Laundry Day

Okay so this post isn't going to be nearly as exciting as my last post. I do my laundry about every two weeks. The laundry facilities in the Student Village are only in Building 2 which is the family building. As in most colleges people mainly do laundry on the weekends. So if you have time you can do yours quickly during the week and you won't have to wait for an open machine. Friday is the busiest day for the laundry room. Observant Jews keep the Sabbath (Shabbat) meaning they don't do any work on Saturday. There is always a rush of people trying to get laundry done before sunset on Friday which is when the Sabbath officially begins. I try to be respectful of the fact that they can't do laundry on Saturday so that is when I choose to do my laundry. If you can get up early to do laundry I recommend it. I like getting laundry done before most people are awake. So I usually start my laundry sometime between 7am and 8am. If you wait there are sometimes creepy guys in the laundry room that stand there and watch you put your clothes in the machine but they don't say anything to you.

As you can see each washing machine has a number on it. The laundry room only has the smaller European washers. Sometime in the middle of the Spring semester they got rid of the few American sized washing machines. I miss the American sized ones. These machines can take either powdered soap or liquid.

This is how you pay. One load in the washing machine is 10 NIS or about $2.50. One load in the dryer is 9NIS. Put your clothes in the machine first add soap. Then put your money in and select the number of the machine then go back to the machine select what type of load and push to start. This machine is sometimes picky. Sometimes it doesn't want to take bills no matter how straight you make them. Other times it will only take bills. Sometimes it will reject some coins and take others. I've noticed this with the ten shekel coins. If the coin is new sometimes the machine will spit it out a few times before taking it or it will only take the less shiny coins. I have no idea why. Occasionally it will eat one shekel coins and not count it and no amount of pressing coin return will help.

The wall of dryers. Note the colorful banner on top with the machine logo. They added this banner during the Spring semester for some reason.  I should mention that this is the only laundry room in the Student Village which is quite remarkable if you consider how many people live here. There are twelve buildings total. Two of the buildings 11 and 12 have multiple sections 11A,11B,11C. I think on average each building has 6 floors. Each floor has at least three apartments. The Graduate buildings have three rooms in each apartment. The Undergrad dorms have five rooms in each apartment. Then you have to consider the family dorms with multiple children in each family. Just keep this in mind when you are trying to decide when to do your laundry. At Texas A&M there was a laundry room on each floor of the dorm.

And now for a little bit on food. This is Shakshouka. I like to make this on the weekends. I cheat though I use the sauce from a can. I think I'm the only one that buys this sauce from the store because the shelf area is always full each time I go to buy a can. I think this is because this dish is usually made by Grandma and it's insulting to use the can. That is just a guess however.

I've made French toast a few times this Summer as a treat. And that is about the only real cooking I've been doing except for making Spaghetti but I don't really count that.

May Flowers Part II

The weather here has been pretty nice this week. On a few days we've had a preview of Summer heat, it has reached 80 degrees. It doesn't really affect me since most days I'm in school before the temperature reaches the high for the day and I leave school after it has cooled down a bit.

The next few weeks are going to be busy as the Spring semester winds down. Lots of projects and reading assignments to finish up and of course studying for exams.






I love all the flowers in the garden. When I have time between classes I like going out and wondering in the garden. I'm always finding a new plant that I haven't noticed before. I thought the plant to the right was interesting enough to take a zoomed in picture. I like the shade of yellow on these flowers. Unfortunately this plant makes me sneeze. Even here in Israel I have seasonal allergies.

This picture is from this past Tuesday when Claire and I had lunch in the garden. The view wasn't as hazy as it has been in my earlier pictures.

If you remember from earlier posts the botanical garden has sections that represent the plants from different areas of Israel. I don't think I've posted too many pictures of the desert section. So I took this one, the desert section isn't as pretty as the others. The red spot in the background is one of the people who works in the garden. They are constantly working in the garden. It takes a lot of work to keep all the plants from the varied climates alive.

