Carmel Park

What a gorgeous day it is today. What an excellent weekend this is shaping up to be. I spent most of yesterday with Menachem. We went to the Grand Kanyon mall (it's a pun, the word "kanyon" in Hebrew means mall), where we had lunch together, traded stories and did some grocery shopping. I came back home that afternoon and did a little work, but mostly tried to be with people as I anticipate my time in Haifa dwindling. After Shabbat dinner in the dorms moadon, I went with a few of the boys out into the park for a night of camping.

I didn't really take advantage of the park much last semester except to job. I'm glad I know better now. The Carmel Park is the single greatest advantage Haifa has over every other major city in Israel - a massive nature reserve literally a 5 minute walk away. We walked about a half hour out, cutting East and South away from the campus to a nice clearing with a fantastic view of the water and parts of the city below. What we didn't anticipate there being were a group of drunken, jackass locals who were screaming and carousing until 4 A.M. I'm not exactly an early-to-bed, early-to-rise type, but this was way over the top.

I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK!

We had trouble finding the wood we would need for a fire. We got out there late, didn't have enough flashlights to go around, and there just wasn't any fuel on the path. A crashing into the forest we would go. Finally, we pulled a huge, dead branch down that had fallen but gotten caught in the lower branches of a tree. It made for an excellent fire when all was said and done.

Just a cool fire pic.

The next morning we hiked a little further East up the road and hit up a different Druze pita stand. They are multiplying! This guy was more engaging than the group who runs the stand by campus, and they had a hummus option to go along with the labneh and za'atar. A good time was definitely had by all. We trecked back home for a quiet afternoon. I did some laundry, a little reading, and hung out with my friends. Tonight I'm going with Menachem to my final Maccabi Haifa game of the season, vs. Maccabi Herzlyia. Beitar has already clinched the championship based on points (bastards), but we're still going to pull for our team. Shabbat shalom.

Hamsin

A Hamsin is a local term for a hot, dusty wind that blows through Israel from the Negev and Sinai. It brings with it unbearable heat and heavy air pollution. It is generally unpleasant. Some have speculated that the term (Arabic for 50) refers to the number of days that a Hamsin blows through the country every year. I've heard another suggestion though: The temperature in the desert can reach 50 degrees (Celcius) during a bad Hamsin. That translates to about 120 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a heat I simply cannot fathom. Lucky us, we've got a Hamsin coming through the area now!

Midwesterners who may or may not still be getting snow in May will want to bash me for bitching about the weather here. Sure, it may be sunny and comfortably warm almost every day in Haifa during the Spring. I don't underrate that. Unfortunately, when it does get hot, I have no way to cope with it. I am a cold weather individual. Everything about me is built for the cold. I'm short, heavy, and hairy. When the heat hits, I just wilt. Give me sub freezing temperatures and ice any day over 100+ degree heat.

Singing The Heeby Geeby Blues

I'm ready to come home. Not that I don't love it here. It's just that I'm ready to come home. I've been here since early October and that is a really long time. It hit me Sunday afternoon while I was on a bus on my way down to the beach. I was daydreaming and slipped into my parent's Neon on North Lake Shore Drive. Suddenly, we were at the central bus station at Hof HaCarmel again. The beach was as nice as it always is - perfect weather and all that. Still, I'm ready for the comforts of Chicago again.

School certainly isn't captivating me anymore. I am no longer enjoying my classes, and am very much looking forward to finishing them. I'm not learning much anymore in Hebrew. We read newspapers in class, but go too slow for me and have to spend too much time defining words I'm already familiar with. The grammar work is tedious and focusing on minor turns of phrase that my Israeli friends don't know how to do correctly. Plus, my classmates were a lot more fun last semester. I'm sticking it out, ready to finish my last exam and put an end to my Ulpan days. I got a 99 on my quiz from last week. The class just isn't challenging me anymore.

At the very least, Ofakim is going great. I love working with the kids, even though they are not always easy to work with. I underestimated little kids going into this job. They are not simple in any sense. I've learned how to relate to each child, how to get them to do their exercises and how to get them to participate in activities. It is going to be hard to say goodbye to them.

Black Coffee

There is never a better Shabbat here than the chilled out Shabbat on campus. I love traveling, I love camping, and I love going out. Nothing holds a candle to truly resting around here. Today was a great day. I had planned to go on a morning hike with Paulien, but not surprisingly I overslept. My cell phone has crapped out and I had no way to set an alarm, so I left my blinds open in the hope that the morning light would wake me. It did not. I got up around 9:15 and stumbled out into the living room. There was Paulien, sitting on my couch, reading. I was rather startled. Luckily, she overslept too and had just arrived.

