Day 35 - Swimming, Spices, Pork and Puzzles

First, administrative news: you can now comment even if you don't have an account. This is to make it easier, but I'd still kind of like to know who says what, so please sign your comments if that's not too much trouble.

Anyways, moving on. Despite getting to bed a bit late after a chat with my parents last night, I awoke early to head to the pool with Asaf for some laps. We left at 9, but unfortunately when we got there and I tried my best to be sneaky, I was unable to enter the pool area without being noticed, and had to pay to get in for the day. Sadness. I had brought the goggles and swim cap Asaf had lent me which are his sister's spares, but the goggles were sadly broken, a fact I only discovered as we were about to get into the indoor pool. Luckily Asaf had other spares with him, and located some in the bottom of his bag which had holograms of piranas on them. They were definitely hardcore.

We swam for a bit, but the lap pool filled up to the point where we couldn't go the pace we wanted. So we grabbed our stuff and headed for the outdoor pool. As we were putting on our sunscreen, though, they removed the lane ropes, opening up the whole pool for free swim. This was problematic for laps, so we decided to work a bit on Asaf's butterfly and flip turns, then swam a few obstacle-filled laps before having a breath-holding contest which Asaf definitely won.

Once we'd dried off and showered, I got some falafel and we both got malawah, a doughy pastry-like thing. It was pretty good but very flaky and messy, and I couldn't finish mine so I brought it home. Since I had woken up so early, after the walk back to Clore I took a nice afternoon nap, then woke up again and went up to the lobby to hang out. I blogged about the last two days and went through all my photos, and chatted with Zvonimir and others. The circle got larger as the day went on, and eventually the evening arrived. Stephen suggested havdalah, so we went down to get his cup, candle and very fancy McCormack container of whole cloves (a "spice box"), and recruited Rachel, her friend who was visiting, Maxime, and Oren to join in. Once we lit the candle we began to worry about the smoke detector, so we headed outside and stood in a circle to do the prayers, using tunes and swaying in a way very reminiscent of Camp Ramah. It was nice.

We headed back inside and sat chatting a bit more, and I continued blogging until I ran out of power. When I went down to my room to get my adapter, I happened to look at  my phone and noticed a few missed calls. The first was Nitzan, who told me when I returned his call that he had meant to invite me to dinner with some friends at Yaron and Rotem's apartment. The invitation was still open, so I changed and started the walk, during which I returned the other call (my parents, about shipping me my chalk bag (yay!)).

I called Nitzan when I was close by to let me up, and he came down and walked me in. Yaron and Rotem live only a 5-minute walk from campus, which is nice because they both are students here. Their apartment was lovely and spacious, and, having the impecable timing I do, I arrived just before we all sat down to eat. Yaron is the cook of the couple, and a very capable one at that. We had rice, dumplings, pork (!) in a sweet sauce, and a chicken and vegetable dish.

After clearing the dishes we decided to turn on the air conditioning and sat in the living room talking. Dessert eventually happened, and consisted of a cheesecake (which apparently improves with age) and chocolate cake (which apparently is a hit because it's standard kindergarten fare here and then disappears for the rest of your life). Both were great, and afterwards we sat some more. Eventually Rotem broke out a few three-dimensional puzzles (wooden blocks and such, and a terra-cotta face thing which I really can't describe). We all took turns trying them except our hosts. Surprisingly, I finished all of them relatively quickly. The others completed some of them as well, but Nitzan unfortunately resorted to making his own "creative sculptures" with the pieces.

Eventually it got late, and some people had early lectures the next morning, so we all said our thank-yous and departed. Back at Clore, most people had gone to bed, but I caught Ari (who had recently returned from a weekend with his family). We chatted a bit before I went to sleep.

To continue pictures from last Thursday...

...behold, the Dead Sea!

A picture of me.  Imagine that.  Thanks, Ari!

