MAPMES Beach Party

Yesterday was the big, end of the year, MAPMES party. We had it at Zikim Beach near Ashkelon.

Shoko had never been to the beach before, so I decided to bring him along for the ride. He made it all the way to Be'er Sheva without issue, but as we got closer to the beach, Shoko threw up, which really endeared him to the rest of the group. But they forgave him. Amir also brought his puppy, Pishpesh Chazir (which means Pig Fly, don't ask) and they had a great time running around on the beach.

As soon as we got to the beach, everyone ran to the water. It was almost 6 so we wanted to get the most time in the water as possible before it got dark. I pulled Shoko in the water, but he really hated it and ran back to dry land. We then quickly realized that there were jellyfish everywhere and we ran out also. Luckily I didn't get stung but Yoni got stung right on his face and Erin and Amir got some bad ones.

After we dried off, we set up the grill and started a little BBQ. We hung out, ate, smoked some hookah and just had a really good time. On the ride back to Be'er Sheva, Rachel started to talk about the blockade of Gaza. I interupted her and said the only politics we're allowed to discuss are those involving Uruguay and Paraguay. To which she said, "But I don't know anything about them." A resounding "Exactly" rang out on the bus.

After dinner, I got a call from the Spielmans. They were visiting family at a Kibbutz nearby and wanted to say hi. So they drove over and I got to see them again, but this time Avi, David and Savta were with them.

It was great seeing Avi. It had been over a year and I didn't realize how much I was missing my friends from back home. He even humored me and played with Shoko a little.

Josh had somehow gotten taller.
I finally got home a little after midnight and called my Dad to say Happy Father's Day. I told him that I was in contact with the company that is going to help get Shoko his Green Card, so now maybe he can relax a little bit, or maybe worry about me for a change.

Today, I had lunch with Maura, Beeba, Sara and Liad. Maura is leaving really soon to lead a NFTY trip so this was probably the last time I'm going to to see her here. We had a nice lunch in the cafeteria and joked around a little before I had to get back to work.

Last Week of Class!

This was my last week of class and as of this afternoon, I never have to go to class again! Thank God. Nothing too crazy happened. I gave my presentation in Historiography and Conflict Resolution. Got some good feedback and hopefully by this time next week both of those papers will be done (a little wishful thinking never hurt right?).

Today, after Conflict Resolution, I met up with the Spielmans (sans Avi and David) at Aroma.

Josh just finished Birthright and they all came down to Be'er Sheva for a JNF ceremony of some kind. It was great to see them and hopefully I'll be able to see them again after Avi gets in.

Now the tough part begins: paper writing.

Here are some more pictures of the pup (yes this is what I do when I don't want to work, I blog and take pictures of Shoko):

Shabbat

Yesterday there was a big "Ayalim Day" in the village. There were booths with food and crafts and kids activities for the families in Dimona. Normally this would be great, but since I was in my room the whole time, working on a paper and the conference, it wasn't really the best timing for me. I brought Shoko inside in case there were some kids who were afraid of dogs and he kept me company by sleeping under my desk.

After stressing on work all day, I realized that I didn't speak to anyone about Shabbat meals. Luckily, there was a meal in the Moadon and I ended up just bringing a tomato/avocado salad because that was what I had handy. Pretty standard Friday night but came just in time!

Today was very laid back. I got some much needed sleep, re-read my article for Historiography and then we finally all got together for lunch around 2. I spoke with Reut's friend from Haifa about the US. She's planning on going there for a year and wanted to know what it's like. It will be her first time outside of Israel and it was cute how she kept asking, "is that place safe?" I think some Israelis have an inborn fear of non-Jews and I explained to her that any place she would be (NY, LA...) she wouldn't really have any problems (especially since most people wouldn't even realize she's Jewish since she's Ethiopian). After Shabbat I introduced her to Craigslist. I guess we'll see how it goes.

For the rest of Shabbat, Boaz, Racheli, Reut and I played Israeli kent (4 playered card game) called Kareh Kupeh. We were pretty terrible at first, but we came back at the end, though we still lost. It was a lot of fun. The game involves secret codes that are hard enough to keep track of when playing in English, but I was able to keep up and learn a bunch of new words in the process. Go Ayalim!