Rather than start a long hike we weren't really going to be able to finish before lunchtime, we just hung around at the dorm. We brought books out to the grass by one of the security posts, sat down in the shade and read. We went out to the park for lunch at the Druze pita stand that is out there every Shabbat. Then we sat in the shade and talked about international politics, culture, globalism and nationalism. It was a perfectly pleasant time. I drink several cups of black coffee and reflected on how I would miss something as simple as the Druze pita stand. Something like this would never fly in America. If the FDA didn't get to them for having no food safety standards, then it would be because the IRS got to them first for not paying any taxes. Plus, can you imagine someone just making a fire on the side of the road in the middle of a major American city in order to cook? There is something quaint and foreign about it that is comforting. It just wouldn't work back home.

We spend the afternoon at Aaron and Bill's flat, drinking more coffee on their patio. I spent all day outside which is just a pleasure in Israel in May. Around 5, Paulien and I walked out to the park and collected a huge amount of firewood. We put it in the usual spot and came back. 4 hours later, we were out in the park with a small group of friends and had an easy, relaxed campfire. All things considered, it was one of the quieter days I've had in this city, but it was magnificent in it's simplicity. Shabbat shalom.

This Post Is Not About Israel

The Chicago Cubs are my one true love. Allow me get that off my chest right now. I have been a fan the entirety of my young life. Nothing would make me happier than watching the Cubs win a World Championship. As of this writing, the Cubs are 9 games over .500 and in first place. This season has me drinking the Kool Aid as much as I ever have. Which is why Jim Hendry, their idiot General Manager, is now dead to me.

Jim Edmonds wasn't out of work long. The Chicago Cubs agreed to a contract with the 37-year-old outfielder on Wednesday, five days after he was released by the San Diego Padres.

"Hopefully, Jimmy has something left and it was just a bad start," General Manager Jim Hendry said.

This time, he has gone too far. There are certain taboos in baseball that you do not transgress, and this should have been one of them. Edmonds is old, broken down and a waste of a roster spot at this point in his career. He is no longer good at baseball. He will not help this team to win. That is not the issue at hand. Edmonds is also an arrogant, hotdogging, selfish clubhouse cancer, who performed unspeakable acts of evil against this franchise for years as a member of the motherfucking St. Louis Cardinals.

He should never have been given the privilege of putting on the blue pinstripes. I worry that this will indeed be the year that we win it all, and the victory will be less sweet for us true believers because we uniformly loathe the team's primary center fielder. There is no forgiveness in my heart for what Edmonds has put me through, and it would fit his M.O. to rob a World Series victory of its unchecked joy. Go straight to hell, Jimmy Ballgame. And take Cruller Jim with you.

النكبة - Nakba

President Bush is in Israel today, here with other heads of state and foreign diplomats to celebrate Israel's 60th birthday. As the celebrations roll on into their second week, I would like to take a moment to pause and ruminate on tomorrow's "Nakba Day." The word Nakba (spelled out for you in Arabic, and intentionally capitalized in English) means "catastrophe." Not surprisingly, it refers to the creation of Israel, the flight of Palestinian refugees that fled or were forced from their homes because of the fighting, and the destruction of over 100 Palestinian villages in what would become Israel.

Israel is dear to me, as it should be. Having lived here, I no longer see it through rose colored glasses, but rather with a skeptical eye and a heavy dose of reality. I believe this is healthier. I love this country but I feel it is my responsibility to recognize that the culmination of our collective hope and drive to regain our Holy Land did not come without significant bloodshed and hardship. Israel was not born by immaculate conception. Nor was it only Israel that was born in 1948. There were two nations born as a result of that war, Israelis and Palestinians.

60 years later, Israel is thriving. It's far from perfect, but Zionism has been a fantastic success. We Jews have realized self determination. It would be immoral and unjust to deny it to the Palestinians, whose fate we are bound to. It is time to realize that making concessions is not a sign of weakness. We have our Jewish state, our Israeli society, our Promised Land, and it is beautiful. For our sake, as well as for theirs, we must help the Palestinians to build their state alongside ours.

The Eternal Learning Curve

Indulge me for a moment while I bitch about something trivial. I've been here since October, and I had never learned how to use the can openers that Israeli's use regularly. I know what your all thinking now. "It's a can opener, what could there be to figure out?" Allow me to show you.


No crank, no wheel, no nothing. The thing was baffling to me. I bought a junk can opener from Supersal just because it looked like one from home. Suffice it to say, it didn't work as well as one from home. It still gave me a sense of comfort. Then the unthinkable happened: I went to open a can of tuna last night, and discovered that my shitty can opener was broken. No longer would it open anything. I was left with but one choice. I could force myself to work the survival can opener, or I could stop eating anything that comes in a can. Being the hardheaded person that I am, there was but one choice. I grabbed the survival can opener, and I began to struggle. And how I struggled. I was sweating, my arm was aching, and I was making no progress. Then, suddenly, I braced the opener against the under lip of the can, and made a small bit of progress! Emboldened, I tried to replicate my technique. It was no picnic, but I eventually got into a rhythm, and by the time my pasta was done cooking, I had opened the can! (Don't ask about what I was making - I'm still a student.) I know this is all pretty nerdy, but it's very exciting for me.