Another good day

So, with no classes, I still managed to have a pretty good day yesterday:

well I woke up late (which ended up working out ok).

took a walk

got some old tennis balls from the sports center and put them on my chair legs so it doesn't make horendous noises when I move

read most of a book

sat by a tiny pond covered in lillypads and cattails under a grape vine arbor

took another walk

ate dark chocolate

explored some academic buildings

explored some abandoned buildings

fixed a toaster

played knockout with friends.

Tomorrow: start the day off with a swim, then read, then clean the floor, maybe fix a fan, and frisbee!

teenageers: the same everywhere?

Today I went to church at Beit Eliyahu and then took a (long) walk along about 1/2 the coastline of haifa, and a bus home. It turns out that there ARE busses that run on shabbot, as I had heard, but they don't go to the "mainly jewish only" parts of the city, such as the technion, but it's a short walk to where they do have them.

On the bus home, while waiting for the bus, there were two young teenagers who apparently thought the world should be blessed by their mp3 collection on their cell phones. Someone thought it was a good idea to make cell phones which can be turned up to near boombox sound levels, and these two kinds were just wandering around the bus station playing their music from their phones very loud. The one with the louder phone was also sporting a short mullet. Anyway, it wouldn't have been so bad except that they got on the same bus. :( Someone asked them to stop, but it only resulted in a slightly lower volume level and a change of seat. Haven't they heard of headphones? I need to learn the word "loud" so that I can tell them.

Also, this evening I ate the dragonfruit (or pitaya) that I bought.... see a picture of one here: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYtwtkctfoxBOYJvnTYmHWt99uBOyHmHDQihKLbIooJqG9iDIgZ5-pzqU5ERtkv-2APT3S6h1f61IhTRks7HLO4ohsppCtQcUkQcaHux1P_iqQDeeEKcKPRQulNPObRddwpm_dxyd5tEU/s320/DragonFruit.jpg

It's a very mild taste, not as sweet/sour as kiwis, but very much that texture. anyway, it looks cool.

the Jerusalem trip of last week

As a reminder to everyone, here in Israel the week is a little different than in the US. In Israel the working days are the first through the 5th of the week (sunday though thursday) and then Friday and Saturday are the weekend. (quite literally). This also means that classes are sunday thorugh thursday.

So, last week, after class on Thursday, a group of 9 students from the class took off for Jerusalem. We took a bus from campus, transfered to another bus and then arrived at one of the central bus stations in Haifa. There we got our round trip tickets to Jerusalm for 71.40 sheqels. This was a pretty straightforward event, except that while I was waiting to buy mine, I was talking to some of the students ahead of me in line, and had been standing off to the side a little bit. When I moved around to get up to the window, an old israeli guy objected --we'll call him "OG"--, apparently saying that I should get behind him in line. There were like 2 people in line, and he apparently didn't speak english, and I'm not all that excited about getting into a fight, so I figured, hey, I can wait. Well the person in from of OG didn't take long at all. However, OG gets up to the window and starts asking the teller questions in hebrew. As close as I can tell, he was attempting to determine how many different bus routes there were in the country, with all their stops.

OG kept on asking questions and talking. I got behind him in line at about 1:30 and stayed there for a full 20 minutes. After about 15 minutes, the line had grown behind me to be about 12 people long. Getting irritated that he had been so insistant about 'HIS' unrightful place in line when he was taking so long, and having plenty of time to think, I managed to say this in Hebrew: " סליחה, יש הרבה אנשים בטור " (transliteration: slee-hach, yesh harbey anashim ba-tor; translation: excuse me, there are many people in the line) to which OG replied "I know" in Hebrew (which I was really proud I understood! ) At that point, one of the other people in line started talking to him in Hebrew in a tone that perfectly expressed my frustrations. Fortunately, he got done and finally bought a ticket before our bus left at 2pm.

Once in Jerusalem, we checked in at the youth hostel we were staying at, where we had a matress and a spot big enough for the matress on the roof for 50 sheqels a night. In case you're curious, it's the Citadel Youth Hostel, Marks St. 20, in the heart of the old city.

#####that's it for now, but I'll extend this post later####

I'm slipping on these posts...

Ok, so my goal is a MINIMUM of one post per week. last post was a week ago... so I guess I'd better post today. It's not for a lack of material :).

Last week I went to the haifa sculpture park with David Erdos, a guy from Ulpan who is from Missouri. After the sculpture garden, we stopped in the ba'hai garden for a little bit and then we tried to find the prehistory museum, which on the map we had, looked like you could get to by a nice walk on a "scenic nature trail."

Finding the scenic nature trail itself was quite an interesting search. After looking all over the area indicated as the start on the map, we finally decided to go down what looked like an access sidewalk for some businesses off the main street. At the end of this, we found a hole in the fence, from which we could see what seemed like it might be the ACTUAL trail that we wanted. Still a little unsure, we crawled through and then continued down past the zoo. There was quite a bit of litter, and some

little campfire rings in the first 1/4 mile or so, and it quickly became clear that the prehistory museum was either the fire rings we were seeing, or that you got to it by some other way. However,

the map indicated that this scenic nature walk had a convient end that we might as well continue on to. We never did find THAT end. Having gone far enough, and passed an abandoned old pumphouse, we turned back to admit defeat.

On the way back up (the whole walk had been significantly downhill), we met two israeli girls who were hiking the trail, which on their (much nicer) map was shown to go almost all the way down to the sea. At this point, they invited us to join them on the way down, and I agreed. David, however, needed to get some things done and went back to the Technion.

On the way down, we found a cool little cave

that looked like it had been walled in and maybe used as a house at some point.

After parting from the Israelis, I took a few pictures of the rocks in the surf, some of which turned out ok.

Then I hung out on the beach for a while

and then walked over to the haifa mall, which was quite nice, though not as big as the "Grand Canyon" (the hebrew word for "mall" is קָניוֹן pronounced "kan yon", so the big mall in haifa is named the grand canyon).

At the mall, I got a kitchen knife for only 10 shekels b/c it was an open package. Great deal. I also bought some childrens books. Then I took the bus back to the technion.

And, a preview of topics to come: the haifa zoo, the weekend trip to Jerusalem.