Day 74 - "Ezra's plunging our toilet!"

This morning I headed to the presentations far more relaxed now that my own was done. I went to grab some coffee and found myself joining Tess and Ester. Only Eszter ordered coffee, but there was some confusion and they prepared two, charging her for one only. My free coffee in hand, we left together.

The presentations today began with Tamara, and ended with Daniela. Almost everyone went slightly over, so we finished rather late. Everyone gathered outside the auditorium for an official group picture, which made me happy and sad at the same time. Here we were, bantering with each other after really getting to know one another, together, in a comfort zone that would soon dissolve as each of us headed home to our various corners of the earth. We would never, ever all find ourselves in the same place like this again.

The photographer snapped a few shots, then we all got up. After a bit of chatting and making plans for the evening, everyone went their separate ways. Jonathan, Daniela and I lingered a few moments longer, but at that point Noa and Sari, accompanied by her parents and children, came up the path. They had apparently been looking for me all day, and when I returned to the lab it became apparent why: they had planned a surprise get-together for me to say good bye to the entire group, but, being as I was at presentations all morning, I had failed to show up. I felt incredibly guilty about this, but the food and drinks were still there, as was most of the group, so we sat and chatted and made up for the lack of party in the morning. Erica, who was apparently the driving force for the celebration, had already left for the day, but I would thank her tomorrow for everything.

At around 3:15, I headed with Noa and her friend to Café Madaa for a late afternoon snack. Tali, Noa’s roommate, arrived just as we got down to an interesting conversation topic: creationism, and intelligent design, which evolved into religion and prayer in schools. This carried us far into the meal and on into my next date, which also happened to be at Café Madaa: cake with Rachel, Lisa, and Daniela. Daniela didn’t show up, which was puzzling, but I couldn’t call her because I had left my phone in the lab, and consequently didn’t know if she was calling me. We ate our cake and Rachel told a very entertaining story about the one time they let a boy in their apartment (her roommates and she are relatively religious): to unclog the toilet so they wouldn’t be late to the ballet. It was an amusing tale, the upshot of which in my mind is the following: late to the ballet + poo in the toilet = legitimate emergency according to Judaism.

When we left the café, we found Daniela had been waiting for us somewhere else. This made me incredibly sad; not only had she been waiting and not met us, but she had missed delicious cake! Only our plans for a Tim Tam party later managed to make me feel even marginally better about this. We set off towards Perlman, where I left the other three to go grab my stuff and say some preliminary goodbyes. I also opened a card signed by everyone in the lab, which was incredibly sweet, and discovered they had gotten me a gift as well: a Weizmann tee shirt and mug. I was delighted as I finally managed to break free and head towards the Garden of Science, where our KKISS goodbye tour and dinner were about to begin.

I caught up with Rachel, Daniela and Lisa taking pictures near Jubilee Square, and was just in time to be a part of an awesome one (which I can’t share because it’s not on my camera, but I am sure Rachel and/or Lisa will put it on facebook). Soon we were at the Garden of Science, which turns out to be a big park with science-like installations that are fun not only for small children but dorky college kids. We split into two groups to take simultaneous tours, and got to play with gravity, sound, water, light, and wind, among other things. I can’t explain much better than that, so hopefully the pictures below will suffice.

After the tour we had a chance to play with the exhibits on our own, then all headed up to the cafeteria where a dinner buffet was laid out for us. After eating the meal and about five different types of desserts Greta kept bringing us, she thanked us all for coming this summer and presented each of us with a backpack with the Weizmann logo and the name of the summer program printed on it. We had a ball taking a “backpack picture,” and practically had to force ourselves to leave after entering the garden more than three hours previously.

Back at Clore, everyone temporarily went their separate ways. I recruited Jonathan, Clay and Zvonimir to help me buy tasty beverages for the evening of fun ahead, and we all kicked in and got a crate containing a mixture of different beers. As we returned and set it on the table outside the music room, we found everyone breaking out either their personal stashes or new purchases for the occasion, and accrued quite a selection within minutes.  Asaf helped us set everything up.  Once we decided it was time for the party to start, we all grabbed drinks and sat down in the lobby to chat.