Salt crystals on a rock by the shore

Oren and some other random dudes floating

Day 34 - Independence Day

After 11 hours of sleep, I woke up to meet Ari for breakfast before he went to Jerusalem to meet friends and then his family. We both went back to Clore, he left, and I grabbed my stuff and went to work for a bit. I stayed, processing images a bit to catch up for yesterday, until a bit after noon. On my way back to Clore I called Asaf, and we met in the lobby so I could give him a CD i had made him. Then I changed and went to go meet the guys to go climbing (Nitzan, Yaron, and Ran) at 1 pm.

We went to the top roping/leading place, which was nice because it was relatively un-crowded and they had finally gotten new leading ropes. I tried the yellow route twice but got really stressed, so I took a long rest. Ran and I belayed each other on some top-roping routes, then I led one I had done before and one new problem. I was overly tired considering what I had done, though, so further lead-belaying lessons from Nitzan will have to wait until next time. We then bouldered for a while, and the guys each had a beer and we sat and chilled until leaving.

I returned to Clore at around 6, and showered in time to be clean and ready for the Shabbaton Stephen, Tamara, and Rachel had planned. Stephen had printed a Friday night service, in Hebrew and transliterated into English, for everyone, and he led the service and gave a brief interactive sermon about the portion. It was a great dialogue and a fun service, and there were about 12 people (but only 9 Jews, so no minyan). Afterwards, we acquired many more people as we headed down to the basement for Shabbat dinner.

Rachel had been the driving force behind the cooking, and Tamara and Stephen had done the grocery shopping. They had pushed all of the dinner tables together and set it with tablecloths and plasticware, but there weren't enough chairs, so we all grabbed some from our rooms before sitting down and filling our wine glasses. We said Kaddish and hamotzi, and began the meal with challah, pita, hummus and other spreads. Then there were two salads, rice, couscous, and chicken. We had juices and soda to drink, and cakes for dessert. Everything was delicious! We lingered for a while, talking and laughing, then cleaned up a bit before going our separate ways.

Stephen, Oren, Dan, Ari (who had gotten back in the middle of the meal), and I sat around a bit longer, having a hilarious conversation. Pretty soon, Ari, Ivonne, Dan, Joel, and I headed out to Hertzl Bar, where we met Ran, Nitzan, and a friend of Nitzan's from the army. The outing was ostensibly in honor of the United States' independence day, which was made amusing by the fact that Ari was wearing a tee shirt with a huge union jack on it (which he hadn't realized would be ironic when he put it on). We got a rather small table, but squished further around it to allow Zvonimir, Tess and Jonathan to join us. Everyone got various exciting drinks; I got a mango, pineapple, and banana smoothie which was delicious. We talked about a bunch of mostly unconnected things, occasionally jokes which are hilarious in Hebrew but just don't really translate, until a bit too late, then finally all headed home.

Pictures today are a continuation from yesterday. Behold: Ein Gedi! And Ari's outfit.

So typical of an oasis...

A hyrax

The caves in the cliffs

The first pool (Jonathan took this one)

A series of waterfalls

The second pool

The third pool

Jonathan holding a tadpole (with legs!)

A dragonfly

And finally, Ari's ironic tee shirt

(notice Dan is wearing a red, white and blue shirt like a good American)

Day 33 - Sunrise, Sunset

I left off the last entry with my 6 pm nap on Wednesday evening. When I woke up a few hours later, I joined a group (Dan, Ari, and Zvonimir) heading to Cafe Mada, the restaurant/cafeteria nearest to our dorm. We all had the same thing to eat: sweet potato ravioli in rose sauce. It was delicious! We were later joined by Jonathan, Rachel, Jordan, and Joel, by which time we had moved on to dessert. I got a delicious chocolate soufle thing which was amazing, and after a bit we all left together.

By the time we got back to Clore, it was almost time to go out! We changed and headed to the Hebrew University Rehovot campus (for agricultural studies), to the bar there called the Kukula, because they have a beer special on Wednesdays. We just sat around on couches and talked for an hour or two, then moved outside to the courtyard when it got too warm inside. An interesting discussion topic, namely, standards and criteria for "hotness" or interest in people of the opposite gender, was a recurring theme for the night.

We got back to Clore around 1 am, at which time we all packed for the next day's trip. We left as a kind of mob of people, heading for the parking lot of San Martin where the bus was waiting for us. The departure time was 2 am. This trip, another one organized by Greta for the KKISS program members, promised to be a long but exciting day.

