Cooking -- help!

Greetings, readers! I promise a real post soon, but I'm writing to you now to ask for some help. In my dorm's kitchenette, we are lacking an oven, a toaster oven, or a microwave: we only have a stovetop. So I am writing to you to ask for RECIPES. Anything that can be prepared using only a stovetop (and, at the moment, one pot) is much appreciated. Bonus points if it can be served cold or the leftovers are delicious when cold. Ready...set...GO!

To be or not to be?

About a week before taking off for this lovely country, I remember talking to my parents about my concerns about making friends. “99% of the friends I made at MHC were through an extracurricular,” I explained, “Project: Theatre or Chorale.” After some discussion of other bonding experiences that study abroad would offer, I started pondering what sorts of extracurriculars the Rothberg International School would offer. I decided (and my parents and Ian can attest to this) that I would be okay doing a choral group but I’d try not to get into a leadership role, and I probably shouldn’t do theatre: it would (and does) eat my life.

But then came academic orientation.

The next-to-last slide announced that Beit Hillel was producing, as their annual English musical, Les Miserables...a show that I have always wanted to do. So what do I do?!? I need advice, dear readers. Whether I audition or sign up to work crew, I’d be happiest with a larger role, but that would also mean less time to enjoy living in Israel. The performances are also the weekend that my parents are visiting. At the moment I am audition coach extraordinaire for Alison and Zev, and that’s certainly something I love!

Possibly the best solution: talk to the director and see if there’s something I can do on a drop-in basis; assistant directing, behind-the-scenes work, etc. I’m afraid it would just be hard for me not to feel like an expert as I usually do. (MHC friends know what I mean – I do my best work when I’m in control of my own world, be it stage managing, directing, music, etc.) I look forward to hearing your opinions, and I’ll keep you posted :)

My Israeli dorm room!

Hello again, readers! Apologies for the deluge of posts...I had been meaning to post this and the Tel Hai post for some time, but I hadn't gotten my camera and wireless internet in one place until now. Thanks for sticking it out!

In my apartment, we have two bathrooms, a shower, a common area (which serves as living room and dining room), a kitchenette, and five bedrooms. Mine is the first, and it has two doors:


We're assuming it has something to do with security purposes. I really like the room itself, though! I've started to make it my own with some pictures of my family.

As I mentioned in a previous post, everything I bought for myself here in Israel is green...thus, here is my very green bed!

It’s surprisingly cozy...I've slept very well in it so far. There's also a handy little rolling unit that is serving me as nightstand, underwear drawer, sock drawer, and drawer of important stuff! I also have some very green kitchen stuff (and a Red Sox hat, because, well, of course!).

The room also has some fantastic storage space; we each get a wardrobe (complete with a full-length mirror!) that has a bunch of shelves as well as an area for hanging items.

There's also a bunch of wall-mounted shelving above the desk.

Thanks for sitting through the obligatory room-tour post! On to more interesting things soon, I hope :)

Ulpan begins!

Shalom, readers! So yesterday I began learning Hebrew! During the ulpan, a three-week summer session, we have Hebrew class for four hours per day, five days per week (plus a sixth day this week). I am in level Aleph, the introductory level! On Sunday morning I woke up bright and early (fifteen minutes before my alarm!), got ready, and headed out for the fifteen-minute walk over to campus. Apparently there’s a shuttle as well, but at the moment, I’m quite happy to walk it! We’ll see how I feel after a few weeks :P It IS uphill both ways...!

I found my classroom, and discovered that two of my friends are in my class! Yay, Zev and Sarah. Zev and I met on the plane (you may remember him from a previous post), and Sarah was one of my roommates at the hostel in Tel Hai. Both are entering their freshman year of college – so young! Our morning teacher’s name is Sheron, and she is very sweet – I like her a lot so far.

Learning another alphabet is reminding me of learning Japanese all over again! I know I’ll get the hang of it pretty soon – it’s going well so far, albeit slightly overwhelming. We had two hours of class, then a half hour break during which Zev, Sarah, and I got calzones and iced coffee for lunch (all for 24 shekels, or less than eight dollars). Israeli iced coffee is more akin to a Dunkin Donuts coffee coolattas, but a little richer and less sweet – delicious!

We headed back for forty-five more minutes of class, then had a fifteen-minute break before our final ninety minutes of class, for which we had a different teacher, Michal. She’s also very nice, and I tend to like having two different teachers for a foreign language...generally different teachers appeal to different learning styles, and they have different things to offer.

