The Continuation

So, classes are beginning to be slightly less of a language shock... not to mean that i'm really understanding all that much more, but it's not as paniky a feeling anymore.

Things are getting underway in the lab, as well, and I'll be helping out tomorrow with some preliminary experiments. This evening I hung out there and helped with some setup for tomorrow. It was great... got to do a little soldering, help with some of the setup, and it was my professor, not me, who overtightened a set screw and cracked some of the plexiglass. In general, I feel very competent from my degree at Cedarville.

This week I also got my signet ring phase 2 delivered. This one is 3D printed in a SS/bronze mixture (don't think it's really an alloy). It's pretty awesome. However, the print method leaves a fairly rough surface, which threw off my ring size tolerance, so that it's a little tight. I used a file to take it down a little, but I think i'll just get the next one a little larger. I used it to put a seal on my rsvp regrets to Peter and Kate's wedding.

Yesterday, I got my student visa! I had an appointment, but ended up waiting an hour anyway. Oh well... main point is that I have it.

Last weekend I went down to tel aviv for a day with some people, looked at some Bauhaus buildings there and had a pineapple (which was way more expensive than I initially thought it was) while we sat by the mediterranean.

Tomorrow I will be in the lab in the morning, then hebrew class, then the weekend begins! (thursday night) This weekend there's a meal at beit eliyahu, and a baptism and a thing on saturday by the sea of galilee with a bunch of believers from northern Israel. Then Sat. night there's a birthday/housewarming party, which unfortunately is preventing me from going to another party. life is hard.

Oh, and the financial side of things should be working out.

The Beginning

So, classes began yesterday.

It was... interesting. After consulting a few different resources, I had come up with 3 different sets of times and places for what I thought was the Hebrew course that I needed to take. I showed up for the most recent set of times/places, and found out that it was the wrong class. It was Hebrew 2, not Hebrew for beginners 2. Of course.

Then, I had my design and analysis of experiments class, which handily was scheduled for the exact same time as the graduate student organization had scheduled their "understanding your time as a masters student at the technion/getting started / answering questions" meeting. Clearly this was a well-planned event. Don't know how it turned out, since I was in class, not understanding much.

The professor speaks english natively, but the lectures are in Hebrew. Fortunately, he gives out printed notes so I have somethign to translate later, and there are the subject titles in English. Two of my friends here have managed to have 2 of their 3 courses in English. (Partly because their advisor was teaching one of them).

Oh, and my HTC G1 android phone arrived in the mail... finally... with customs tag of 120 dollars... so I thougth that was a little extreme, and asked the guy at the post office who said that I can come back on sunday and write a letter to the customs board. should be fun.

Cough... do not look at the long absence of posts... nothing to see here... move along.

welp, I'd say the verdict is failure. DEFINITELY have managed to slip on the one post a week goal.

But, not much point to dwelling on that, I'll just pick up some of the highlights and move on.

Since classes don't start until the 14th, I've been spending a lot of time hanging around, staying up late, sleeping in, watching movies (which counts as studying if you turn on hebrew subtitles, right?) and in general picking up on the summer laziness.

This time is full of holidays; there's a "new year" (during the seventh hebrew month... yeah... I think it's just an excuse for a holiday). There's also Yom Kippur, and now Sukkot.

I've managed to fit in two birthday parties for friends from the congregation I'm attending, including one that was in Tel Aviv at a Thai restaurant, where I ordered "Moo Phat Prick" (that's exactly how it was written on the menu). It was really good.

Besides that, there's not a whole lot that I can report on in general. I bought a really nice phone online, and cell phone service here in some ways makes more sense than in the US. For instance, it always bugged me to death that you would get charged for text messages/calls that you did not initiate. Not so here in Israel. score.

So, I'll finish up this post with a quick bit of Hebrew for y'all.

Some of the worst parts of Hebrew/English are shown by this cute little phrase:

She is היא and he is הוא and who is מי and me is אני.

she is {HEE} and he is {HOO} and who is {MEE} and me is {ANNEE}.

but seriously, the fact that the hebrew word for "she" sounds exactly like the english word "he" is not a great help.

Have fun everyone!