We began with a drive, during which I think most people (me included, hence the "think") slept, to the foot of Masada. I also met Daniela, a recently-arrived KKISS student from Austria, on the bus. We arrived around 4 am, in the dark, and began the trek up the easy trail as the horizon began to take on a tinge of pink. By the time we reached the top, it was light enough to see very well, but the sun hadn't truly risen above the mountain tops in the distance, so we stood, looking east, munching sandwiches, as the fiery red ball emerged. Scattered along the edge, various people could be seen praying, and grackles hopped about looking for crumbs. The air was still cool and quiet as the day broke.

Sarah, our guide, then began the formal tour. We explored the storage buildings, baths, Herod's palace, the dovecotes, and the meeting rooms or synagogues as we criscrossed the surface of the plateau. Other tour groups engaged in similar activities or performed reenactments of the two sieges which took place at this site (Herod and his army or the Jewish rebels), and could be seen as we went on our way. Finally we started our descent, down the more difficult route, called the "Snake Path." You can use your imagination to conjure up possible origins of that name, but for my description, suffice it to say it is much longer and steeper than the way we took up.

At the bottom, we entered the visitor's center and sat basking in the glory of the air conditioning for a bit before walking through the Masada Museum, after which we boarded the bus once more and headed to the closeby Ein Gedi nature reserve. We restocked on water before beginning the hike, which took us through tall cliffs dotted with small caves, along a stream which periodically cascaded down the pale rocks, forming blue-green pools ringed with algae. While the first portion of the path was rather unexciting, there were many hyrax spottings: the adults as well as young were hopping about, in the shade on the ground or in the branches of the trees, and we literally saw dozens before the path dipped down and took us to the first pool. A few of us swam, but many waited for the next pool, only a few minutes down the path, which was larger and colder than the first, with a slightly more impressive waterfall. The third pool was even deeper and had a small, flat portion of rock by the falls which allowed Ari and I to compete with some acrobatic dives. I started with a cannonball, as requested, but when he did a backwards twist-flip, even my consequent backdive couldn't bring me back to win the contest. This pool was also home to a small worm which bit Tanmay's arm and some tadpoles which Jonathan caught to show us before releasing. I was able to photograph the latter, as well as some dragonflies.

After dipping in the third pool we gathered our belongings and headed back. At the bus we waited a few minutes for everyone to return, then drove across the street to the Dead Sea, in which we...floated. For anyone who hasn't ever done this, it is a necessary life task, but I don't think anyone can describe to you just how odd it is. The rocks by the shore, where water has evaporated, are coated in sharp salt crystals which glittered in the sunlight. The water is oily, and very warm, and the salts (plural, yes; not just NaCl) make up such a high percentage of the water that you are able to discover any unknown cuts or broken skin you might not have known you had. Also, after a bit it hurts. So we got in, sat for a few minutes (some longer than others), and then showered before grabbing our first real meal of the day. We took our time eating, then got back on the bus for the drive to Jerusalem. As this leg of the journey was a bit longer, many of us (read: I) took a brief nap and woke just as we pulled up to a scenic overlook of the Old City.

We got out and Sarah told us a little bit about the Temple and the Dome of the Rock, as well as general history of the large cemetery in front of us and the city of Jerusalem. We took a group picture before having a snack of watermelon and boarding the bus again for Mount Hertzl. We saw his and various other tombs there, then walked a few minutes down the hill to Yad Vashem, Jerusalem's Holocaust Museum. Here we spent two hours, which wasn't nearly enough to finish but still was emotionally draining. Since the relatively recent renovations of the museum, the structure echoes the content: you enter a relatively wide hall above ground, and can see the end of the museum in the distance. But to get there, the central hall narrows and dips underground, and the exhibit crisscrosses this central hall, shuttling you along and forcing you to pass all the material. As the "years" pass, the path is more constricted, until the end, when the central hall becomes wide again and glass doors lead onto a balcony overlooking a huge valley outside Jerusalem. As I emerged, tears in my eyes, the glowing orange ball of the sun hung low above the trees ringing the valley in the distance, silhouetting a view of modern Israel, the embodiment of hope for the Jewish people.

