits without having been in the military and their communities would be strengthened. But again, who am I to say that it's right or wrong. I'm just a guy with a computer. One of the first things Nasser said was that he was not a bad guy with a bomb. I was a little confused by it, but I understand why he would say that. Arabs have a really bad image in the West and I certainly hope that his visit to our table was not specifically intended to debunk this myth. If my friends and I truly believed this, why would be in Haifa, where half of the students are Arab? Anyways, Nasser seems like a nice guy and he said he would come up and visit sometime, however I think it's all talk. When it comes down to it, I think he was just free loading.

Wednesday!

Wednesdays here are great. There's music and free beer. And I only have one class. I had a falafal for lunch to go with my free beer and free music. Wednesdays at Pitt are nothing like this.
Aferwards, my friend and I went to the Arab market and Wadi Nisnas to do some shopping. I came back with a big bag full of fruits and vegetables, a dozen fresh pitas, some fresh olive oil that was pressed last week, and a brand new hookah. It was a great shopping trip. Plus everything was really cheap. It only costs me about $5 for all my produce, which included grapefruits, red peppers, onions, and eggplants among other things. The hookah was probably a fourth of what I would have paid in America. It was a good day.

The Supreme Court, Teacher Strike, and Shesh Besh

Yesterday was a typical Monday. I went to class in the morning, gym in the afternoon, and then tutored refugees at night. After my morning class I was hanging out in my room talking to my roommate Evgeni. Somehow he and I ended up talking about American Supreme Court cases. It was a pretty cool conversation. I didn't realize that other people, let alone people from the United States, knew anything about the Supreme Court. It was a good conversation. We talked about the situation in Guantanamo Bay and the new Attorney General, who is Jewish.

Tutoring is a serious waste of time. Not because the kids are apathetic, but because the teachers are on strike here. How are we, as college students, supposed to tutor without homework? They need to resolve this immediately. I asked our madrich why there isn't a national solidarity strike because the strike has been going on for almost 2 months. He said that the other unions won't do it because they make more money than the teachers. This is outrageous. Apparently garbage men make more money than teachers. WTF? I would have figured, or even expected, that out of all the money that comes to Israel from the United States, through economic aid and private donations, some of it would go to the education system in Israel. I'm also amazed that in the new Holocaust reparation proposal for Germany, money for education is not included, at least from what I read. Needless to say, I'm outraged. The amount that Israel spends on buying 4 or 5 new American made fighter planes has got to make some sort of dent in the education deficit. It's also very inconsistent that within the next few days, Israel will be doing more large scale military exercises. Again, these cost money. Lots and lots of money, beyond normal soldiers pay. Did anyone factor in the cost of ammunition, gas, even bottled water. I have no idea who does the budgeting or accounting for the Israeli government, but this is insane. Children should be in school, not uniform.

Some of you might be asking why I am so critical of Israel on this matter and not the US. American school systems are not nationalized and are state and local issues. Because of this, the auditor general and the controller for states and counties keep track of everything and the governors do not divert funds to something commonly viewed as the antithesis of education (the military). Yes, my former governor, Gray Davis, messed up California schools and other institutions to the point where they went on strike, but he paid the price for it by being recalled and wasn't diverting funds to the California National Guard. Instead he was paying the price for a contract he signed with Enron that destroyed California's energy infrastructure when Enron imploded. I've been reading Ha'Aretz and the Jerusalem Post and nobody is singling out individuals to be accountable for this. This is unacceptable. The two sides haven't even talked about the issue. Teachers deserve better than this. Students deserve better than this. Israelis deserve better than this. All of the original Zionists were proponents of education and must be rolling in their graves because of how skewed the priorities are here.

Back to tutoring. This week the kid I worked with was Israeli and he spoke no English. I spoke Hebrew with him the whole time. It was good practice. Because I had nothing to work with him on, we played checkers. He taught me a magic trick. I taught him the English words for checkers and helped him with his writing. Ironic, since mine is terrible. I also taught him how to ask for his favorite foods in English. During my time there, an older kid came up to me and told me, to my face, in Amharic, that he was cooler than I was. I didn't know what he was saying so I nodded my head and smiled. After he left, someone told me what he said. When I saw him on the way out he said it again, so I gave him a dirty look and told him to go f*** himself in French. That's right, I speak another language that nobody in the room could understand. Let's see how he feels. Despite this, it was definitely a better tutoring session than last week. They just need to get the kids back in class.