I’ve got to admit, I won’t be sad to see the end of ulpan. I’m looking forward to the beginning of the semester when I have other classes to look forward to as well!

First weekend in Israel!

Greetings, readers! Sorry for the delay in posts -- I returned quite late on Saturday night from my weekend trip to northern Israel, and yesterday was the first day of ulpan Hebrew classes! Now after day two I’m on campus relaxing and taking advantage of the free wireless (still no internet in the apartment yet). But let’s backtrack a few days...

On Thursday I had a fairly lazy day – I knew that I was going to have to wake up at 5:30am on Friday to leave for the trip to Tel Hai at 6:00am, and so I figured I should have a fairly low-key day leading up to that. I also wanted to have a day of exploring campus outside the tour so that I’d be familiar with it before classes begin.

I slept until about 8:30am, had a lazy morning, and eventually walked down to campus with Kate. We headed to the Academon bookstore and bought our Hebrew textbooks. Then we visited the madrichim office to sign up for a few more trips – we both signed up for the practical Jerusalem tour, a picnic, and a night tour of the Old City, and I also signed up for a trip to Ein-Kerem. Then we grabbed lunch from the cafeteria (reasonable prices, HUGE portions, decent food) and went to the Academon non-bookstore, where I purchased a router so we can get have wireless internet in the apartment. Then we chilled out in the Forum for a while catching up on e-mail and Facebook.

When we got back to student village we stopped by the office of Bezeq, the internet company that serves the dorms so that Kate could sign up and get a modem, but they had closed early! So another couple of internet-less days...I'm looking forward to having internet so I can Skype more comfortably! Then we dropped off our stuff in the apartment and went to the grocery store to get some basics: milk, cereal, pasta, cheese, bread, peanut butter, apple jam, chai tea, hummus, pretzels, and half a watermelon. Then we headed back to the apartment where I chilled out for the early evening. Kate and I attempted to go eat at the falafel place near campus, but they were closed :( So we ate our lunch leftovers for dinner, made a quick stop at the grocery store to buy honey for our chai and used an ATM, and went out and used the internet in the courtyard for a bit. Finally I went to bed nice and early around 9:00pm.

I woke up the next morning at 5:15am to get ready for the trip. Now, a friend of mine who is an alumna of this program told me that I should go on all the trips – “It’s a small country and they take you everywhere,” she said. Well, I am so glad that I listened to her! We took a three-ish hour bus ride on very groovy-looking buses (with a stop for a traditional Israeli breakfast – chocolate milk in a bag and bread!) up to the Golan Heights.

Groovy bus: Chocolate milk in a bag:
Golan Heights!
There we went on what the madrichim had called in the description of the trip a “short, beautiful hike.” We also asked the madrich on our bus, Sima, if the hike was difficult. “I think it’s pretty easy,” she told us. (We later discovered that she spent three years as an officer in the Israeli army. Noted.) Well, the hike was very beautiful, but it was pretty intense! It was about three hours, and here’s a sample of what the trail looked like:

Pretty tricky at points, especially when crossing streams where the rocks got super slick. But it was worth it: we eventually arrived at a waterfall and a swimming hole where we got to spend half an hour playing in the water! It was absolutely beautiful.

Finally we hiked the last half hour up to the buses where we had sandwiches for lunch. Then we climbed back on the buses and rode up to Mount Bental. From there we had a spectacular view; we could see into Lebanon and Syria. Our tour guide also gave us some really interesting history, and Ido, one of the madrichim, told us about his father’s time in the Israeli army and pointed out the place where he had fought an important battle in the War of 1973.

There were also some statues made by a local artist, and I found this one particularly amusing -- my family especially will understand why!

Finally we continued on to the Tel Hai youth hostel where we spent the night, and I took a looooong nap. I woke up for dinner, then we went to a “madrichim special event” – we divided into teams and competed in events such as creating the longest possible chain of clothing, dressing one guy on the team in drag in our team colour, etc. It was pretty fun, but I was glad to see the end of it and head to bed. Here's a shot of the sunset in Tel Hai:

In the morning I woke up for the tail end of breakfast, then got dressed and ready to go to the Open Photography Museum in Tel Hai, a very short walk from our hostel. We received a tour of their current exhibition (several collections from Micha Bar-Am), spent some time in a darkroom, and watched a film on Stef Wertheimer, who has created several industrial parks in the Middle East, including the one the museum is a part of. Interesting stuff!

