Day 27 - Wasting time in virtual spaces

I woke up this morning to the lovely sound of Ari knocking on my door at 12:15.  He wanted to get lunch, and kindly granted me 15 minutes in which to get ready.  I showered, got dressed, and grabbed my stuff in only 12.  It was apparently very impressive.

We ran into Clay in the lobby, so waited 2 minutes for him to put away his stuff so he could come with us.  Ari wanted to try the dining places on campus, but all the subsidized ones (Jubilee, San Martin, and Charlie's Place) were closed.  The restaurant at the Visitor's Center was open, however, so we decided to eat there.  We ran into Zvonimir having some coffee, so he ordered another one and hung out with us.  After a bit Ari left a bit early to catch his train to Haifa for the weekend.

When we got back to Clore, I chatted with Carina (!) for the third time in four days, or something ridiculous like that.  It was great!  Carina, if you are reading this, I am waiting for that report...it's due on my desk by MONDAY.

Anyways, Anya came down to the kitchen to find me.  It was time for our shopping date!  We walked along Hertzl Street, stopping in any shop that held the possibility for cute summer dresses, the objects of our quest.  The first place we entered turned out to be the most promising, but since it was fist, we tried on oodles of stuff and then moved on.  We found ourselves empty-handed, until we found some cute and cheap socks at one of the places along Hertzl.  As neither of us had brought enough, we both got three pairs.  We worked our way down all the way to the mall, but by the time we reached it, most things were closing.  The pharmacy was still open, though, so I bought an ace bandage.

We were both glad, after the walk back, to reach air conditioning.  As we parted, the protocol to exchange some sort of contact information was fulfilled in that Anya told me she was now on facebook, and went up to her room and friended me.  Oh the joys of facebook.  

I went down to grab my computer, and ended up joining Zvonimir in the lobby.  Asaf had called me when we were out, asking about my ankle and wanting to exchange some music.  So I called him back and told him we were chilling in the lobby.  I put a bunch of stuff on his thumb drive, and we sampled some Dane Cook, because he had mentioned a love for Mitch Hedberg.  Of course this launched a YouTube visit, because Dane Cook is better when you can see him.  And this one video precipitated an entire afternoon spend watching YouTube videos.  It was amazing.  We were joined on and off by Dan and Jordan, and later permanently by Joel, but our core group of three spent some embarrassing number of hours showing each other clips from comedians, imitators, Christopher Walken reading The Three Little Pigs, and other amazing stuff.

Asaf had a hankering for a hamburger, and since we had seen Nina, Dave, and a bunch of others heading to Hertzl Bar, we decided to go change and join them.  We sat, Asaf and Zvonimir ordering hamburgers, and were joined by Asaf's friend Amir.  I got edamame (steamed soybeans in the pod) for the table, which were a hit!  Somewhere in the middle of the meal Asaf decided we needed to call Nitzan and Yaron, but only had Yaron's number.  I, therefore, called Nitzan, breaking our no-call streak and ruining both our hopes for Beijing.  He said he could come in about an hour, so we finished up our meal and went back to Clore.  Joel broke out some tasty beverages and we chilled for a bit.  Eventually Nitzan showed up, as well as Yaron and Rotem, his fiance.  Iris also hung out with us, which was great because she will be a sophomore at Penn this year, so we have lots we can talk about.

We left Clore, at which point Yaron and Rotem headed home.  Our intention was to head to the Irish pub near Hertzl Bar, but our hopes were dashed when they didn't have a table large enough for the group.  Another place had a 35 shekel minimum per person, not appealing to those of us (*raises hand*) who would not be consuming two beers.  So we returned to the old standby, Hertzl Bar, where we got a large enough table and weren't forced to order a preset amount.  We got more edamame, too.  It was a banner day for soybeans.  

After sitting and chatting for a couple of hours, we all went back to Clore and from there some went their separate ways.  All in all, a good day.

For those of you with picture cravings, 

enjoy one of Anya and I shopping...