Since the party wasn’t yet hopping, Rachel and I decided it was prime Tim Tam time. I called Lisa, Daniela and Tamara down to the kitchen to join us. Rachel was heating the chocolate milk in the microwave as I grabbed the cookies from their safe, bug-free spot in the refrigerator. I also grabbed a few tee-shirts for us all to put on so as not to soil ourselves. Dan, Asaf, and Oren all passed through as this was going on, wondering what we were up to, and I demonstrated first, to explain.

I took a Tim Tam and bit off opposite corners. The cookie is chocolate-coated, and filled with a porous, crunchy substance. I dipped one end in the hot chocolate and used the cookie as a straw, and as soon as it filled, shoved the entire thing in my mouth to discover hot, melted chocolaty goodness. My preliminary, mildly successful trial was duplicated and improved upon by all of us girls, and even Oren tried, but only repeated it to see if he could actually see what was happening in side the cookie. By the time the box was gone, we were giggly and filled with chocolate, and I had burned my lip, but it was an amazing experience.

At around this time Nitzan showed up. He didn’t seem to surprised at our experiment, asking how else one was supposed to eat Tim Tams. As the gathering broke up, Nitzan and I went to my room to grab my computer, and then had a great chat where I showed him Penn Band pictures and he called me a dork, and then I showed him climbing pictures, making him insanely jealous, as payback. At some point he decided he was hungry, so I accompanied him to a nearby pizza place for a bit. Our conversation carried us through the meal and back to Clore, where he left me at the door and went home. I re-entered and joined the party in earnest, which wasn’t hard because it had really gotten going by this time. Large groups of people sat and stood all over the lobby and spilled out onto the lawn outside. I was very pleased, but a bit sad because I had to start saying some goodbyes.

After this painful procedure, during which I negated the farewells by setting a date for San Martin at 12:30 tomorrow and making people promise to be there, I headed out to Hertzl Bar where a few people were waiting. First I stopped back at the store to return the crate, then I crossed the street to sit at an outside table and chat with Iris, Clay, Tanmay and Alex. I was far away from everyone because of the table, though, so soon headed upstairs and found Dan H., Ari, Jordan and Zvonimir having a great time. I ordered a milkshake and sunk into the conversation, which wasn’t very linear but covered many topics. Dan’s favorite waitress brought us free shots at one point, with which we all made random toasts, and at another, Jonathan joined the group and we really got going. It was a nice way to spend the last night out.

At the Garden of Science:

Standing on a large spring...

Bubbles in oil

An instrument used by Tibetan monks

Jonathan at the other end of a big "phone"

Bubbles; or, proof of thermodynamics

The breeze makes each pipe sound different

Alissa showing that distance from the center affects rotation speed

Things to note in this picture: Oren, to the left, 

with a gyroscope, and Eszter's facial expression

Ari simulating a moonwalk

Rachel flying!

Lisa doing the same

Zvonimir!

Tamara says hi

Greta got us backpacks!

...so we modeled them

Zvonimir and our party selection

The super-secret Tim Tam eating time:

Tamara and Rachel

Lisa and Daniela...

Oren giving it a go

Simultaneous Tim Tam eating

The Tim Tam Gang...

...plus Oren

Presentations, Day 1

Maria Magdalena: "Low Frequency Vibrations of Trans-Stilbene"

Onur: "Least Concave Utility Functions"

Anna: "Costly Nash Paths"

Andrey: "False Discovery Rate in Case of Small Number of False Hypotheses"

Jessica: "The Mechanisms of the Pro-Migratory Function of Synaptojanin-2 and its Role in Actin Rearrangement and Extracellular Membrane Remodeling during Invasion"

Oren: "Modeling Magnetization Transfer NMR of Semi-Solid Biological Tissues under Magic Angle Spinning"

Ivonne: "Interaction of Pluoronic Blocks Copolymers with Single Wall Nanotubes Observed by Spin Probe EPR"

Marina: "Reversible Charge Separation Followed Exciplex Formation"

Erin: "Characterization of a Naturally Occurring Single Gene Mutation in Barley and the Role of Silicon"

Jonathan: "Evolution of Transcription Factor Binding Sites"

Joel: "An Investigation of Anisotropic Stochastic Dynamics: Mean First Passage Time for a Random Rod to Rotate in a Confined Domain"

Daniel: "Transcriptional Regulation of the Oncogene miR-373 by Mutant Forms of p53"

Rachel: "The Role of BDNF in Antidepressant Treatments"

Me: "Determination of the Thickness of Graphitic Planes in Multi-walled Carbon Nanotubes using Transmission Electron Microscopy"

Maciej: "Calculation of the Feed-Downs to the Meson Transverse Momentum Spectra Measured in PHENIX Experiment at RHIC, BNL"

Oren and his magic!