The day had an interesting symmetry to it: sunrise at Masada, sunset at Yad Vashem. In 20 hours we had covered so much ground, and I was drained completely, physically and emotionally. On the bus I expected to pass out immediately, but sleep eluded me all the way back to Rehovot. When we arrived around 9:30, I found some dinner, and then I crashed completely.

I took so many pictures that I'm going to post them grouped by location or subject matter over the next few days. So today you get pictures from the start of the trip and Masada!

A seemingly normal picture of people on the bus

just before our departure. But wait for it...

...look at Ari's face!

And now, Masada:

Day 32 - Continued Weirdness

Today was very busy at work.  I woke up super early in the hopes of cashing my first salary check at the bank, but arrived there at 8:20 to discover that it didn't open until 9.  I therefore went to work and started, then went back to the bank.  

< .science >

I started sonicating my samples just after 9:30, then met Talmon at 10:30 for him to show me how to use the glow discharge machine (to make the TEM grids hydrophilic so I could deposit samples sonicated in water, as opposed to ethanol).  This means these nanotubes won't cluster together on a small area of the grid, which will make them easier to examine with the TEM next week.

< / science >

I really didn't have a very exciting day otherwise.  Around lunchtime I heard about the terrorist attack in Jerusalem, which freaked me out much more than it did everyone around me.  I tried to do some work but was really distracted, so around 3 I went to chill with Ran for a few minutes before the math cookie time, then ate yummy pastries with all the math-ers.  After this much-needed break, I looked at more images until around 6, when I had a brief chat with my professor and showed him a new (and very relevant) paper XiaoMeng had found before heading out.

When I got back to Clore I settled in for my nap.  And this is where this entry will conclude, for reasons which will tomorrow become clear.

Another interesting tidbit: welcome to the blogosphere, Joel's mom!  Enjoy a tag!

In the meantime, enjoy some Tel Aviv street art

with interesting alternate spelling

"A Disaster Created by Human Beings"

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1214726186987&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The title of this post is how XiaoMeng phrased it. I think that sums it up pretty well.

Day 31 - Data, Data Everywhere

Ok guys, an official announcement. My blog "Day #" and the date will no longer line up. This is incredibly sad. I expect you to mourn.

Now that that's done, today was also weird. This is pretty much shaping up to be a weird week. Although this afternoon I discovered that part of it, namely the fact that I've been dizzy, in a sort of daze, tired, and a bit nauseous/headache-y might be due to the fact that I haven't been drinking much water at all for a bit. So I started again. Hopefully this is dehydration and it will go away.

So this morning I was on the TEM with Talmon from 9 am to 12:30 pm. The images (of which there are almost billions) are quite promising, which is great! Also, some professors/researchers have begun e-mailing me back with images from their published papers, so now the data is just a river and I am trying to keep my head up. This is what I mean when I say that at this job, sometimes I'm bored and sometimes I'm very, very, very busy.

After working on the TEM I dropped off my stuff in the lab and headed to San Martin for lunch, where I joined a relatively large group including Ari, Tamara, Rachel, Zvonimir, and Lisa. We were soon joined by Tanmay as well. Afterwards I returned to the lab for a bit, began work on the images, and then headed out again for a 3:00 pm talk about stem cells given by a researcher at Harvard who spent a summer in the KKISS program himself, nine years ago. It was actually a very good talk! It was at about the right level for me (I have a bit of biochem), but I feel like it was also accessible to math and computer science people, and not so far below the biology people that they felt like two-year-olds. A lot of people asked questions, too, so I think it was a success.

From this point until 6 pm, I continued to work on images. XiaoMeng and I had talked a bit about my data so far yesterday, and she showed me a new paper she had read that models the same thing I'm measuring. It's in a journal called "small." That makes me really happy already, but I'll get back to you after I read it.

