monday update

The plane from London to Tel Aviv was not only on time, but was 35 minutes early getting into Ben Gurion. However, all of that time was taken up standing in line at the passport control.Also, my camera battery was still dead, so I didn't get a picture of the sweet miniature they had of the old wall and temple, and it was only after I left that area that I remmebered I could take pictures if I hooked the camera up to the computer through usb. (I suppose, in retrospect, I could have just taken it with the webcam even, but I doubt that it would turn out very well. 1.3 Mp versus 6.0So, using the usb connection, I was able to get some pictures from Ben Gurion, which is a sweet airport. Airports in my experience have typically been really neat or really not fun at all. For instance, even though the Dayton airport doesn't have too much in teh way of awesome architecture (though the new tower they've built definately qualifies), but they DID have FREE, no strings attached, email stations at the gate. Chicago has some pretty nice lounges, and notifies you of gate numbers several hours in advance. London has some sweet hinged 3d truss elements to support the arching roof sections, and Ben Gurion has some sweet water things and awesome pillars.However, in Liberia and Russia, the airports were painful and dirty and small and just generally not fun. Maybe there's some middle ground somewhere, but I don't feel like I've run accross it. I'd have to think a little harder about Columbus, Cincinnatti, Newark and Brussels, since I HAVE beenh to them, but I don't have any really striking memories--a key hint that maybe I only remember the extremes.I was hoping to sleep on the ~5 hr flight to Tel Aviv, but I never was able to fall asleep. They had the little screen s with the remotes, but after about halfway through the flight mine stopped working. They're running some kind of a linux distro with custom airline software... I got to see the sys start screens a few times since tehy reset it to try to fix it, but I was too uninterested to notice much more than the penguin. Were I a true coder, with a black belt in hacking awesomeness and presenting a lecture at DEFCON, I probably could have told them the problem as well as using my little remote to code in a custom tetris app while I waited for the meal.Also, a question: can matthew mcconahay ?sp? be in anythign that isn't a chick flick?so I think I've been telling people that I was going to take a bus to haifa... well it's actually a train... just got it a little mixed up in my head. Good reason to have things written down.It's gonna be a long day. --written at 6:30 am

After the train ride, I had to lug my bags over to the bus station accross the street, where I ducked into a bathroom to changed *attempt* to clean up a bit after 2 days on airplanes etc.
At the bus station, I met Marjon (pronounced "maryon"), a new Technion student from Macedonia. We chatted with an Israeli girl in the army who was waiting at the same bus gate, who was asking about why we had come, etc. Just as we had to leave for our bus, she asked "why Israel? a tiny country full of soldiers?" All the answer I had time for at that point was "yes, but an important country."

Later, we got off the bus and went to Rodica Levy's office, where we met Iliya, who is an Israeli student who GREATLY helped as we scurried around getting a bank account and room forms and keys. Then we had to take the luggage UP to the houses, which was rather strenuous, especially owing to the fact that Haifa is on the coast and therefore inescapably humid.

More about the house later, but we also visited a convienience store on campus and then I fell asleep at about 7pm.