Day 44 - Flitting off to Jerusalem for the evening

Today began, as the last few also have but which somehow I've been neglecting to mention, with coffee/etc at Cafe Madaa with Zvonimir. Today we had the pleasure of being joined by Alissa and Barbara, which was entertaining. Alissa totally showed me up with her knowledge of Croatian history and culture. Darnit, I will really have to study Wikipedia more.

At work...make sure you're sitting down, because this is earth-shattering...I made more plots. w00t. No but seriously, I am exploring my data and it's going fine. Lunch was again at San Martin, with everyone, and was fine except that the pita guy really doesn't like me, for some reason. I'm not making this up: Jordan was there and can act as a witness. Anyways I hung out and ate, and a bunch of us discussed some theoretical weekend plans in more depth. I hope it all works out!

I continued work in the afternoon, taking a break at 3 pm to go to the Wolfson Building for a talk by Professor Ron Naaman about molecular sensors and such. It was very interesting, and I got to ask a bunch of questions about carbon nanotubes which I think (or at least hope) made up for the previous occasion upon which I met this professor (when I was asking sort of stupid questions about a pasta dish in line at Stone Cafeteria). More plotting afterwards, then I left to change and eat a quick snack at Clore, during which I was accompanied by Zvonimir.

At around 5:45 I left for the mall, where I caught a 6:20 bus to Jerusalem. An hour later I was walking along Yaffo Street, and 20 minutes after that I had found Debbie Yunker sitting waiting for me! Debbie is in Israel for a month studying Talmud at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem, and we decided it would be a shame not to have dinner together. So we went to a cute place, which happened to be the same restaurant/book shop/coffee shop place Jodi's friend had recommended when Jodi, Nina, Dave and I were in Jerusalem a few weeks ago.

Debbie and I both ordered shakshouka, which was a fabulous decision. Shakshouka is an Israeli "breakfast" dish consisting of an egg, tomatoes and possibly other vegetables (Debbie's had eggplant) and tomato sauce, and is served with bread. This was my first official shakshouka since getting here; I've tried other people's but never ordered it, so it was a momentus occasion. We chatted about each of our stays here, and a bit about Birthright and Penn, before leaving and walking up Ben Yehudah Street in the cool evening air. Jerusalem is amazing; it actually gets pleasantly cool and breezy in the evenings. This is confusing to me, having spent most of my evenings in humid Rehovot, but was very refreshing.

Once we got to the end of the street, and after I had bought a gift or two, we parted ways. I walked back to the Central Bus station and caught a bus which goes through Rehovot, so dropped me off at the front gate of Weizmann instead of at the mall. As I approached Clore, I saw everyone sitting, playing the guitar and chatting in the music room, so I joined them. A highlight of this portion of the night, for those keeping count, is that Jonathan will be getting a tag for the first time in a few days, due to his waiting for me to finally get the guitar, listening to me play one verse of Lenny Kravitz' "Fly Away," and then taking it away to play a better, bar-chord version for about 30 seconds before moving on to the next, much more impressive (I'm sure) song. Boo. Other highlights included many loud and beautiful renditions of Fugees songs by Alissa, Daniela, and occasionally Tanmay, and a dazzling (accapella/body) castanet display by Oren, which he repeated when I played an aria from Carmen on YouTube.

The gathering endured until people began to feel very sleepy (and Stephen actually dozed off on a bench). Eventually the crowd dispersed, but before that a good time was had by all.