Now Shabbat is finally over and I'm taking a break from outlining a paper but I guess it's time to get back to work.

Highlights of the Week

This week was the penultimate week of classes for me. We're way beyond crunch time now. I had my last two Oil Politics classes this week and I'm really glad I took it. For my final paper for that class I am writing a critical review of the film "Syriana" examining how the oil industry is portrayed in popular culture and how it matches up to what we learned in class. Should be interesting.

One day, on the bus back to Dimona, I saw a pro-IDF rally in front of the hospital in Be'er Sheva. The protestors were all elderly Russians (they had one sign in Hebrew and 3 in Russia). I just thought it was an interesting sight.

On Wednesday, Sam came to Be'er Sheva for Ari II's graduation so I met up with them after class.

Graduations in Israel are very different from those in the States. For one, they are a year after you finish instead of at the end of the same year, so very few people bother showing up. Also, only the professors wore robes for the whole ceremony. For everyone else, they had 4 caps and gowns on the side for the grads to put on for pictures. Proving that it's much more important to have the picture than the actual experience. I'm not sure if that's the message they were trying to send but it's how it seemed to me. Since I probably won't be here for my graduation next year, I decided to get the all important picture. Feel free to print it out Mom.

Now I'm just trying to get work done on my papers, while finishing everything for the conference. I feel so swamped. Hopefully I'll be able to get everything done in time. Woooo! Here we go!

Golan and Some Classes

This weekend was the last OSP trip and on it we went up to the Golan. I think it was the best trip we had all year.

First, we went on a hike that ended at an awesome waterfall. At the beginning, Hila tried to get us to stop jumping off the rocks and climbing the waterfall, but she eventually gave up. We had a great time. Zafrani decided to jump with his glasses on and lost them (after losing his other glasses last week). He then asked an Israeli with goggles to see if he could find them and after a short dive he came up with a pair of glasses. They just weren't his. So now he's walking around with squinty eyes as he tries to make the new ones work.

Then we went kayaking on the Jordan. I was expecting a really short ride with minimal rapids, if any. I was very pleasantly surprised. There obviously weren't great rapids but there were more than I expected. I was in a kayak with Josh and even though we started after most of the rest of the group, we ended up at the front. So as we rolled along, we saw a group of Israeli guys sitting around smoking hookah and we decided to pull over and join them for a little bit.

After our hookah break, we pushed off again. On our way downriver, we bumped into a raft with a bunch of Arab guys a little older than us. I said, "Sorry," in Hebrew, and one of them responded, "It's ok, we're new immigrants," he chuckled, "from the dessert." and they all laughed. I laughed and, in Arabic, said, "Us too! From the Sinai desert!" We all laughed.

We kept floating downriver and after a botched boarded attempt of Maura and Andrea's kayak, we found ourselves wondering if we had missed the point where we were supposed to stop and get out of the river. But soon enough we saw it and since we were the first ones there we thought it would be better to pull off to the side and hang out in the water, rather than wait by ourselves on land. A raft of Americans got caught on the other side of the river and we waded out to free them. But we were quickly pulled out by the current afterward and struggled to get back to our boat. Of course as soon as we got there, a raft of Arab women got stuck in the same place and we had to swim back out to save them too.

Then a group of our friends started to float by and Josh and I yelled out "Mavi Marmara!" as we rushed their kayaks and tried to take them over. Hannah pushed me off hers and I ended up catching a ride to the end with the other Hannah and Chad. Elif, who's studying abroad here from Turkey, ended up taking our kayak in. Good times.

That night on the Kibbutz, Hannah asked me to lead services so we could sing and do Carlebach. But there was a Haredi guy there who shortly into Kabbalat Shabbat, told the girls to stop singing. They stormed out. Afterwards he told me to apologize to them since he didn't mean to offend them, but halacha says that women can't sing in front of men. I told him that's not exactly true but he wouldn't listen and he then told me that there is still time for me to become religious. Now that's Chutzpah!

