סיבה למסיבה

One thing Israelis are great at is finding any old reason to throw a bitchin' crazy party. Last night we had TWO great reasons to party. Devorah's birthday is later this month, and the family threw her a massive surprise birthday blowout last night. I couldn't mention it on this page earlier for obvious reasons. The party was at a restaurant in the German Colony and it was really fancy. It looked like over 100 people showed up and cramed into an upstairs party room the size of my flat's living room. It was really warm. Amir made a nice movie for Devorah with friends and family wishing her a happy birthday and mazal and happiness and everything that goes along with it.

Shachar parties down with one of his cousins.

The food was fantastic. I had a salmon patty with greens and mashed potatoes that was absolutely to die for. Plus they kept the wine flowing. Devorah was smiling and blushing so much that I thought she was going to just faint. I've got to give big props to everyone who had a hand in planning last night. I wish I could say I did. It was an unmitigated success!

Menachem and Carmit at dinner.

I left the birthday party a little after ten o'clock to roll for my second party of the evening. As I've previously mentioned, the international school semester is over, and last night was our one last chance to go out, celebrate and all hang out together before people start leaving. We went to a put down by the port and near to the German Colony, Eli's Pub. I've never been to any of the bars by the water before (except for the overpriced, watered down beer they hawk at the beaches.) The neighborhoods change quickly in Haifa. I walked about a half block down Yaffo street towards the pub, and all of the sudden I was in one of the rattiest neighborhoods I've seen in Israel. The pub was actually awesome on the inside. A nice atmosphere, chill, with a little room to dance but mostly a place to sit and talk with your friends over a pint. As a bonus, they had a great soundtrack going all night with lots of classic rock.

4 of us sat at the bar until the main group arrived.

If there was one potential drawback to this pub, it's that it wasn't very large. We began to ask the bartender about tables, since I had made a lot of calls and was expecting a large group to show up. They had one huge empty table, but apparently it was reserved. When she asked me how many to expect and I estimated 15, she smiled and offered us the table! Earlier that night when I had been on the phone talking to Anna, she mentioned that she knew the manager at the pub and would call to let him know we were coming. She asked me for a number and I gave her the same estimate, and the manager blocked off the table for us! The bartender's words (translated from Hebrew) were "are you here with the Hungarian girls who called?" Just marvelous!

What a lovely kiss!

I will miss my friends a lot, but I'm looking forward to meeting a whole new group of people soon. In the meantime, my vacation travel begins this morning. I am leaving for Jerusalem in a half an hour, and I'll hopefully be seeing plenty of old friends. I'll update when I return. Shabbat shalom.

The End Of An Era

The semester draws to a close this evening, after one final edition of "Arab - Israeli Relations." It's been a really awesome semester, my recent exam stress notwithstanding. I took my Hebrew exam this morning, my 4th exam in 4 days. It wasn't easy, but I have no doubt that I did well on it either. Arabic was yesterday afternoon, and my anticipation was worse than the test itself. I'm not quite as confident about that one, but we'll just have to wait and see. In the mean time, everyone is steeling themselves for the inevitable goodbyes that come at the end of the semester. We are going to have a lot of turnover between now and the start of the spring term in about 6 weeks. Most of my close friends are taking off for parts unknown, but I'm not worried about that. I will make a new circle of friends next semester. The program will be much bigger next time around, ballooning from around 90 students to somewhere in the 150 range.

Hanging out at our fall semester farewell dinner.

We had a goodbye dinner this week which was really nice. Good food, lots of people showed up, and it was in a nice little room on the absolute top floor of the Rabin building that they must only use for catering. In order to get their, you have to take the internal elevator all the way up, and the elevator doesn't go up to that floor at all unless management punches in an authorization code first. In other words, this was a sweet set up. The best part was the slide show that Oshrat put together of all of us from this fall. It was kind of corny and reminded me a lot of "No Smoking" slide shows of Ramah summers past, but there is certainly a place in my heart for that kind of cheese ball sentiment.


Now that the semester is over, my focus can shift to other things. I finally got the lead out and bought a gym membership this morning (thanks, Dad!) I've got some catching up to do to get back into shape but working out is not a chore for me, so I'll get there. I'm going to say something that many of you may consider blasphemous. Even I have a hard time believing it. I watched a half of a random soccer match between two Spanish League teams while running, and it is a better workout sport than baseball.

Before the State Department revokes my U.S. citizenship, allow me to explain myself. Soccer moves very quickly and there is a lot of contact. This is great for when your moving, as it holds your attention. Baseball is a more cerebral game, and you really need to watch it with others and discuss the action in front of you to truly enjoy it. Outside of that, what truly made this a better experience than baseball is that soccer has no whistles and no time stoppages, and that means no commercials. Imagine, 45 minutes of straight action without having to stop and be reminded yet again that you have no interest in the newest razor model with 8 blades. It's just magical! I jogged for 25 minutes until the half rolled around without a single interruption.

Of course getting in shape is not my only winter goal. I also plan on traveling. I will be spending nearly a week in Cairo, Egypt towards the end of January, and I plan to travel for a few days in Jordan as well, possibly as early as next week. Plus there is lots to see and do inside Israel that I hopefully won't find myself sitting around in the dorms. If I do, I will just lose my mind.

Cacti in Haifa are just one of the many cool things I want to see on my travels.

Perhaps it's ironic that today, on the day the international school semester ends, the University strike has now reached the lengthiest work stoppage in the history of the state. All I can say is that if the government insists on putting a gun in its mouth, no one is going to keep them from pulling the trigger.

The Best Silvester Day Ever!