After work I got ready for climbing and met Alissa in the lobby at 7. We grabbed a train to Tel Aviv and walked to Performance Rock, where we met Tamara, Mena and Jesse for some bouldering awesomeness. The place was jam-packed when we got there, which I found out later from Tamara and some super-sleuthing skills was probably due to an open house from 7-9 with this climbing trainer/coach from England. The place cleared out a bit around 9, and we stayed until 9:30; we wanted to catch the 10:12 train and I wanted to grab a falafel on the way. Luckily the falafel place was about to close and the woman had pre-made a pita (seemingly just for me), because even with this quickness of food acquisition we got onto the platform just as the train was pulling into the station. I ate happily on the ride home. Tamara and Alissa were still with me, while Mena and Jesse had taken another form of transport back to their destination. I convinced them that we needed ice cream bars before returning to Clore, so we grabbed some at the convenience store and sat in the lobby to enjoy them.

After a bit the two of them went to bed. I sat with Zvonimir and Stephen a while longer, chatting about languages and writing systems and other interesting topics for a bit (the most important tidbit I learned being the tendency of ancient languages to be "inflected," while modern ones are usually more "analyic"), then we all joined a larger group also hanging out in the lobby. I was so tired that I soon went downstairs. After a brief chat with Ari, the main topic being that I was bestowing upon him 1.07 gigs of music, I crashed.

For Dave !

Oh my goodness Dave is gone!

Must...tag...

!

Day 30 - How bizarre

Today was an even weirder day at work. I had nothing to do but somehow managed to create tasks for myself. I even made two more TEM samples, in the afternoon, and had an approximately 7-minute-long talk with my professor about my data. He again, as he seems wont to do, suggested another way for me to graph and break down the data, because at this point I have data pouring out of my ears. My EARS. Luckily that's an exaggeration or that would be very bizarre.

Lunch was spent with Sari, Tamara, Clay and Lior, and the highlight was watching the ants near our table heft huge (relative to their size) vegetables, which after a while we started providing because we were fascinated. Also, we gave one of the cats Tamara's salmon skin, and in so doing discovered the territorial boundaries for the cats at Charlie's Place. All in all, an educational hour for us with respect to wildlife.

I stayed at work rather late and decided not to go swimming, because Asaf wasn't going either. Instead I went back to Clore and retrieved my climbing shoes from the roof. A picture of them hanging, as well as some views of campus and Rehovot from said roof, can be found below. Then I fell asleep until dinner time, when I roped Stephen, Oren and Joel into a falafel run. We ran into Alissa and Rachel, a German student here for the year, at the falafel establishment and later Dan showed up and joined us, so we had a yummy meal and fun chat. Eventually we headed back.

The rest of the evening was spent chilling, mostly in Stephen's room (which is apparently the new hang out place), playing some guitar, blogging, and talking. Eventually there was interest in a rooftop party, but I was tired, so I went and found Dave (!) and said a final goodbye to him before his flight, had a chat with Ari (and intermittently, Oren, Jordan and Joel), then went to bed. Oh, and I talked to Mom and Dad on the phone, which was lovely. But they told me they were behind on the blog (Hi parental units! You guys better catch up).

My poor climbing shoes...

View of campus

View of Rehovot

Day 29 - a/c + water + climbing shoes = :(

For the first time so far this summer, I overslept my alarm, waking up at 9:50. Oops. I showered very fast and made it to work by 10:15, which turned out not to be the worst thing ever because once I got there I realized I had absolutely nothing to do. I sat around, sort of graphing my data but mostly talking with XiaoMeng, who was also very bored. I won't lie; facebook happened.

A bit later, I ate lunch with Zvonimir, Ari, and Jonathan, without planning on it, at San Martin, which was interesting due to a funny comment of Jonathan's, addressed to Zvonimir: "Do you have facebook in Croatia?" What he meant to ask was whether it was popular and used, but the ensuing discussion of Croatia's recent acquisition of electricity and clean water was amusing.

The afternoon was spent shooting the breeze and being bored again, so I left early and went shopping! Oh retail therapy. I bought a few cute things and returned to the dorms, where I found Zvonimir watching some YouTube videos. After a few minutes, though, I headed to my room to discover the sad fact that I had left my climbing shoes under my a/c, with the hopes they'd air out faster, and had left my a/c on by accident, which of course meant that the puddle/flood had surrounded and permeated my shoes. I grabbed some clothespins from a laundry line on the 4th floor and hung them out to dry on the roof...hopefully they aren't permanently damaged.