Joel speaking about how a random walk is similar to being drunk, 

something he enjoys as much as exploring fundamental scientific principles

Unfortunately, I missed the opportunity to snap photos of Jonathan and his worms 

(Brigsey, Gramps, and the other one, I think...), which were beautifully drawn

Day 64 - This is a test.

Today it was back to work, for my second-to-last week. It's so sad that I'm leaving soon enough to count down like this. I stopped in at Cafe Madaa for some coffee and a chat with Tanmay, then headed to the lab, grab some TEM samples, and turned right back around and left again for the TEM class. I ran into Talmon walking that way as well, so we chatted briefly until we reached the microscopy building. I headed downstairs to the microscope, and he joined me in a few minutes, followed soon after by Patro.

< .science >

Within about a minute it was evident that today would be a sort of extended test. Talmon asked me if I had brought any samples we could use, then asked Patro to align the beam and ready the microscope for a sample. Patro had somehow not taken notes on this part of the procedure, though, so struggled a bit and needed some help from Talmon as to where to start. We then took a short break before it was my turn to try. I was able to do the various direct alignments, but needed to ask a question or two in order to correct the stigmatism of the beam.

After this, we insterted a sample and finished the alignment, and did some more review of the computer menus and functions before learning a bit about the CCD camera, the camera software, and how to capture, save, and batch convert the images. Finally, we learned how to mount samples in the sample holder and insert (and remove) the holder into the compustage. Talmon made us each practice this a few times, as it's the only real part of the procedure where you can damage the microscope.

< / science >

We finished in time for me to head back to Perlman with Patro to drop off my stuff before lunch. This was a busy five minutes, though, due to me running into Asaf and Nitzan one after the other and then receiving two almost simultaneous calls from Dan and Tamara about lunch. I met Dan and we walked to Charlie's to meet Tamara. We sat inside to eat, and were joined soon by Jordan, but later by Rachel.

During the afternoon I finally began to use my new and last batch of data to update my statistics and plots, and began updating my presentation with these edits. I lost track of time during all this and didn't leave work until rather late. When I got back to Clore, Dan proposed an outing to satiate his sushi craving. I had to eventually end up at the mall, so we walked along Hertzl in that direction. 

Onur had mentioned "Same Same," the first place we encountered, but it was empty and all the people behind the counter looked Israeli, so Dan exercised his veto power and we moved on. The next place, "Buzzi," looked more appealing. It was a very small restaurant, basically a bar with two waiters and a Japanese sushi chef, and they didn't have any menus in English. Dan and the waitress talked a bit about the options, and we ended up ordering some sweet potato roll and a "photomaki" roll we designed ourselves: spicy tuna with green onion and tempura flakes. This latter choice ended up being so delicious that we got another.

Back outside on Hertzl street, Dan and I parted ways. I walked the rest of the way to the mall and headed straight downstairs to where I had bought my outlet adapter when I got here, to pick up a couple for my parents. I then wandered a bit more, picking up a few more tank tops from the same place I had gotten them in Tel Aviv at Azrieli, before getting a call from Tamar. We made plans to meet, not only so she could return my harness to me but also so we could eat ice cream.

As I walked back towards Clore and our meeting place, I called my parents to see what was up. They were in the car on the way to New York to catch their flight to Israel! We chatted briefly about logistics and such, then I let them go to focus their full attention on the New Jersey Turnpike. Soon I arrived at Tartufo, Tamar's ice cream shop of choice, and within a few minutes she had joined me.

We tried many of the flavors before making our final decisions, and sat to enjoy. Tamar had brought me my harness back, as well as a few tee shirts (with Hebrew logos and stuff) that she was getting rid of before moving to Spain. Yay tee shirts! As we ate we discussed important and non-important things, like significant others, climbing, pets, and other topics. Joel had walked by earlier and grabbed falafel to go, and some of Tamar's friends had picked up some ice cream and sat for a bit before heading to dinenr down the street, but when Stephen and Dan S. randomly turned up, they got sandwiches (the falafel had just closed) and sat with us. The conversation then turned to topics like Hebrew, dogs, and Holocaust jokes. Eventually Tamar had to go home, which turned out to be a good cue for us all to head out. I said goodbye to her and then joined the boys for the walk back to Clore.