After lunch we walked to the Joseph Trumpeldor monument, the Roaring Lion. Our tour guide gave us some background on Trumpeldor’s life and why he was important to Israel. I also got a chance to chat with a few Israelis with us (one of the madrichim and a couple of our guards) about their thoughts on him and his legacy.

Then most people walked an additional 30 minutes uphill to go to a swimming pool, but I opted to return to the hostel and read for a while. After dinner, we had Havdallah (a ceremony celebrating the end of Shabbat and blessing the week ahead) and got back on the buses. We returned to the student village at 11:35pm and I fell straight into bed!

Coming soon: first day of classes :)

UPDATE: click here for some pictures the madrichim took over the weekend!

Exploring Jerusalem

Shalom, readers! Today was my first full day in Israel – wow! And it’s not even over yet :) I woke up at 9:00 this morning, listened to some music, futzed around with my iPod, and eventually got up and get ready. I took the bus to downtown Jerusalem so I could buy a power converter (so glad my laptop is alive again!) and meet up with some friends. After getting seriously lost (a.k.a. thorough exploration?) we walked around for a while, then took a taxi back to campus in time for a campus walking tour.

Here, I have decided, is the problem with campus tours: you will never take that route to get to any of the places on the tour, so it really doesn’t help you to know how to get to anything. But Ido, our tour guide and one of the madrichim, showed us some beautiful and interesting spots. I got my first look at the Old City from the campus’ amphitheatre, and Ido gave us some tips on how to meet and get to know Israeli students on campus. After that we had an orientation, which basically taught us about health insurance, warned us against a lot of unsafe/insecure places, and reminded us of some basic security tips. I won’t bore you with the details.

After this, I suddenly realized I hadn’t eaten all day. Oops. So I walked with some friends to Burgers Bar, the chain burger place in the same plaza as the pizza place I went to yesterday. Sadly, as they are certified kosher, no cheeseburgers :( But I did have a delicious burger with barbeque sauce as well as some very interesting French fries – they were potato slices!

Now I have returned to my dorm to write this. Soon I’ll venture out into the courtyard, where it’s rumored there is wi-fi, and then Alison, Kate, and I plan to have a pajama party and watch a movie. Stay tuned...this may be my last post for a while, as this weekend I am going on a Shabbaton trip to Tel Hai where I will hike, swim, enjoy a Shabbat dinner, and hopefully have an enjoyable last weekend before ulpan classes begin!

Shalom, Israel!

So to pick up where I left off, we deplaned, then headed over to customs. I waited in line with the guy who had been beside Alison and me on the plane, Zev. We chatted for a while and discovered a common love of the Red Sox and theatre! Then we got a luggage cart and collected our baggage. Mine was waiting for me on the carousel, but Zev had to wait quite a while. Then we headed out of the security zone and tried to find where we were supposed to go.

This proved challenging.

We ran into another girl from our program, Cara (also one of my roommates!). Together we wandered until one of the madrichim (basically the RAs for international students) showed up with a sign that said HEBREW UNIVERSITY. We waited around near him until we’d gathered up most everyone, then headed out to a charter bus and drove to Jerusalem.

Upon arrival we were given bags that included our room keys, student ID cards, and health cards. I also picked up my cell phone for the next four months! I went to my dorm, dropped off my luggage, and headed to campus to pick up my health card, which was missing from my bag. (They told me to come back tomorrow. Helpful.)

We took a shuttle over to campus and walked back; it’s a nice ten minute walk! Then Alison, Sean, Malcolm, Steph, Esther, Robert, Rachel, and I decided to go get some lunch. We found a pizza place just outside the north gate of the student village, and even in Jerusalem, I managed to get my favourite – black olive and pineapple ☺ Then we stopped by the market there to buy some basics: toilet paper, soap, paper towels, etc.

After this, Esther and I went back with Alison to her room to make lists of what to buy on the shopping trip that evening, listen to music, and watch Alison unpack. Then we headed down to the bus and went to the local mall.

I walked away with a comforter, fitted sheet, pillow, pillowcase, cup, plate, bowl, mug, towels, and trash can – all green. Not because I particularly like green, I just think it will make it easier for me to keep track! I also bought utensils for my apartment and a Happy Meal for dinner. Then we returned to campus at which point I unpacked, made my bed, and watched a movie with the last of my laptop battery. Finally I fell asleep around 10:00PM and didn’t wake up for eleven hours! What bliss :)