SNOW!!!

ITS SNOWING!!! real honest to goodness, big flake, swirling, magical, beautiful snow!!! It's amazing to see. I'll post some pictures eventually...now I'm going back to bed....no final today!

SNOW?!? 12/28/07

Snow is all people are talking about. The Weather Report says that it is supposed to snow in some form and combination of heaviness from Tuesday night until Thursday morning. The question on everyone’s mind is: Is it really going to snow? Every year the forecasters predict snow in the hopes that the entire city will shut down and everyone will get a day (or few) to just play and relax and drink hot chocolate (mmmmm shoko). Houston is clearly a place that doesn’t get much snow so under any normal circumstances I should be SUPER excited at the prospect of a few snow days. But I’m not. I’m supposed to have a final on Wednesday and if it is cancelled due to snow I’ll have to take in on Friday. That is a really upsetting thought! The other downside is that David would be stuck in the army. What fun is a snow day if you can’t curl up next to the heater with the one you love?

Just wait though, once the snow falls I’ll be outside making snowballs like any good kid should. And once it does I know I’ll be glad it did. Snow in Jerusalem is supposedly one of the more beautiful things to behold and it would be a nice thing to add to my “first year in Israel” experiences list! Happy snow days everyone. Hope you are all bundled up and warm wherever you may be, snow or not.

The Strike is over (and selfishly I wish it wasn’t) 1/22/08

The Senior Lecturer’s Strike, which lasted for 90 days finally ended this Sunday and classes in the University have gone back to normal (almost). The repercussions on the students are insane (ex: I order to fill in all of the material for an entire year in essentially 1 semester, studies are going to run straight through all vacations, excluding religious holidays. The next expected vacation is exactly a year from now. Sick. ) It’s a whole big balagan (i.e. mess) and as angry and annoyed as everyone is they are just happy to finally be learning.

On the selfish side, I along with my fellow Overseas School students have had the entire campus almost completely to ourselves. It doesn’t really make a difference once we get to our classes in our own building, but it makes a HUGE difference in the commute to school as well as waiting for services once we get to school. The bus rides this week have been absolutely unbelievable. I was on my way back to school on Sunday and the bus was much fuller than usual. As we got closer and closer to campus the bus became PACKED beyond packed. (luckily I get on far enough away from campus to get a seat) I would have sworn over my first 3 children that the driver wouldn’t possibly stop at any more stops (Its common practice for drivers to bypass stops when they are just too full to take on more passengers) but he did. And he continued to. It was slightly amusing and a bit worrying to watch students force themselves through the back door into the already tippy-toes room only bus. It took the driver a few tries each stop to close the doors because somebody’s limbs or bags were stuck outside!! I was afraid the bus would weigh too much and the bus would break down and then NONE of us would get to school….but then again I’m a worrier by nature.

The second problem that this creates is once we reach school. At Hebrew U, everyone wishing to enter the campus has to pass through security: first an ID check and then a bag check/metal detector. While there is a strike the whole process takes no more than 2 minutes. When the entire university shows up for class at the exact same times it can take 10 minutes! It’s freezing outside in the bus tunnel and the security personnel who are terse on a good day are downright pissed that they have to actually work so hard. It’s not the end of the world but it’s a pretty shitty was to start your day: being yelled at by disgruntled kids my age who hate their jobs.

The next big shock came when I reached the campus. It was full. I mean really full. People were sitting on the grass and someone was smoking every 3 steps and there were just a lot of people. I’d been used to the University being a depressing ghost town. I couldn’t wait for the strike to be over and the place to come alive again…now I just feel like an outsider like a quasi-student since my Hebrew isn’t perfect and I’m not really in university anyway.

On a more positive note and to help explain my prolonged (again) absence I recently finished writing an 8 PAGE PAPER IN HEBREW. Yes, you read correctly. 8 pages. In Hebrew. To top off the whole experience and to make all of the late nights and nervous breakdowns worth it I got a 100. Clearly they weren’t dissecting our use of grammar and word choice rather our ability to do a research paper…but still. It was in Hebrew. I succeeded. As far an I’m concerned this year is a success. Even if I fail every other class (which would be really hard considering my high school classes were much harder than this) I wouldn’t care because I have proven to myself that not only can I survive in Hebrew but I can succeed as well.

Also, completely unrelated, my cousin Alan was here on birthright the last few weeks so not only did I get to see him but he also got to meet David! It was really exciting for my since very few of my family members have had the opportunity to meet him yet. It’s also very exciting for me that my family is coming to spend time here….hopefully they’ll all come to visit more often ☺!!!

Next up is finals which start this Friday. I have a week and a half and only 4 finals spread out which will be really nice and relaxing ☺. Mom comes on February 8 to help with a blitzkrieg 6-day wedding planning extravaganza. I can’t wait to see her and it will be nice to get started on a lot of the things that I still need to work out before the wedding! Other than that I am on a 3-week vacation where I plan to attempt to get an Israeli drivers license and maybe do some hiking! Hope all is well with all of you. Happy Tu B’Shvat!

