Fairy

Not a whole lot going on today, so instead I wanted to note another one of life's little culture shocks.


This is a mostly empty bottle of dish soap in my kitchen. Thing this would fly in America? Neither did I. My family arrived today and I am eagerly awaiting their first hike north to Haifa.
ברובים הבאים, משפחת ברנר!

Trying To Catch My Breath

The weekend has come and gone and I'm just struggling to keep up. The work is really starting to pile up as we draw close to the end of the semester. My Arabic workload is a solid 2 hours per night, night in and night out, and I have lots of other classes on top of it. I will be giving a presentation in "Rabbinic Literature" a week from today on the legality of smoking tobacco according to modern interpretations of Jewish law. Tomorrow morning I have a Hebrew exam. Things are getting plenty dicey and I spent a solid part of the weekend pouring over my notes. This is all with an eye to the future. I need to get my work done now because my family arrives in Israel tomorrow afternoon and will be spending the two upcoming weekends here in Haifa with me. I would really rather go touring with them than sit with books open studying.

I did have some fun over the weekend in spite of myself. Thursday night I went out with a group of friends to a pool hall in Mercaz HaCarmel. Dominique and I lightened the mood considerably by cracking open a bottle of vodka for the group before hitting the strip. I probably had a little too much, and the lowlight of my night was lining up to shoot at a ball that I didn't realize wasn't mine, and then making the perfect shot to sink it.

I went over to the Mor's home for a wonderful Shabbat lunch with the whole family. Amir came, and Carmit and Shani brought the kids. Devorah made a lot of cholent, just the way I like it. I got my standard playtime with Shachar and I tried feeding Shai. She wasn't having any of it, and most of the apple sauce-ish stuff I was trying to give her ended up on her bib. Now I'll shamelessly post pics of the kids, with many thanks to Carmit:

To me, this is what Shabbat is all about.

One of the few moments where Shachar wasn't running around.

I think this photo was taken before the high tide of apple sauce.

And one of me and Devorah, since this is my space anyway.

As for the situation on campus, the student strike has come to an end beginning today, without accomplishing a single one of the goals they set out to accomplish. Totally pathetic. The only thing they managed to achieve was the cancellation of university classes for a week. The government is still not meeting with the professors who remain on strike. It's the status quo, ladies and gentleman! I mentioned in an earlier post how disappointed I was with the efforts of the student union to affect policy change. Now I'm just disgusted. The semester is all but assured to be canceled at this point. If the students hoped to make a point that the Israeli government would respond to, they failed.