Now for a little change of pace I've been a little homesick lately. So I decided to self medicate with food. :) The grocery store recently started to stock Doritos corn chips again. I love chips and salsa but I don't have time to make my own salsa. The container next to the chips contains Turkey Salad. Claire was the one that originally found it and told me about it. It is basically salsa it has tomatoes, onions, garlic, peppers that add a little kick to it,and various spices. I have no idea why it's called Turkey Salad. It's not from Turkey and it doesn't have turkey in it. Despite the strange name it tastes great. They were training new cashiers this week. The trainee rang up all of my purchases and I had already bagged them up when she hit the wrong button and had to rescan everything. She had already taken a long time to scan in the first place because she was still learning where all the bar codes were, the loaf of bread took forever because it wouldn't scan. Thankfully the trainer rescanned everything very quickly and apologized. I didn't have anywhere I needed to be so I didn't really mind I just thought it was funny. I made some dumb mistakes when learning to work a register.

We take turns buying to toilet paper in our apartment and this week it was my turn. You are looking at a package of 48 rolls of toilet paper. Families here are bigger than in the United States. I think the smallest package of toilet paper you can buy here is 24 rolls. I've seen packages with 96 rolls. The case of toilet paper has its own carrying handle on top. As I've mentioned before most people walk to the grocery store here so they carry everything back. This brand of toilet paper is usually cheaper than the others and comes with the added bonus of red hearts on it. There is another brand that is more expensive that has the outlines of puppies on it. The fun comes when you exit the store and walk down the street towards the student village. You pass by a few cafes that have outdoor seating. People look when a single person is carrying a package of 48 rolls of toilet paper. They probably think I have some horrible disease. Or maybe its just me feeling self conscious about carrying that much toilet paper at once maybe they weren't really looking. But buying the larger package saves having to make more frequent trips to the store.

This picture is actually from earlier today. Claire pointed this sign out to me and I had to take a picture. This is outside the cafeteria at Rothberg. The Mechina program is hosting an event called Lip Dub. Our best guess is this might be karaoke but we're not sure. 















From the last posts:
Uncle Joe- I forget which plants I've already posted pictures out so I might have posted that tree before. I can't comment on the word play in the New Testament as I can't read Greek. In my Biblical Hebrew class we are currently looking at Amos there is some clever word play.

Misadventures in Israel

So I haven't really been doing anything exciting over the break. I've mostly been studying, reading books on my Kindle and cooking. This post is going to focus on some more everyday life stuff.



This picture is from just before the last Ulpan session ended but it didn't really fit in with the topic of my last post. They started on some construction projects on campus specifically knocking out what appear to be perfectly good walls. The first occurrence of this I don't have a picture of but I'll explain it. Everyone that walks to school has to enter in through the same gate and most walk through the forum(student center) in the morning. Along the path that everyone has to take from the gate through the forum there were two men taking down a wall during the time of heaviest foot traffic through the area. This wall also contained a glass window. The two men were not wearing protective goggles or face masks. The area was not coned off there were no drop cloths hanging from the ceiling to stop flying debris. No signs to warn you that you were approaching a construction area. Just two guys with sledge hammers pounding on the wall with glass shards and sheet rock flying through the air. About thirty feet from this was an open cafe where people were calmly sitting enjoying their morning coffee and pastries. I thought this was odd but quickly moved passed it to avoid injury. The next day I had to take a picture of a second wall being knocked out. Same as before no protective gear or signs. The two men were wailing on the wall when it must have occurred to them 'Hey there is a vending machine on the other side of the wall maybe we should move it. ' I was surprised they hadn't moved it before starting on the wall. Another day towards the middle of the forum they were jack hammering up some of the tile. A cafe very close to the site was still open and people were sitting there enjoying their drinks. I don't think I could enjoy coffee with the sound of jack hammering so close by. I guess they must not have lawsuits for liability in Israel. I know that doing the construction during the Ulpan makes sense because there are less students on campus but I think they could have started after the morning classes began and less students were passing by.


