A New Post For My New Place

So, it's been a while since I last posted. So here goes a quick summary.

London was awesome. I had a really great time with Erica. We went to the London Eye - the huge Ferris wheel on the Thames (see right) - and saw "We Will Rock You" a musical with all of Queens music. Lots of fun.

I was supposed to fly out Thursday night but when we got to the airport, they asked me if I would agree to be bumped to a flight the following day for 300 pounds. I said I couldn't because it would get in after Shabbat, but Erica quickly asked if I could take a flight Saturday night instead. They said yes and that's the story of how BMI paid me around $20 to fly to London (they paid me more than the flight actually cost!). Hooray for England!

But that meant that I got back to Israel at 4:45 am Sunday morning; which happened to by my first day of class. Not the best idea, but it was totally worth it all things considered.

After finally making it all the way down to Be'er Sheva, I crashed for a wonderful 2 hour nap - my first sleep all night - and then ran to campus for Benny Morris' class: Milestones in the Zionist-Arab Conflict 1881-1948. Since it was the first class we didn't go over anything so controversial but it was still pretty cool to be there.

Then I had French. Since I'm going to have to learn French or German in a PhD program, I thought I'd get a head start and audit one of them here. So I sat in on the class, taught in Hebrew, and I really liked it. The next day I sat in on a German class and that was good too so I decided I would ask Benny Morris which one he thought would be more useful to me, given the area I want to study. So the next day I started to ask him and before I could even finish he said, "French!" So that sealed it. Auf Wiedersehen.

Back to Sunday. After class, I went over to Andrea's to pack all my stuff up and called a cab to take me to Dimona! Considering the fact that I had barely slept and had only half a falafel for lunch, moving wasn't probably the best thing for me to do. Oh well.

I was told that the student village was only 20-25 minutes from Be'er Sheva. Untrue. It is a good 40 minutes. That was really annoying. But the place is really beautiful and all the people here are really friendly. I think I'm going to like it here.

Later that day (Tuesday) I had my class about the Iranian Revolution. The professor is really animated and you can tell he really likes the subject. Someone asked him if he had ever been to Iran and he got a little annoyed. He said he had a whole trip planned as part of an NGO but then Ahmadinejad stole the election and there was rioting so it was canceled. Maybe we can do a class trip!

After class was over I took our little bus back to Dimona where we all had a big meeting about the village and volunteering. I didn't understand lots of it and it was frustrating because I still don't know most of the people here since I missed orientation while I was in London. But it's still early and I have a whole year to work on my Hebrew and make friends.

And that brings us to today (Wednesday October 21st). Wednesday is a really busy day for me, especially today since I had two Arabic classes to check out, back-to-back from 10-2pm.

The first one I went to turned out not to be an Arabic class, but a class about Islamic art and architecture taught by a professor who also teaches Arabic. I decided not to leave since the professor was also teaching the other Arabic class I was going to take today. It was really interesting and I understood everything! There were a few words here and there I didn't catch, but other than that I followed the whole class. So that made me feel pretty good.

The after class, the professor told me that the next class was indeed an Arabic class. Phew. So I went to that class and instead of just being a straight-up Arabic Language class, it's called "The Prophet Muhammad between Literature and History." So we learn Arabic by studying the life of Muhammad in Arabic. Very interesting. I'm not sure if it's the right level for me, but it's still cool.

It's a little weird that classes here are all pretty much either 2 or 4 hours long on the schedules, but they all start 15 minutes late and end 15 minutes early. I don't know why they don't just say that on the schedule but it is nice that there is always a good break in between classes. That also means that I had time to eat lunch today! Hooray for Kabobs!

Then it was time for my second French class (the professor said it was fine for me to audit!). I've got to work on my snooty accent. But I was called on to clear up some differences in cognates in English.

After that I had my class on the Historiography of the Middle East. Not the most exciting class, but it has potential.

When I got back to Dimona, I was on a mission to get furniture for my new place. I had mentioned the fact that I needed a few things to some of the students here and they put me in contact with this married couple who own 2 apartments and are selling one and need to get rid of their furniture there. So I walked over to their place, which was only about 5 minutes away and got a big bed and a desk with lots of shelves (thanks BMI)!

While I was there, the wife came home and asked if I wanted something hot to drink. Not wanting to impose, I said no. The look of horror on her face was awful. "Why?! Why won't you drink something?!" I quickly told her I would have some tea. Note to self: don't refuse offers of food and drink from Israelis. When I took a sip, she was so happy. She told me that if I needed anything while I'm here I should call right away, that I was a like a son.

What a great country.