Stomach Flu

I have been battling a stomach virus since early Tuesday. It was a pretty nasty one while the infection was at its peak, but it also receded quickly and I am feeling much better. On Wednesday I ate nothing but some oatmeal, a little cold pasta and a few bites of an apple. Today, when I was feeling better, I had a falafel with a lot of spicy harif for lunch, and a cup of coffee with milk around 5. There can only be two outcomes here: Either I'm healthy again and there won't be any comeuppance, or I'll be burned by the fires of hell in a few hours. Here's to hoping its the first.

I did have the sense to stay in last night while my crew went to a pool hall. Tonight, I have no such sense. I'm going to a bar in Mercaz haCarmel to see a "Beit haBubot" concert tonight. Unfortunately their website is in Hebrew and it doesn't even have track excerpts on it so if you want to hear some, you'll have to find someone with a cd. It is excellent music though, and I recommend it. Think folk acoustic guitar with Latin influences, in Hebrew. Here is the site. It does have tablature, for those of my readers who also play the guitar.

Classes And Such

My Terrorism and Responses professor is a little bit nutty, which is just fine with me. He gave my class an experience this afternoon that I don't think can be topped. He taught the entire class with a handgun tucked into his jeans. No holster or anything. My professor was packing like he was a Latin King. It's certainly become my favorite class.

Arabic is getting crazy. The difficulty level has increased exponentially since the start of the semester. We get about 40 vocabulary words per week, which is simply too many to commit to memory. Doris is getting very frustrated. I'm keeping my head above water right now, but it's a struggle. Rina pushes us harder than any other teacher I've ever had. I'm looking at this as good prep work for law school. Better to get used to the workloads now.

There is a Hebrew flick in the moadon tonight so I'm gonna go meet some friends and watch. Tomorrow is my short day (only Hebrew at 10 A.M.), and I am going to a pool hall tomorrow night for a birthday party. I'm looking forward to the late morning, although usually when I get to sleep in I feel about the same getting out of bed as I do on the days when I get up at 7. Go figure.

Nes

Today was an average Monday. Getting out of bed took a tremendous deal of effort, and I was pretty drowsy all the way through Arabic this morning. I grabbed a cup of Nes before Hebrew Ulpan, much to my embarrassment. For those who don't know, Nes is local slang for instant coffee. This is because the Nescafe' brand ran ads making a play on the Hebrew word נס, meaning miracle. In other words, Nescafe' is the miracle of coffee. Except it's garbage. I can't believe I am drinking this swill. Finding a real cup of coffee in this country is all but impossible so it's all I have. There is a coffee machine in the Terrace Building that serves Nes like its real coffee; cappucino, mocha, lattes and espresso. It's really quite impressive, and at 1.10 Shekels per cup, it's seductive. The worst part is that I'm actually starting to not hate the taste.

How humiliating.

One thing this stuff is good for is warming me up when it's chilly outside. I'm really not a superstitious guy. I'm just aware of the coincidences that superstitious people would attribute to some omen. That said, the last time I complained about the cold weather, it got nice and warm again and stayed that way for quite a while. It's getting cold here now and I don't much care for it. It's a different cold from back home too. It comes from a general attitude around here that winter doesn't really happen, so it seems colder than it is. That's the best way I can explain it. None of this is really rational, but I'm not always entirely rational either.

Tiyul In The Galilee

We left campus at 8 this morning for our educational tour of the Galilee. We were all over the Northern part of Israel, going up mountains and down into valleys, and winding through ravines and Wadis. Today was the kind of day it was totally impossible to dress for. At times it was sunny and warm, at other times it was overcast and cold, and we had periods of high winds and rain mixed in.

A cold morning foreshadowed a strange weather day in the north.

Today's tour was organized for students in the "Contemporary Israel" class, so we had class time interspersed with each stop on the tour. The overall topic of the trip was Labor Zionism and the seeds of the country planted by the pioneers of the second and third aliyot. Our first stops were on the Gilboa ridge overlooking the Jezreel Valley. The photo above is from the top of Mount Shaul, where according to the Tanach, King Saul and his army were routed by Philistines, and Saul committed suicide by falling on his sword. The Labor Zionists were avowed secularists, but they still used imagery from historical events like the battle at Gilboa to promote their ideology. I mostly like the mountain from the view at the top.


One of the missions that the Labor Zionists took upon themselves was the draining of the swamps that dotted the Jezreel Valley. The swamps were breeding grounds for malarial mosquitoes, so draining them was an absolute necessity for making the valley habitable for large kibbutzim. The Labor Zionists took this principle a little too far, eventually doing ecological damage by eliminating every swamp in the valley. Of course they did not have any knowledge of ecology science, and the state is now working to protect the environment. We stopped next on Mount Gilboa proper to look out across the separation barrier into the West Bank. Each time I do this, it's a startling reminder of how close the West Bank is to Israeli cities.

A small Palestinian village just across the border from Israel. The separation barrier can be seen in the bottom left hand corner. Jenin is about 2 KM Southeast of here.

Our next stop was the Kinneret Cemetery, where a number of prominent Labor Zionists are buried. The cemetery is not traditional, because of the secular ideology practiced by the Labor Zionists. Today, people visit more to see the cultural icons buried in the cemetery, such as Rahel the Poetess, and the recently deceased Naomi Shemer the composer of "Jerusalem of Gold."

Naomi Shemer's grave.

We went to Tiberias next for lunch. The city sits on the western shore of the Kinneret and it is mainly a tourist attraction. Parts of it remind me of Florida, which is not a complement. The resort district is nothing but old guys walking around in flip flops and shorts. Tiberias has been home to a number of very famous Rabbi's, making it an attraction to a lot of Orthodox tourists as well. The city does have a nice shopping area where we went for lunch.

The modern city of Tiberias.

Our last stop was Mount Arbel, where we looked out across the Kinneret at the Golan Heights, and down the cliff at the Ginosar Valley and the Druze village of Wadi Hamam. The Galilee has a very large non Jewish population; by some measures Jews are the minority in the area. The last time I was on the Arbel was on Ramah Seminar back in 2002. It was our first real hike of the trip. My luggage was lost on the way to Israel, so I was hiking in sandals, and I blistered up pretty badly. It was cold, windy and rainy at the summit today, so we were all very grateful to head back to the bus. It was a nice, educational tour, but I would like to tour the Galilee on my own when I have time.

The village of Wadi Hamam, just below Mount Arbel.