When we got back from tutoring, my friend and I played shesh besh (backgammon) and smoked some hookah. It was fun.

Rainy Day in Haifa

It's raining here. I don't have a lot of work to do. I said I did in the last post, but the work is part of a project on ETA for Terrorism and Responses, and our meeting has been pushed off until Tuesday night. I've been sitting here in my room, exploring some untouched music on my computer and reading The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain. It's a great book. It's about Twain's trip to Europe and the Holy Land towards the end of the 19th century. The image it casts of the Middle East is a lot different from the Middle East of today.

Not having a TV set is great. It gives me more time to read. I've compiled a list of books that I plan to read while I'm here. They're not literature, they're all related to the place I'm in now. The books are:

The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer (I read the original paper in the London Review of Books)
From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman
Palestine: Peace not Apartheid by Pres. Jimmy Carter (I skimmed this over the summer, I recommend people read it and take it with a grain (or sack) of salt)
The Deadliest Lies by Abe Foxman (I'm curious what his rebuttal is to Walt and Mearsheimer)
Anything by Tom Segev
Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East since 1776 by Michael Oren
The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann by Chaim Weizmann
Anything by David Ben Gurion

There's a lot more I just can't think of them right now. I've left off Chomsky, Dershowitz, and Finkelstein. They're all childish pundits and are all equally full of crap. Foxman is too. I'm just curious about what he's written.

Interest in Middle Eastern politics is a disgusting vice and is a lot more addictive than tobacco.
Discussing the politics here reminds me of the scene in All Quiet on the Western Front where two old German guys are sitting with a solider, discussing the tactics of the war and how it will be over before Christmas. To demonstrate the tactics, they move beer glasses and nuts around on the table. Everyone is guilty of this somehow. Reducing the lives of soldiers and civilians to beer and nuts. It's disgusting and mind boggling how people can toss around other people's lives and think that they're more expendable than others. Or that they're worth more than others.

That's exactly why I'm going back to Pitt. I am on Middle East overload. All the talk about war, peace, nuclear weapons, terrorism, Iran and such is making me sick. I need to get back and work on something else. But I'm still going to read those books. I'd rather be informed than ignorant.

Busy Weekend

My weekends start on Thursday night. This week there was a program called Carlsberg and Carlbach. It's pretty self explanatory. We hung out, sang some Carlbach songs and drank some Carlsberg beer. We learned something interesting. Carlsberg was the first beer to be brewed in Israel and it was also the first beer to receive Kosher certification. And also its sister beer, Tuborg, was created by a Jewish immigrant to Denmark who had no money. Pretty cool stuff.
I spent Friday afternoon preparing for Saturday afternoon's bbq and waiting for my friend from Pitt to show up. I made a big pan of chicken kebabs that I finished right before Meredith arrived. After she got here, we had some coffee and hung around for a bit and then we went to Shabbat services in the dorm's synagogue. We tried to light candles in my room, however we were afraid of the candles falling over and burning the place down. I already set the fire alarm off once, and I really don't want to do it again. I was the only American guy at the service. The rest of the people were Israeli soldiers, most of them secular, and most of them had no idea what was going on in the service. The religious situation here in Israel is deeply divided between the Orthodox and the secular and there is generally no middle ground, which most people believe is hurting Judaism and Israel more than helping them.

After services there was dinner on campus for students. Dinner was schnitzel and vegetables. It was tasty. There was no desert. Which was weird. So my friends and I went back and ate a cake that I bought earlier in the day because I knew I would be having a guest. The cake was really good. After cake, we decided to watch the movie "Snatch". I'd never seen it before, but it is not one of my favorite movies. It has lots of my favorite movie things in it, including:
Ska Music
Reggae Music
Crime
England
Irish People
English People
Jews
Violence
Humor
Dennis Farina (The guy that replaced Jerry Orbach on "Law and Order")

The next day was the potluck bbq for the International School. I brought a big pan of kebabs that were absolutely delicious. We at them with hummus, pita, and cabbage salad. They turned out great. I seasoned them with garlic, pepper, and hot paprika. After the kebabs, my friends and I made turkish coffee on the grills, which also turned out great.


