Summer is here again

It's hard to believe that I have now been living in Israel for a year now. Officially I flew to Israel on June 13th last year. In some ways the time feels like it has flown by and in other ways it feels like I haven't been here very long at all. So much has happened in this last year. I feel like I have learned a lot. Living in Israel has changed me somewhat, I feel like I've grown as a person more living here than in the States. Living in another culture has its own unique challenges.

Spring semester exams finished up last week on Thursday. Akkadian, the exam I was dreading the most was naturally the last one I had to take. It had to be the last one so I could worry about it. The picture to the left comes from my study sessions of Akkadian. After studying the various signs for hours I started playing around with them. The signs in the picture are from Lady Gaga's song Bad Romance there is no ro sound in Akkadian so I had to substitute ru. But other than that is the line from the song ra ra ah ah ah ro ma ro ma ma ga ga u la la! And then I realized that that line would insure that I never forgot those signs so I tried to come up with similar lines from songs to remember other signs. For the most part my strategy worked.
I still have one take home exam for the Assyrian sources class but I have until next week for that one. I'll probably work on that test this weekend.

The last several weeks there has been construction on the way up to campus. The city has been putting in bike paths all over Mount Scopus. From my observations the bike paths start and stop in very odd places. Entering and exiting the bike paths in some locations would be very dangerous to the biker and drivers. On the way to school the bike path construction caused them to tear up the sidewalks and eliminate a few parking spaces that were always full. Those who park their cars there now have to cross the bike path to put coins in the parking meter. Last week when I was walking to my Akkadian exam they were putting asphalt on the places where they broke up the sidewalk. Construction in Israel is mind boggling. They do not close the sidewalk you can walk by not even a foot from where a giant machine is picking up chunks of concrete. The construction workers do not wear hard hats but they do wear yellow vests. The supervisor will be the one sitting in the shade smoking a cigarette. They had put out the new asphalt with no signs indicating this. People were walking through the new asphalt and leaving shoe prints and none of the workers were bothered by this. I don't know how these people missed that the asphalt was still wet. It has a shiny quality to it, it smells awful and there is a guy in a steamroller driving towards you! I went around it which required walking out into the street and hoping a bus didn't hit me. Obviously I made it. Walking back the same way later I noticed they redid the asphalt because I can't find the shoe prints in it. They could have saved themselves some time by just putting up some signs.


The new students for the Summer checked in on Sunday and Monday this week. It was nice to already be in an apartment and not be dragging luggage everywhere. Every time one semester or session ends they try to kick me out of my dorm room even though I've paid for it. I tried to head it off buy going to the dorm office in person but it doesn't matter. My name is always on the list of people who need to move out. On the day they say I have to move out they sent by several maintenance men who tell me I have to be out of the apartment by a certain time. This requires multiple trips down to the office to get things sorted out. This time the lady in the office insisted I had to move because they had already scheduled my room for someone else for the Summer session. I had to throw a fit and it worked because I got to stay in the same apartment.


Monday evening I attended the mandatory orientation. It was exactly the same as last year but they assured me I had to attend because they had changed their policies. It was interesting hearing the same information but from the perspective of someone who has been here for a year. I would have been at the school anyway for the shopping trip to the mall. The Burger King is no longer in the mall but there is now a McDonald's! So I got my hamburger and french fries fix. I also went to the bookstore down on the first floor. They only have a small section with English books but I spent quite a bit of time looking them over. They were having a book sale so I ended up getting three young adult books...in Hebrew. These books are above my reading comprehension level in Hebrew. I thought it would be fun to try and read these with the help of a dictionary maybe one chapter a night depending on how long it takes me to read. I had the sales clerk help me pick out three that were in easier Hebrew. I'm looking forward to reading these.


Yesterday was a emergency preparedness day. I don't actually know what they called it. Yesterday at 11am all of the emergency sirens sounded throughout the country for two minutes. During this time everyone is supposed to go to the bomb shelter in the building. Rothberg International School had special permission not to disrupt the summer classes so we didn't have to go in the basement. The professor told us that the police,fire department and other safety related departments would be running drills throughout the day. The sirens also went off a 7pm last night for two minutes. This was to make sure you are prepared at home and know where the nearest shelter is located. My room is the bomb shelter in our apartment so I didn't have to go anywhere.

For the first Summer session I'm taking Intermediate Biblical Hebrew. There are 10 people in the class. I have the class five days a week. On Sunday we meet from 10am-3:30pm. Monday-Thursday 8:30-2pm. It's very intensive but I'll be able to get Intermediate Biblical Hebrew completed. So far the class has been very interesting. Today we worked on translating Psalm 23 which is one of my favorites.

From the last post:
Uncle Joe- Yes Hebrew is one of those languages where you have to conjugate the verbs differently depending on the person's gender that you are talking to.

Where I live

This is going to be about where I live. To the left is the view I have walking down the hill to school in the morning. If you look closely to the right of the light pole you can see the Dome of the Rock.











Here is the South Gate as you can see it's a
secure gate. There is a guard there all the time
who checks your id and can check your bag before you enter.









This is the massive staircase I have to walk up and down several times a day. Most of the other students had to carry their luggage up these stairs.

















This is my building 12D also known as Casa Argentina. All the buildings are named after countries.












My room is a special room as I have mentioned before its the sealed room. Basically my room is the bomb shelter in case something happens. My room has two doors the blast door which is white in this picture and a normal door. The blast door is around 1and a half to two inches thick.