Little did this American son know, but much of the world refers to New Years Eve as "Silvester Day", in honor of Saint Silvester, a Catholic Pope from the third century C.E. It's mainly a European custom, but Israelis have adopted it. Oh yeah, and the dude was apparently virulently anti-Semitic. How quaint. The party got started at noon with my Rabbinic Literature exam! I didn't really know what he wanted from us when I walked in the door, and my feelings haven't changed much the day after the test. It was just one of those exams. I'll keep you abreast of my grades as they roll in of course.

Instead of going to the community center for our normal volunteering project, we celebrated the new year and the last meeting of the semester by going bowling with the kids at the mall in Lev HaMifratz. It was a blast. The bowling alley looked like any alley you would expect to see in the U.S., but as always there were some key differences. One in particular that caught my eye was the claw machine. The prizes weren't dolls or toys or anything like that. Each prize was a pack of cigarettes with a 20 shekel bill taped to the outside! I'd like to make a joke about this, but honestly it is simply a sad reflection of today's Israeli society.

Me with Amit, one of my tutees and a "checkers" hustler. I got whupped by a 12 year old.

I played my usual uninspired round of bowling, checking out somewhere in the mid 80's, but I still managed to win a free round of bowling when I bowled a strike during the special 6th frame. I gave it to one of the kids, since he'll get more use out of it than I would have. We all gathered for pizza afterwards and then had to bounce back to campus so the kids could go home.

Students and tutors chilling at the bowling alley.

I came back for a little pre party with some of the boys on campus, and then a bunch of us went over to the Hungarian's apartment for a new years party/birthday party for Anna. It was a nice, chill get together with some great homemade food and a nice mix of people. We toasted the new year at midnight with champagne and watched fireworks explode over Wadi Nisnas from their living room windows.

I called it a night early and was home by 1 A.M. on account of this still being finals week. I took my "Terrorism and Responses" exam this afternoon - piece of cake. Tomorrow's Arabic exam will be another story. There is just a massive amount of material and it all gets mixed together in what my professor benignly calls a 'salad.' To me, it's more like mixing cold medicine with alcohol. I'm not ready to go yet but I'll be putting in some heavy study hours tonight. Wish me luck!

I Am Going To Catch Tuberculosis From A Classmate

Is it so much to ask that someone who is violently ill not come to class where she can infect the rest of us? Seriously, it's really starting to bother me. There is a girl in my Hebrew class who seemingly comes down with a terminal illness every six hours, but she insists on coming to class, sitting near me and then hacking up a lung all over the classroom! I don't want to catch your flu!

School is almost over for the week and then I have a second weekend with my family in the north. By the way, I'm planning to update all of you on all my travels with the family after exams are finished. Right now I simply don't have the time. My exam schedule is as follows: Monday afternoon I have my Rabbinic Lit exam, and I'm a little concerned about that one. Simply put, my mind does not work the way the mind of a 1st century Rabbi did. This makes it difficult to analyze the text. Even so, I've been studying hard for it all week and I have a basic understanding of the material. My Terrorism and Responses exam is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, and I'm not worried about that at all. I'm a rockstar in that class. Wednesday afternoon is Arabic, and I will be prepared by the time I have to take the test. Thursday morning I will take my Hebrew final exam, thus ending a marathon week of testing. I'll also have some kind of final assignment for Arab Israeli Relations, but our professor hasn't deemed us worthy of learning the details of the assignment more than a week in advance.

As for the weekend to come, it will be a mash of family, studying and goodbyes. Many of my closest friends at the University are only staying in Israel through the end of the semester, and then returning home or to programs in other countries. My hope is that we will all get to go out and spend a last night together chilling as a group. I'm going to miss them. Shabbat shalom.

Dahlia And Itay's Wedding

Last night I attended my first Israeli wedding. The bride, Dahlia Weinberg was the President of IllinIPAC when I was a freshman at the U of I. I still remember vividly sitting in the Hillel library with Eli, yelling our opinions to anyone who would listen. I don't think the group had ever seen a couple of freshman like us. Fast forward 4 years and Dahlia is now married! So weird. I'd met her husband once before, at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem last June. He's a real nice guy, and he looked significantly more nervous before the ceremony than Dahlia did.

I had a definite Israeli moment on my way out of Haifa. I missed my intended train because the bus from campus left 10 minutes late. When I eventually got to the station, I asked the mouth breather behind the ticket counter when the next train to Netanya would leave. "15 minutes." And when will it arrive in Netanya? "15 minutes." Needless to say she didn't know what she was talking about. I bought my ticket anyway and made my way onto the platform where there are train schedules posted on big signs. The signs aren't the clearest things to read, and I knew I would need to transfer to another train, so I flagged a woman down and asked if she could confirm to me how I was going to get to Netanya. We got to talking and lo and behold, it turned out that we were both headed to the wedding! I really think this sort of thing only happens here. She got off in Binyamina to meet her husband, while I transferred to the next train and wound my way to Netanya, where I met up with Reut.

For those of my readers who don't know Reut, I met her 4 years ago in Champaign when she was working as the Israeli שליחה to Hillel. She's 34 years old but she acts like she is 19 sometimes, and she is definitely a free spirit. My date for the evening. We spent most of the night chatting about people back home, but we moved out onto the dance floor for the last 45 or so minutes. It's a shame the wedding was on a Monday night; there were caterers walking around with bottles of liquor, just offering shots to anyone who wanted one. I maintained my discipline, drank one glass of wine and called it a night. After all, I did have class this morning. A hearty mazal tov to the new husband and wife!

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.