I then took an unintentional nap, with my door open and lights on, until around 8:30, when we were supposed to leave for the Euro championship game. We were heading to Hertzl Bar, but planned on getting there early and ordering dinner to get good spots. Of course when we arrived we discovered that all the outdoor street-level tables had been reserved, so we crammed onto a small balcony to get an almost equivalent view. When we arrived, we had six people, but eventually 10 were sitting or standing around our small table. It was a great game (and Spain beat Germany, in case you are in the US where these things aren't really followed), and a really fun atmosphere.

Afterwards, we returned to Clore to join in on Dave's goodbye party (Dave, this is the first in a string of tags for you, really!). We just hung out in the lobby and right outside the front door of the building, drinking a bit and saying our goodbyes on film for his farewell video. I think that will be a hilarious documentary! I also gave Nitzan the CD I had made for him, which I had so cleverly forgotten to bring to work. When I shared with him my climbing shoes lament, he made the excellent point that they can't possibly smell any worse, which was some comfort. Eventually the party had wound down a bit, but was still going relatively strong when I decided to retire for the night. I chatted with Ari in the kitchen for a few minutes before turning in. All in all, a good day.

Day 28 - Don't Mess

When I woke up today, there were no plans yet for the day. I hung out in the kitchen for a bit, ate some leftovers for brunch, and watched Dan's Israel videos with him on YouTube. As people passed through the kitchen, I tried to rally them for a trip to the beach in Tel Aviv. Joel, Jonathan and Iris were interested, but after waiting for Jonathan for a while, we decided to leave and he'd meet us there later.

We left Clore and saw a shuttle waiting up the street. Joel took off running to see if he'd wait for us, but it turned out there wasn't room for all three of us, so we waited and within 2 minutes another one had pulled up. We got off at the main bus terminal in Tel Aviv and walked from there to the beach, which took some doing because it wasn't a straight shot and various people we asked on the street gave us slightly different directions. Some of the streets looked slightly sketchy, but only because they were deserted for shabbat.

Eventually we made it! We were slightly south of the main part of the beach, so we bought some popsicles and set off walking north. In a few minutes we were there ("there" being the location of which I have posted multiple pictures previously), and sat down at the second restaurant we found for some cold drinks/shakes. We relaxed as we finished them, then dropped our stuff under an umbrella and went swimming! The water was cooler than I expected, which was nice. We took turns watching our stuff and waiting for Jonathan to call and let us know where he was, and eventually he found us. He had brought goggles and noseplugs to see the jellyfish, but after much searching merely found one grey (but tropical fish-shaped) fish.

After he had searched and we had all dried off a bit, we continued walking north in search of the Disengoff Center, where there was apparently a movie theater. Our goal was to see "You Don't Mess With the Zohan," and we stopped a few times for baked goods and cold sodas before reaching the theater. Luckily we arrived 5 minutes before the 7:30 showing, and got in!

Now this movie begins on the Tel Aviv beach, where we WERE TODAY, so the crowd was really loving every Tel Aviv reference, line spoken in Hebrew, and hummus joke. I won't ruin the film, because there are some great lines, but it's not the stupidest or worst comedy I've ever seen, and if you happen to see it, just think about how much more of a hit it would be with an Israeli audience IN Tel Aviv.

Afterwards we wandered a bit, including through the nearby mall (in which Iris and I did our best to refrain from shopping), before catching a cab to the Hahagana train station to get back to Rehovot. It turns out Ari, Stephen, and Oren were on the same train, which we discovered as we all disembarked. We walked back to campus together and everyone showered/unpacked/hung about. I chatted with Stephen, Iris, Oren and Ari before finally going to bed.

The walk north along the beach

Iris' "strawberry" milkshake

The three of us at the restaurant

Iris and me! Iris took this one.

Jonathan in the Tel Aviv train station.

There's a whole series of these, for those interested...