Meredith left around 7 Saturday night. We waited outside for a bus and played with some of the stray cats that were hanging around the station. One of them was black and had no tail. He looked like he was expecting food or something from us. Seriously, I hate cats. He kept climbing up on me. I told him that if he ripped my jeans he would learn the hard way that there is more than one way to skin a cat.
After Meredith left, my friends and I went out to a pub. It was fun. We went with some other people from the international school and then we took a long walk down Mt. Carmel to get some late night waffles and crepes. We stopped in a park to look at a fountain. It was lit up and looked really cool. We took a cab back to the university. The cab was a brand new Mercedes, which was reflected in the price of the cab ride. I never would have thought that a Mercedes would be used as a cab, especially in Israel, but apparently the cars are part of a reparations settlement with Germany.

Anyways, this weekend was great, but now I need to get some work done.

Misc. Photos

Here's some photos that people took of me that surfaced on Facebook.Day 1 at the Baha'i Gardens (I know I look pissed. I was trying to tell someone how to work my camera)

The hike in the desert (I look happy)

The opening bbq

The Concert that Wasn't

The concert last night was a bust. The ticket said that the show started at 10:30pm. Or so my friends and I thought. Apparently, 10:30pm was when the doors opened and the show started later. Much later. When we got there, they said 1am. 1am rolled around, and there was no show. 1:30am, no show. At 2am, they did sound check. And at 2:30am, the show started.

It didn't matter. I left at 2am. I was pissed. The show was at a massive club on a kibbutz. The club has something like 9 different rooms playing all sorts of different music, all of it club stuff. Anyone who knows me knows that I hate night clubs. I hate the music. I hate the culture. And I hate the lifestyle. I went to see a band, and there was no band. At least not until 2:30am.

The ticket price included transportation to and from the university, however the buses didn't start running until 3:30am, even though when we bought the tickets they told us that the buses started at 2am. So my friends and I were calling cab companies at 2am, trying to get a cab. Nobody wanted to drive to the kibbutz to get us. (The ride is only 20 minutes, but the kibbutz is outside of the city limits)

We were stuck until a cab miraculously showed up and picked up my friends and I. This was at 2:45am. The driver told us that it would cost 60 shekels to get back to the university. That's reasonable. He drove like a maniac and blasted techno music at full volume and kept asking me if I liked music. I do like music. I love music. But not techno at 3am! When we got to the university, somehow the price became 70 shekels. We tried haggling with him, but he was adamant. So we paid him.

I went to bed at 3:15 pissed off, reeking of smoke and sweat (people were smoking everywhere), and feeling like I had been scammed. Not every student in Israel has professors who are on strike. Some of us have class. But what can you expect from a place who's motto is "Never Stop Partying"? Thankfully my class was at 10am. This was probably the worst night out I have ever had.

And Hillary, if you're reading this, this was worse than our Avenue Q outing. A lot worse. At least we got burgers then.

My roommate and I will be going to a reggae concert in Tel Aviv next week. Hopefully it will not be anything like this. It's on a Thursday, so we don't have class the next day. But we still have to get back to Haifa. That will be interesting.

FREE BEER!

That's right. Wednesdays at the University of Haifa is FREE BEER DAY! Seriously. Every Wednesday they set up a stage, get a band, bring some kegs, and everybody comes and just relaxes. It was great. And they don't give out bad beer. They give out Tuborg and Carlsberg. I can't imagine any college in America doing this. Especially Pitt. The closest thing they do to this is give out free t-shirts a Fall Fest and Bigelow Bash. The whole experience reminded me a lot of Music in the Park in San Jose. It's outdoors, the bands are cool, and people are just hanging out. The only difference is that there's free beer. Hooray Beer!

Needless to say, schnitzel and beer is now my Wednesday afternoon activity.
On a side note, I'm going to a concert tonight. The band that's playing is called Ha Yehudim (The Jews). They're apparently one of Israel's best bands. I know, their name is very original. Anyways, it should be a lot of fun. My roommates are going and they told me to come. The street team for the band actually interrupted my class this morning to tell us about the concert. I'm excited. The ticket cost 45 shekels (11 dollars) and includes transportation. That's cheaper than any club show in America. It's going to be great.

Roommate Bonding

Last night my roommates and I bonded. We went outside, smoked some hookah, drank some beers...the usual. It was cool. We talked about all sorts of stuff like classes, politics, the army, what we want to do after college. It was a good experience. My roommates are cool guys. I'm sad that I have to leave them.