Once there, the party materialized in Stephen's room. Both Dans, Jordan, Oren, and I sat around, some of us on our computers, talking, and in my case blogging. Jonathan got home eventually and joined us, and as it got late, the room gradually emptied. I was the last to leave, and for some reason Jonathan and I continued our chat in the hallway. He tried on my new 30-shekel aviators, as he's contemplating new sunglasses, and munched (in a not-so-visually-pelasing way) on sabres as we discussed his gradual comeback in the tagging war on this blog. After a bit we said goodnight and I crashed.

For your photographic entertainment, here's Jonathan trying the aviators and holding the fruit:

Day 63 - Day of rest?

As usual, my once-weekly chance to sleep late again fell on Saturday. I had no plans and didn't intend to make any, so there was no reason to get up. After breakfast, some brief blogging, and checking my e-mail, I showered and got dressed, and headed out of Clore. My destination: work, excitingly. Since I'll be missing a day during my final week and it's getting to be crunch time, I wanted to take the chance to get as much done as possible.

I was expecting to find Noa in, but instead found Patro, again. He was working on Matlab homework exercizes as he made some samples, and I just sat and processed images. For five hours. I didn't get up, or eat, or anything except listen to Kenna and measure distances in ImageJ. How I did this I don't know, but, magically, I am again, and hopefully permanently, DONE with all the images I have and plan to use! It's truly wonderful.

Once I arrived at this landmark point, I tore myself away from the screen and left Perlman. I was hungry, and learned that a group was heading out for dinner soon, so I stashed my stuff and chilled for a bit until everyone was back from the gym and showered. David, a Weizmann student, was having a large picnic outside to celebrate having been in Israel for a whole year, so I mingled with Ivonne, Maria Magdalena, Claudia, and Yovav outside and tasted a few of the many cakes which kept appearing among the other food. The picnic was really chill; music was playing as people sprawled on blankets on the lawn in front of Clore or tossed a frisbee (and later an American football, which puzzled me as no Americans were present) around. Claudia took an amazing picture of Maria Magdalena and I both making characteristic "Becca" faces, an image which I hope makes it to facebook.

Soon, though, Maciej, Onur and I joined Tanmay, Clay and Zvonimir at Hertzl Bar. I had a huge craving for meat, so got the hamburger, which is an ambitious undertaking. Onur and Maciej did the same, while the others had puny little sandwiches at the next table. They planned on seeing the Batman movie (again, for Tanmay and Zvonimir, but for the first time for Clay), and so went back to Clore to get ready and such. The three of us lingered a bit over coffee. Maciej and Onur suggested something I'd been contemplating for a while: asking the waitress whether the place had any of the coffee cups and saucers with an image of Hertzl for sale. Unfortunately, we learned they didn't have enough to sell any. Sadness.

After finishing our beverages we headed back to the dorm. I decided not to tag along to see The Dark Knight again, mostly because it was hot out and I didn't feel like walking. Maciej and I hung around at the picnic, which was still in full swing. I got a chance to catch up with Dan about his trip to Portugal with his family, and we had a discussion as to what defines cute (in his words, a large head-to-body size ratio: i.e. an iPod plugged into a TV = cute). During this discussion we also discovered that there was a cooler of liquid nitrogen at this picnic (how dorky and scientist-like). It had to be gotten rid of, so we made frozen treats out of the remainder of the picnic desserts. The frozen chocolate truffle was particularly delicious.

Eventually it got too hot to stay outside, and I kind of needed my computer adapter, which I had lent to Jordan but couldn't get back because neither Jordan nor Joel were around or in their room. When I mentioned this to Dan, though, he reminded me that his room adjoins theirs, so he helped me break in through the bathroom and get it back. I noticed some juggling pins on his floor, and of course made him show me his mad skills. He did the whole under-leg tossing thing, and other fancy stuff, and it turns out he attended a juggling conference here earlier this summer. Very cool. I had him give me some tips for starting out, but pins have always eluded me so after a few minutes and marginal improvement I called it quits.