I took a picture of the door frame to give you an idea of how thick the walls of my room are. They are made of solid concrete and are about a foot thick. When the window is shut and the door is closed the room is pretty quiet. Except for last night I heard all the screaming and yelling from the people watching Spain vs. Netherlands in the World Cup last night. Even if I had the blast door closed too I still think I would have heard them.











My window is unique as well. When the window is closed it forms a tight seal that also cuts down on the noise level from outside. The glass is thicker than the other windows in the apartment. I don't know if it's bullet proof or not but its pretty thick so it might be.








This picture is with the glass part of the window open. I took
the picture at an angle so you can see the space between the shutters and where the glass would be if the window were closed. The shutters are made out of metal if there is a strong wind they close themselves. While this is annoying when doing homework and suddenly finding yourself in the dark it is designed so if there was a blast outside while my shutters were open the force of the blast would close them for me. With the shutters closed the room is pitch black you can't see anything at all even if it is the middle of the afternoon. This works out great for taking naps but not so great if you are used to relying on the morning sun coming through your window to wake up to.


This is the zoomed in look at part of the view outside my window. Most of my view is the student parking lot but these buildings are on the other side of the parking lot. I'm not sure if they are part of the dorm housing or not since they are behind a separate fence. I zoomed in because I want you to notice the white cylinders on top of the brown colored building. Those are hot water heaters. Most of the residential homes in Israel and the apartment buildings have their hot water heaters on the roof. They also have solar panels as well. The gray building in the front is currently under construction. Construction works differently here. If this was Texas A&M and they had to do construction near the dorms they would usually wait until 8am or if you are lucky 10 am. Here these guys get started earlier some mornings its before my alarm goes off a 6:30am. They are trying to get a lot of work down before the afternoon when it really gets hot. They work everyday but Saturday.

Here is my bed and nightstand. The mattress is made out of some type of foam and its only an inch and a half thick. I'm still not used to sleeping on it yet. The reason my comforter is two colors is because it is a sleeping bag. I want to go on some archaeological digs while I'm here and that requires a sleeping bag. In order to save space in my luggage I decided to use it as a comforter as well.













Here is my desk and bookshelf. Homework is out on the desk for that authentic student look. The Israeli flag was given to me by Yael the lady that works in the gift shop of the Regency Hotel. Note the blue water bottle on the desk this is a very important item. If you are coming to Israel you need one of these. It gets so hot here you always need water with you. Almost every student on campus has something similar to this. Next to the desk is my wardrobe that has a built in floor length mirror. I decided not to take a picture of the closet because I didn't think that would be very exciting to see.













My light switches and electric sockets are cover up as shown. I'm not sure why but I'm going to guess it has something to do with the safety of the sealed room. The light switches and sockets in my room mate's room are not covered. The sockets in the kitchen are covered like this.














This is a mezuzah attached to the upper right door frame. There is also one outside our front door and many of the offices and classrooms at school also have them. Every hotel room at the Regency had them as well. Inside is a piece of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21) These verses are part of the prayer Shema Israel. They are placed on the doorways in Jewish houses in order to fulfill the Biblical command of Deuteronomy 6:9

That completes the tour of the sealed room. I hope you found it interesting.







Questions from the last post: Uncle Joe- The roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is another point of argument. The roof currently needs replacing but they cannot decide who owns the roof. Since it is an honor and a privilege to take care of the church they all want a piece of it. I'm guessing they will still be arguing about the roof until it falls down on them.

Moving into the Dorms

This morning I registered for my Elementary Biblical Hebrew class. Registration seemed like a mini United Nations. They really mean it when they say its an International School. I heard French, Chinese, Hebrew (of course), as well as British and Australian accents. My orientation is tomorrow afternoon. Class begins Thursday morning.

The big project for today was moving into the dorms. My dorms are considered on campus housing but I'm not so sure the term fits. The school is a good twenty minute walk down hill. On the way up to the dorms I passed by a hospital and a British military cemetery. The student village sits on Mount Scopus which was occupied by the Jordanian army during the six day war of 1967. I overheard someone say that the older dorms used to be Jordanian army barracks. I don't know if that's actually true or not.

I've been calling it a dorm but really it's more like an apartment. There is a kitchenette which means I have a refrigerator and a stove but no oven or dishwasher. I have a room to myself and my room door has a lock on it. Door locks do not automatically lock behind you, not even the front door. My room is special its referred to as the sealed room, basically its a bomb shelter. One room in each apartment is a sealed room that my roommates and I could take shelter in in the event of an attack. The room has an extra two inch thick metal door that locks in. The ventilation in my room appears to be hooked up slightly different from the other two rooms. All the windows and the sliding balcony doors have metal shutters like hurricane shutters. I'm not sure what the walls of my room are made out of because I get cellphone coverage and wireless internet just fine but I haven't tried calling anyone with the blast door closed to see if that makes a difference.

The dorms are very green compared to the dorms at Texas A&M. When you reach your floor the hall lights are off you have to turn the light on and it will remain on just long enough for you to unlock your door. The toilet is a duel flush to help save water. The third green feature I learned about was the hot water heater. Outside the bathroom there are two buttons with orange squares in the center that light up when activated. You must press those two buttons at least thirty more minutes before you want to shower. The hot water heater doesn't run all the time you need to carefully plan when you want to shower.