I have another example of construction this time at the Student Village right outside my building. The hole has been doubled in size since this picture was taken the tree has been snapped in half and almost all of the vines are now gone. And the whole is full of water. Outside the door to my room there is a speaker in the ceiling. I wondered when I moved in what the speaker was for since we clearly did not have a sound system in our apartment. Several mornings over the break there has been a chiming sound followed by an announcement in Hebrew then in English. I was proud of myself for understanding the Hebrew before the English was given. Basically all they said was in twenty minutes we are going to turn off the water for a few hours. But when they made the announcement in English they still used the Hebrew word for water and minutes. So if you had just arrived here you wouldn't know what they were talking about. I do appreciate the warnings that they are about to turn off the water but having the speaker also feels a little big brotherish to me.


This next story wasn't very amusing when it occurred but now that some time has passed I'm able to laugh about it. I had to do my laundry specifically I had already washed my laundry and needed to dry it only one of the dryers was still open. So I tossed my clothes inside and turned it on. After checking the lint trap which is always a good idea in a university laundry mat people often forget to clean it out. The dryer was only on medium heat. When I came back thirty minutes later something was clearly wrong. Several of my shirts had caught fire in the dryer and had holes burned through them. Several other shirts and my bed sheets had scorch marks on them. And yet seeming to defy the laws of heat transfer (the actual scientific name escapes me at the moment) the waist band of all my jeans was still wet. I took the shirt that was in the worst shape and headed down to the dorm office. After waiting in line for a few minutes I told the woman that dryer number 16 needed to be repaired as it had caught fire and burned my clothes and I showed her my burned shirt. She glanced at it and looked me straight in the face and said "Yes this happens." I was dumbfounded what did she mean by that? Do dryers frequently catch fire in Israel? Are the dryers in the student village really that dangerous? She gave me the number of the company that runs the laundromat and sent me away. I called the number but they didn't speak English and that was the end of that. I did go back to the laundry mat and no one has placed any kind of sign on dryer 16 to warn that it has the tendency to catch fire. I haven't added a sign because I don't know how to write this information in Hebrew. I was folding up my laundry and complaining about the scorch marks and just to show you how much of a geek I truly am one of the things I said was "I'm going to look like I've been singed by mage fire!" I guess that qualifies as geek ranting. In my defense I was at the time reading C.L. Wilson's Tairen Soul series where the villains are mages and are know for the devastating fire attacks. If you like fantasy series you might want to look into the Tairen Soul series its currently four books long with the fifth one coming out at the end of October. The first book is called Lord of the Fading Lands.


My next adventure is the Post Office. I have a mailbox in the student village but its very small. So if I get a package it can end up one of three places. Sometimes it will end up at the housing office desk you will have no way of knowing its there except going to check every few days. It could be sent to the Post office on campus but that would be too convenient and make too much sense so they usually sent it to the Post Office that's about half a mile away from the Student Village. They are supposed to put a slip of paper in your mailbox to tell you that you have a package but sometimes they don't and you just have to go check to see if they have a package for you. So if you are going to send a package you have to let me know so I can look for it. In writing the address its best to write in print and do not abbreviate things like street or building. A lot of people can read English but not everyone here can read cursive. And don't bother to sending anything by priority mail the only person its priority to is you. Its also not a good idea to send things during the High Holy Days (Days of Awe) which consist of all the holidays of my last few posts. Because of all the holidays the Post Office is shut down so many days it takes forever for things to get here. I got a package slip in my mailbox so I set off for the post office. There are some great views along the way so I brought my camera along.


Here I've gone out the South gate of the Student Village up the street to the grocery store and turned the corner and walked about ten minutes to get this view. I'm walking along one of the ridges on the mountain and its hard to gauge distance. You can see homes towards the right of the picture. In the upper left corner you can see the buildings of the Student Village.










In the center of this picture is the famous tower of Hebrew University.

