Newly armed with my adapter, I went back to my room to grab my computer, and hung out in the lobby for a bit, chatting and blogging. Eventually I decided it was bed time, but who else was entering Clore as I went downstairs but Stephen and Ari! I made them come talk to me in my room where the air conditioning was actually effective, and Oren, Joel and Jordan came in and out periodically as Stephen and Ari told me about their weekends in Jerusalem, which had contained a few overlapping events (like Shabbat lunch). We all got tired at around the same time, though, so I kicked them all out and went to bed.

As promised, here are pictures of the Bahai Gardens. Enjoy!

Day 57 - Back to school, sort of

The beginning of my third-to-last work week began like many previously: with coffee at Cafe Madaa. I had to leave before Zvonimir, Tanmay and Clay did, to get to the lab and drop off my stuff before heading to Wolfson with Patro.

< .science >

We then had our first TEM class with Talmon! The purpose of this first session was for him to give us a very in-depth introduction to the microscope, including details about each lens, aperture, valve, pressure gauge, and vacuum pump. I always knew it was a very complex piece of equipment, and Talmon has been telling me about it little by little during our sessions, but only in response to my questions, and I don't know everything to ask. It was also helpful for him to be able to make all sorts of adjustments to demonstrate things as we went along; most of this was stuff you can't do with a sample in there, so it was mostly new to me.

< / science >

Anyways, I took about 8 pages of notes, including annotated diagrams. It was very jam-packed, but hopefully if I review it all it will sink in. Patro and I headed back to Perlman afterwards, luckily early enough for me to head straight to San Martin, where I sat with Anna and Onur. Back at the lab, I continued work on my presentation, and ended staying at work until very late (around 8:30 pm). When I was happy--or as happy as I was going to be--with the powerpoint, I decided to call it a night, and headed back to Clore.

When I got back, Dan, Ari, Stephen and I headed out for dinner. This was a banner evening: Stephen's FIRST TIME AT HERTZL BAR! I got shakshouka, which was delicious but since I was so hungry, I didn't wait for it to cool fully and really burned the roof of my mouth. Stephen ordered a mixed drink consisting of coffee and Kahluah, and it was delicious. Dan got an Irish coffee (coffee and Bailey's), which turned out to not be delicious at all. In general, though, the service was slightly faster than usual, and everything was yummy.

Back at Clore, the "party" was in Ari's room. I grabbed my computer to catch up on some blogging, while chatting with Ari, Dan, Zvonimir, and Oren. I don't know how it started, but I got into a sort of shouting match with Zvonimir on the subject of Macs versus PCs, which was very silly but somehow made a lot of sense at the time. At some point Joel came in. His family is visiting this week, so he was with his little sister Barbara. While I would have liked to hang out with them more, I was tired and sort of cranky by this point, so I lingered only a few minutes more, enough to promise Barbara her first tag (and here it is!), before going to bed.

Day 50 - [Gosh, this was so long ago...]

Ok people, I know I am way behind. These entries might be slightly shorter, so you and I can catch up a bit faster.

Anyways, Sunday was not too exciting a day. The morning was spent processing images, after coffee at Cafe Madaa. Lunch was with a slightly different group than usual, including Asaf, Nitzan and a friend of Nitzan's, and later Zvonimir. Notably, I took this opportunity to tell Nitzan, in Zvonimir's presence, that the latter had referred to the former as "the short one with the tail." Oh the hilarity.

After lunch was about as interesting as the morning, but dinner at Cafe Madaa was also with a slightly different group than usual: Ari, Zvonimir, Clay, Dan, Stephen, and two of his friends from his lab, Dadi and Amir. I got a delicious dish which Zvonimir has previously referred to as a "goat sandwich," consisting of goat cheese, eggplant, sundried tomatoes and pesto on wheat bread. Ari and Stephen both ordered hot chocolate with their meals, which was also amazing.

Afterwards we spent a rather chill night playing Settlers of the Catan in the lobby of Clore. Clay, Zvonimir, Tanmay and I each played individually, until Oren decided he needed to join in. He became a part of my team, so I explained new rules to him as we played. Somehow I could only roll sevens, which was inconvenient when we had a lot of cards but really nice when the robber was cutting off supply to two of our cities at once. We actually decided which of us would roll the dice based on these two factors.

The game went rather late, so once Clay won (without telling anyone) and Tanmay came in second, we called it a night. Today was not picturesque, so please be patient...

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.

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)