On Shabbat we spent most of the day in the Kinneret swimming. The water was really warm and we had a great time. There was also a little farm on the Kibbutz that we checked out in between swims. We saw some ostriches that ate from our hands, some horses, ducks, geese, rabbits and chickens. I felt like a little kid in a petting zoo.

(Thanks to Andrea for the pictures)

On Sunday our group finally gave our presentation in Conflict Resolution and I think it went pretty well. After that I had Oil Politics where we discussed an excerpt from Munif's "Cities of Salt," quintet. It is a fictionalization of the history of American oil development in Saudi Arabia and was a really good read. If each of the five volumes wasn't nearly 1000 pages, I would consider reading the whole thing.

Today, in Geography, I finally got to do my presentation about Smooha's theory of Israel as an Ethnic Democracy. But I only had about 15 minutes and the presentation I had made was way too detailed so I had to rush through it. I think Yiftachel understood and he saw that I put a lot of work into it, so I think it should be fine.

After class was over I came back to Dimona to work in the Youth Center. I helped the girl that was reading the Wizard of Oz last week with some English homework. Then she asked me for help with some math. It was on fractions and finding the lowest common denominator (which I can now say in Hebrew) but it had been such a long time since I had done any of that kind of stuff that I wasn't so sure how to solve them. I thought I had explained it right but on one problem we kept getting a weird answer. Tamar looked it over and she had learned a different way of solving it which made me think my way was wrong. But in the end, it turned out we were both doing the same thing, the girl had just replaces a plus with a minus that threw everything off.

Now it's time to get some of my own work done!

The Flotilla Takes Over Be'er Sheva

I've been wanting to post for a while, but I've been running my own Israeli PR campaign on Facebook and Twitter and haven't been a little distracted. Ever since the raid things in Be'er Sheva have been tense. On Monday there was a protest against the raid by a few hundred students that, from what I heard (I didn't see it myself) was more anti-Zionist, than anti-raid.

So, on Tuesday, there was a huge rally in support of the IDF. It started at the main gate, but the police arrested the organizer and we moved it inside. Of course I had to be next to the one idiot who shouted "Death to Arabs." I yelled at him to leave, but he just smiled and laughed with another racist friend.

I've been trying to post my videos, but my Internet sucks and youtube keeps telling me to reformat. Very annoying. But I was able to get one to work at least: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg2a9_oqFeE

Yesterday, there were big protests again, both for and against and they got pretty heated. There was even a leftist who Heiled. Hooray for respectful and constructive protests.

When I got to campus today, Ahik was selling Israeli flags at the gate. He said there was going to be another protest today but I didn't see it. Maybe I was in class when it happened. I had Arabic and Oil Politics and in between I was running around getting stuff ready for the conference.

After class, I had a meeting with Andrea, Yoni and Loren to work on our Conflict Resolution presentation on the economic ties between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. But before I could head over to the dorms, I ran into Omer from my village. He was clearly very worked up by this whole situation and asked me a lot about my program. I told him that it is very left-leaning and our tours focused on the conflict and he immediately made the jump to the program being anti-Zionist. He went on a big rant about how he didn't understand why he should be paying for the school to run an anti-Zionist program. I tried to explain that it wasn't anti-Zionist, just critical, because that's how you study. But he did get me to think about one big thing. Noah is our program coordinator. She's very nice and I've enjoyed the programs she's run that I participated in. But she is clearly and unabashedly and anti-Zionist. I think there is a huge range of legitimate political opinions in Israel between anti-Zionists on the left and Kahanists on the right. I'm all for free speech and not stifling political opinions, but not all political opinions were created equal. I can't imagine that the school would give us a program coordinate who was openly racist against Arabs. So how how they give us someone who thinks that Israel has no right to exist? I'm going to have to speak with Avi Rubin about this.

Now I'm very tired and I need to get up in a few hours for our trip to the Golan tomorrow. Should be fun! I don't know what I'm going to do without my 24 hour news connection. We'll see how it goes.