Rainbows, Rain, and Oranges 12/19/07

This morning I woke up and as usual looked outside my window for the usual “Omigod I Live in Jerusalem” routine. It looked pretty yucky and cold outside so I continued on my routine as usual. To my surprise and wonder there was a RAINBOW outside my window! Today is fast day and I felt really uplifted that even though it’s the day we commemorate the beginning of the siege on Jerusalem the universal sign of G-d’s mercy and forgiveness was shining in the sky. I even took a picture ☺
Then on my way out the door I had to run back upstairs to grab an umbrella because it was seriously raining!!! We have been in desperate need for rain this year (what’s new???) and considering its December already and we’ve had only 2 real rains…it’s amazing that we got some this morning. After the big flood in 2001 I have been relatively traumatized by rain so its pretty nice to enjoy it for once.
THEN on the way to school I was sitting on the bus (which was nice and warm while it was cold and rainy outside) I noticed for the first time that in one of the concrete and planter barrier things in the middle of one of the main roads on the way to campus (like on braeswood) there were Orange Trees! Since now is orange season the trees were covered in tiny orange balls and it was really something beautiful. Only in Israel do they plant fruit trees as decoration in the middle of a busy thoroughfare!
While I was thinking about all of this on the bus a thought popped into my head: Wow you are naïve. I live in one of the (if not the ) most contested cities in the world, people are being killed in my country every day, and if no one dies then there is SOMETHING controversial in the news… and im sitting on the bus getting excited about rainbows and orange trees. And then I started to think that those are exactly the types of thoughts I should be having. If I can’t remove my mind from all of the negative things that go on here and focus on the beautiful and wonderfulness of everyday things then I have wasted my time moving here. I didn’t move here to sit around and be depressed and scared. I moved here to be with the Jews in the Jewish homeland and to help build the future of the Jewish people. That is a beautiful thing worth taking a minute to smile about.

A Zionist Dreidel 12/4/06

Happy Chanukkah! So my first night of Chanukkah as an Israeli citizen started out pretty depressingly. On my way home from school I only saw 5 menorahs displayed in windows and since my roommate is sick there wasn’t much cheer in my apartment. Even though I think I’m also starting to come down with beginning of winter crud I knew I couldn’t have an unpleasant first Chanukkah. Fortunately my friend Talia is also under the weather and is home from the army. I went to her house to get some real Chanukkah feeling. Man am I glad I did! Aside from having a great evening with a wonderful friend I left with my first Zionist Dreidel. One that has a peh instead of a shin. I haven’t stopped playing with it since I saw it and Talia’s mom let me keep it as a present ☺. Thank goodness for those who know how to save Chanukkah from lonely despair by emphasizing the little yet important things!

Greece with the Fam 11/18-23/07

mom had a convention, seth turned 17, and daddy and i did a ton of sightseeing! it was a fantastic week to spend with the family...a special bonus time to be together just the 4 of us before the wedding!!!

When School Strikes Go Crazy 12/3/07

The entire Israeli education system from grades 8 and up has been on strike for at least 40 days. The high school teachers and the university professors are striking for different reasons that are completely unrelated but who cares: no one is learning and everyone is unhappy. Fortunately or not, depending on your point of view, my program has gone on unhindered by any strike attempt and we have had class every day of the semester. The university students are really really fed up with the strike. They don’t agree with how the professors are administering their strike and as long as there continues to be a crisis with the high school teachers nothing will be done about the universities. The students are essentially paying for a semester in which they are only partially learning (most students have about 25% of their classes and most in the sciences are being taught by their TAs and are responsible for the information exactly as if they were truly being taught by their professors) or not learning at all. This is quite painful especially after shutting down the system for 6 weeks last year over the cost of universities.

Today the student union, the representative voice of the students, at Hebrew University decided to COUTNERSTRIKE in protest of the professor’s strike. One of their main complaints is that the professors aren’t doing enough to garner public interest in their plight or to force the government into negotiations to bring the strike to a close. They are simply staying home, doing their research, and waiting for the government to come to them. The situation is finally reaching a crisis point where closing the semester officially is increasingly becoming the only option. This is a disaster for everyone especially for students who have made plans and worked out their lives to fit their academic schedules. So today the student union locked down the campus. Literally locked down with chains and everything. I obviously had class today because my program is part of an external school that just happens to be housed on the campus. My school along with the Betzalel art school was in session. There was one gate all the way in the back of campus open. I got a ride with a friend’s father and it was really interesting driving up to campus. There were massive signs everywhere that the campus was closed and please find other alternatives for the day. Huge signs begging for the return of studies and fair education for all covered the outer walls of the campus. It made me fell really guilty to be entering the school instead of standing with the student body (which I will hopefully be a part of next year.)

Once I got into my building it felt as if nothing different was happening, but all the same, I wish things weren’t so volatile here. I don’t understand the concept of striking to get your way. In America the electric company doesn’t just decide to stop working in order to get better wages or working conditions. Things don’t instantaneously shut down because a certain piece of the population is unhappy. It’s hard to make plans for the future when a degree might take 4 years instead of 3 because of factors completely out of my control. If only we had a competent government who could help solve the problems rather than ignoring them. The entire future of this country, which is heavily dependant on its brain trust, is at risk. Nothing is being done and it is infuriating. I wonder if next week there will be a counterstrike to the counterstrike. It would be quite entertaining. Thankfully for now I still live within the insulated overseas student’s bubble. For now.