It's Official, I am Coming Back to Pitt

This afternoon I terminated my enrollment for next semester. I did this because staying here is not the best thing for me to do academically. Over the summer, my educational and career goals changed drastically and unfortunately Haifa is not the place for me to achieve them. Don't get me wrong, I love it here. The people are great. The food is tasty. The beach is beautiful. The campus is beautiful. And I'm getting better at speaking Hebrew. But when it comes down to it, I need to be back in Pittsburgh prepping myself for grad school and taking courses that diversify my education. It's great that I'm here learning about the Middle East and Judaism and it was great that I had the opportunity to intern with an Israel organization this summer, but unfortunately I feel like I'm cornering myself in the Jewish community. All my job and personal references are with Jewish organizations and the majority of my classes have some sort of Jewish element to them. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm not burned out on Jewish matters, but I need to diversify.

My ultimate goal is to go to grad school and become a policy analyst, researcher, writer, or professor or some combination of them. And recently, becoming a corporate or tax lawyer has become an option as well.

I applied to Haifa at in a time in my life when I was absolutely broken, stressed, and devastated about my shortcomings at Pitt and with Hillel. I thought that going abroad would be the answer, and to an extent it has been. I had a long summer to explore new things, to meet new people, and to figure out what I'm going to do with college. And I think I've figured out everything that I needed to.

I'm a year a wiser from last November, and I'm ready to get rolling on achieving my goals back at Pitt.

Los Gatos in the Middle East

If anyone is interested my hometown, Los Gatos, California, got some recognition in the Middle East. I was watching the Kansas City Chiefs play the Green Bay Packers last night and they did a little vignette about Jared Allen. Jared Allen is the Chiefs' star defensive lineman and went to my High School. When I was a senior and in the marching band, we played at the East-West Shrine Game at Pacific Bell Park to show him some hometown support. Anyways, because of Middle East Network, Los Gatos now has international recognition in cities like Haifa, Baghdad (I'm sure soldiers were watching), Doha, Cairo, and probably Tehran and maybe Kabul. Now let's see if any Buffalo Bills games are broadcast. (Trent Edwards also went to my high school and graduated my freshman year)

Thomas Friedman was right: the world is flat and and everybody is connected.

The Tutoring that Was

Tonight was the first night of actual tutoring. However, nothing was accomplished. All of the high schools are on strike in Israel. From what I know, the government doesn't want to fork over the money to both the university and high school teachers. If you've been reading this site frequently you've probably seen the news reports from Ha'Aretz and the Jerusalem Post.

Anyways, I sat there with two Ethiopian girls tonight trying to communicate with them and help them practice their English. I ended up speaking more Hebrew than they spoke English. I feel like I may have wasted their time because I was pretty useless. However it was great practice for me. Hopefully the strike will be resolved and the kids will have homework to do next week.

I asked the girls if they liked to go to the beach. They said no. I asked why. One of them said "because I'm Black". That was a really surprising answer. I would have expected something like "I don't like the water" or something like that. Not "because I'm Black". I don't know how race relations are in Israel, but I hope that that really had nothing to do with the answer.

I wish I had more to write about this experience, but unfortunately I don't. Tonight was pretty uneventful. Although I got a better glimpse as to the conditions that the new immigrants live in. We walked through the playground in their complex and I noticed that the jungle gym was covered in graffiti and that there were used drug needles laying around. It's really depressing. I hope that some day Israel gets its priorities straight and cleans up the education and social messes that exist. Herzl must be rolling in his grave.

Art and Waffles

I went with a group of friends to the Haifa art museum last night. It was pretty cool. The exhibit last night was all modern art. There were some really cool pieces there and there were also some really weird pieces. My favorite piece there was a big noose made out neck ties that someone bought at a market in Kenya. The piece was a statement of how the structures of capitalism and corporatism are nothing more than a noose around people's neck, sucking the life out of them.

After the gallery, we went to this all night waffle and crepe place along the main road back to the University. It was delicious. I had a waffle with maple syrup, apples, cinnamon, and vanilla ice cream on it. It was tasty. Quite possibly the best waffle I've ever eaten.

When I got back to my dorm room, I found that my roommate had moved in. Finally. He seems like a good guy. I hope he stays that way.

