Monday/Tuesday – Day 20/21
August 8, 2012
Here it is! 3 weeks away! Not really missing home yet, far too much excitement and seeing Adi is wonderful.
For the last few days I have been studying hard, in the areas of algorithms, data structures and programming. I have an interview coming up that could make quite a difference and so I’m sacrificing a little fun time for a great potential benefit!
Monday saw me at my cousin’s birthday in a more religious area of Jerusalem, Givat Shaul. For those of you who haven’t been to Israel this means a rather stark difference from what many of you will have experienced otherwise in travel. The entire neighborhood is dressed modestly, commonly in black, white and bland colours. The advertisements are specifically targeted to cater to the population and feature very few women and if so, in household situations. The food is all kosher and everything closes early Friday afternoon, with nothing at all open on Saturday. The roads close and the streets fill with people on the way to meals and synagogue.
After my stay there it was back to the boys apartment in Tel Aviv where I engaged in some applied research into wireless security protocols, much to their excitement. Apparently programming is cool, who knew?
Also today marked the beginning of ‘The Two Towers’, as I felt it was necessary that Sarah, who considers herself somewhat nerdy, to be inducted into the full trilogy and was somewhat horrified that she hadn’t seen them all already.
My camera has run out of battery and I left the charger in Jerusalem so it may be another day till photos appear.
Sunday – Day 19
August 7, 2012
Today I stayed in to work. Preparing for job interviews, arranging logistics with UPenn (a painful affair) and just sorting my life out.
Leaving my cousins to hang out with more shnatties, I went out with Amy Bortz in central Jerusalem to HaMoshava 54, a new instant coffee place with amazing free samples, and a GIANT 28 NIS frozen yoghurt. Yum.
Following that, Amy and I began to walk home when, we chanced upon a christian tour group from Hong Kong. Knowing that something interesting was likely to occur soon, I stopped Amy and we continued to eat the frozen yoghurt in place. Sure enough, soon they were singing the Hatikva with hands on their hearts and a real sincerity. Nice to know not everyone hates the Jews :P.
I asked the leader of the group what they were doing in Israel and they told us they had been studying Hebrew, Judaism and Israel for the last two years and this was the culmination of all their hard work. A tour to the bible lands to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.
They then encouraged us to sing with them Heveinu Shalom Aleichem, and we started dancing too!
After that, they took down our names, so that they could pray for us to ‘make aliyah’ (emmigrate to Israel) in hopes of bringing about the third coming of Christ.
Friday/Shabbat – Day 17/18
August 6, 2012
This morning I woke up to one of the most exciting emails I have ever received. Ask me about it.
From there it was a good few hours back to Jerusalem!
On arriving I decided to take a walk and ended up getting lost in Jerusalem (a rare occurrence) for a few hours and thus had a good three hour walk in the heat. I bought some rogelach (an Israeli pasty) and more felafel!
Dinner was a quiet affair at my cousins, with Daniella, back from the army for her first weekend at home. Surprisingly she seemed to find basic training a most enjoyable period and was treating it much like summer camp, earning the name ‘Savta’ (Grandmother) for handing out sweets to the other trainees.
Shabbat was peaceful, sleeping and visting family and friends. However, Saturday night was out on the town with Daniella! We visited a few of the less reputable establishments in Jerusalem and I met a few drunken friends of hers who seemed not to be able to stop yammering. Despite this, I enjoyed myself until I collapsed into bed at 3AM.