We don’t get homework on weekends! Michal told us to take the time to go out and explore Jerusalem and the rest of Israel. Of course, I am doing that by going to Tel Aviv this weekend. We have a tour in Old Jaffa and around the city tomorrow. A bunch of people are planning to spend the night in Tel Aviv tonight to go clubbing and staying at some new hostel. I thought about it but Wendy asked me at the same time if I wanted to do something with her in downtown. I felt a little bad but rationalized that I’d rather not go to a strange new city in the dark (after Rachel, who’s organizing all this, told me that they’d be leaving around 5-6 PM).
Yesterday I registered for classes. My advisor, Dr. Issacs, seems nice but eh, he’s nothing like Kira. I tried to convince him to let me do an internship with Yad Vashem without credit so I can take David Bankier’s advanced Holocaust seminar. He wasn’t wild and told me that I’d have to make a decision by the first week of classes. I also heard from Colgate about possible science courses. They said that the ones I asked for were not science-y enough (Duh, they’re made for non-science majors!). I wanted to take either Game Theory (supposedly mathematical) or Genetics and the Society. So I have to keep sending them syllabi until they can approve at least one science class. Anyway I ended up registering for “Contemporary Perspectives of the Holocaust,” “The American Jew and the Israeli Jew: A Comparative Analysis” and “Women, Religion, and Politics in the Modern Middle East.” I may add Biotech and drop the last course… Dr. Isaacs said that the most popular courses are in political science/international relations and the Archeology of Jerusalem. He’s confident that I’ll be able to shop around without problem. The last course teaches on Sunday… yikes. Am I ready for that?
I have had more conversations with other people in ulpan and I am just really fascinated by their backgrounds, especially those not from the U.S. Natalia, from Argentina, and I discussed her comparison of Argentina and downtown Jerusalem, and where she has traveled to. I really wish that I could be more fluent in Spanish because I think she’d be a lot more comfortable. I also talked with the only two adults in my class- one’s a ESL high school teacher from Australia and the other just finished his medical school in Turkey who wants to practice in orthopedics.
News about my internet- finally caught up with the techie (who’s a woman, by the way) when I saw Dave (we’ve kind of been helping each other out with this whole internet thing… mostly in passing) walking with her and one of Ashley’s roommates. It turns out that my telephone line is broken. Wonderful… Now I have to wait until Sunday to have someone to come in and fix it. But I brought my laptop all the way to the main campus so I could spend a little quality time with the Internet today- setting up some pics from Spain and putting together this blog. I did feel a little better but I’d rather do this at night when there’s nothing going on and there is so much to do during the day.
Wendy and I attempted to explore downtown Jerusalem tonight to find this kosher meat Italian restaurant called Angelo’s (supposed to have really good chocolate cake). The problem with many good restaurants in Jerusalem is that they tend to be in side streets so they are not target for suicide bombers. So they do it to avoid losing business. We walked up Jaffa at least three times to find this particular side street before asking two Israelis. They picked up my American accent immediately when I asked in Hebrew “mis-ada Angelo?” The two guys directed us. We followed their direction and walked that street two times before stopping at a hotel to ask for directions. Wendy stupidly went to the right when the hotel said to the left when we ran into two women. They said one more block over. We go over there in the dark in this alleyway (the light was fine, Mom). I mean the alleyway was nearly deserted. I was kind of surprised not to see people spilling out on the streets to wait for tables. The street had a dead-end. Then we decided to try to find this other place by the same owner that was supposedly around the corner on Jaffa from where we were. No such luck. Finally, we just walked across Jaffa to Ben Yehuda. We just had falafel and schwarma at Moshiko’s. Wendy ran into some friends and talked with them while I watched a street performer doing a dance with fire (with wands and all that). Israelis definitely crowd around to watch street performers- this man probably had an audience of at least 40 people. Then shortly before Wendy’s friends left, Julianna came up to us. It was so funny- Wendy had said on the bus earlier that she wondered who we would run into tonight form our program because that’s really where a lot of people go. Julianna was by herself so we hung out together on Ben Yehuda for a while before catching the bus home. She was really a nice girl- she likes to socialize but isn’t a wild type. Oh, I found a small world connection with Wendy- her aunt actually works for the US Holocaust Museum in the same division that I worked in during my first summer with the museum!!! She didn’t think I’d know her name but when she told me that her aunt works in France- I knew it.
Israel is something else, I’ll tell you. It really does bring all the Jews together. I do love this part about Israel.
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