The Never Ending Shabbat Feast

Last night I had Shabbat dinner with a group of friends with a family in Haifa. I think it was the biggest meal I have ever eaten in my life. The food did not stop coming. Let me list the things off to you:

Fresh Challah
Matzah Ball Soup, with plenty of balls an soup nuts
Salad
Marinated Peppers
Roasted Vegetables
Rice
Couscous with Lentils
Chicken
Beef
Turkey
Chicken Pad Thai
Roasted Potatoes
Meatballs
Individual Apple Pies with Sherbet
Birthday Cake
Brownies
Coffee
Tea
Wine
Beer
Scotch

It was a feast. And all of the food was delicious. The beef was very tender, the challah was great, the vegetables were seasoned perfectly. The Scotch had to have been at least $50 a bottle. The coffee was great. The brownies were really chocolaty. Seriously, we were really spoiled.

There were 20 people there last night, and apparently this family does a large Shabbat meal twice a month. We found out how they do there shopping. They get together with their friends at 10pm every Thursday night at the supermarket, buy everything, and then spend all day Friday cooking. I'm amazed that someone could not only afford to do this twice a month, but also be able to make everything on Friday and have it taste good.

The family was very friendly and were another family of ex pat Britons. I practiced Hebrew with some of the kids and talked about Lockheed and the defense industry with the father, who works for Rafael, which is Lockheed's Israeli competitor. (Dad, I'm sorry to say, that's why you can't come to Israel. It's all business and you should be pissed)

The synagogue we went to was a little weird. Most of the men sitting in the men's section were reading newspapers during the service. That seemed a little odd. There was also a huge spider walking around. We're pretty sure he was Jewish. He coordinated his movement with the service. There was a mix of both modern Orthodox Jews and Chassidic Jews. One guy was davening harder than anyone I've ever seen. He looked like he was a Carlbach follower (dirty hippie), so either he's reached spiritual enlightenment or he's on something. Probably a mix of the two.

Today, I'm not sure what I'm doing. I'm still full from last night and I've been hanging out this morning listening to music. Tonight, I'm going to an art gallery opening. That will be a lot of fun.

Things are Picking Up

Last night there was a Halloween party on campus. It was a lot of fun. I tried to wear the Halloween costume that Hillary sent me, but unfortunately it was too small. And yes, it is a little princess costume. The party was exactly what I needed to unwind from my lousy day and week.
Tonight I'm going to have Shabbat dinner with a family in Haifa along with a group of people from the university. I'm excited. The Madrich who organized it, Levi, considers this family to be his second family, and I trust his judgment. He's a stand up guy. The guy is orthodox, but he's not out to impose anything on anyone and he's working on a very noble cause that unfortunately gets over looked in a lot of places: domestic violence. He also has a lot of great ideas for bringing helping students connect with Judaism, not organizations, such as next week's campus Shabbaton, which starts Thursday night with a program called Carlsberg and Carlbach, which essentially means everyone will be hanging out, drinking beer, and singing songs by Rabbi Shlomo Carlbach who tried to bring Judaism into the hippie movement. Friday night there will be a dinner on campus and then on Saturday there will be a pot luck/bbq at a park near by. It's going to be a great weekend.

Anyways, back to this weekend. Tomorrow night, I'm probably going to go to the beach, as usual, and then go to an art gallery opening somewhere in Haifa. One of my friends is doing an internship with the art gallery, so she invited us to come.

Weekends here are great.

Really Bad Day

Yesterday was a terrible day. I got my Hebrew test back, and just as I predicted, my grade was not very good. In fact, my teacher wrote on it, in Hebrew, "You need to study harder". I hate this teacher. It's going to be a long rest of the semester.

After Hebrew, I tried to get something from the library, however, bur for some reason nobody was willing to help me. Needless to say, I didn't get what I needed and just used the internet.

After that, I went to the gym, but did not have headphones with me for my ipod. My ears were bombarded with horrible, non workout like music such as "Hey There Delilah" by the Plain White Tees. I hate that song. A lot. It sounds like a suicide note and is just a real downer of a song.

In the evening, my friend and I decided that we would cook some dinner. We decided to make chicken and sauerkraut because we were both really burned out on flavorful Israeli food. It was a serious dinner. It had lots of chicken, apple, sauerkraut, garlic, pepper, carrots, potatoes, onions, sweet pickled cabbage, and beer in it. It was on track to be a great dinner. However, we left the kitchen to check on something online and while we were in my room, something started to smell. And then the fire alarm went off. Our dinner was burning! The house mother ran into our room because she thought the building was on fire. When she came in, she saw me and my friend holding the pot out the window and letting the smoke out. On the plus side though, the smoke added an interesting element of flavor to dinner.

Seriously, yesterday sucked.