Here is a closer view of what the houses in this neighborhood look like. Notice the solar panels and hot water heaters on the roof.













Along the way there is some interesting graffiti. This one kind of reminds me of Pablo Picasso.














This one looks rather familiar like I might have seen graffiti similar to it in the States. I don't remember where though.














This last one was rather large. I couldn't take a picture of it from across the street because cars were parked in front of it and would have blocked most of it.











So I reached the post office. In Israel the color of the post office is red and there mascot looks like Hermes shoe ( a sneaker with wings sprouting from around the ankle) which would make sense since Hermes was the messenger of the Greek/Roman pantheon of gods. However I'm not sure that is what the symbol is supposed to be given that this is a Jewish state. There is an armed guard outside who checks your bag before letting you in. You take a number and sit down and must like the drivers license office you sit down and wait for your number to come up. They open around 8:30am and I got there around 11am. The number I pulled was 917 luckily they were on 890 something. To work in the post office in Israel is difficult because I think you have to know three languages. Everything in the post office was written in Hebrew, Arabic and lucky for me English. I took a seat in the corner by the door since they were saving money and the air conditioner was not on the seat by the door was much cooler. As I sat waiting I began to notice something interesting...where certain people would and would not sit or specifically who they wouldn't sit by. Women sat by other women and sometimes would remain standing if they had to cross in front of a man to get to open seats. At one point all of the chairs were taken except for the one next to me. Several men came in but none of them would take the seat next to me. When my number came up I handed the lady my package slip and she went and brought me my package. If I didn't have the package slip I would have to show my passport in order to pick it up. So I had my package and began my walk back to the student village. It took me a few minutes to notice but people were giving me a pretty wide berth walking down the sidewalk. I had a couple people cross the street rather than walk past me. I guess it was because I was carrying a box and you never know what I might be carrying. I was just thinking of the contrast between Israel and America. Back home no one would think anything of me walking down the street with a box in my hands here it is noted.

Yesterday I walked up to school to show a new student around and to buy a few school supplies. The street leading up to the University is lined with parking meters. On the way back to the student village there was a parking meter guy going down the street and checking to make sure everyone had paid. I normally wouldn't have noticed him but I did because he had a gun on his belt and several extra clips of ammunition. It just struck me as odd that a parking meter man would need to be armed? I'm still not used to the presence of so many guns everywhere.


As I mentioned above I've done a little cooking over the break. Since I'm still learning I've very proud of everything I make that turns out well. This is German potato salad. Skin and boil the potatoes. Chopped up one white onion and saute it in a half cup of white wine vinegar add mustard,salt, pepper and a little sugar. Saute until onions become clear then mix into potatoes and let it sit for a while to absorb the flavor and top with parsley. I will take this time to mention that I've had to learn to think about the altitude difference between Texas and Israel. I had to boil the potatoes for about an hour before they were soft enough.



I also made apple crumble cake. I think the least healthy thing I've made so far. The topping is flour,butter and brown sugar. Chopped up the apples into wedges put them in a mixing bowl pour lemon juice over them, this is so the cinnamon will stick. It's supposed to have a whipped topping but we don't have a mixer so I couldn't make it. Put it in the oven to bake for 35 minutes at 176 degrees Celsius or 350 degrees Fahrenheit. I used a temperature converter on the Internet to figure it out.





This is a popular kids treat this is what the kids ask/whine for at the grocery store. I'm not sure how to transliterate the name into English so I'm not going to try. They are creme filled little nuggets they come in chocolate and vanilla.












Claire is the one who pointed out this line of brownies to me. Each one has a rather offensive cartoon drawing of an African woman whose hair color matches the brownies on the package. The blondies packages have offensive looking white women on them but I haven't tried them yet. When I do I'll post pictures. You know I have to try them all just to get pictures of the packages, for my followers of course! You see what I'm willing to do in the name of an interesting blog post. The brownies were really good though so I it won't be much of a sacrifice.




As far as my reading goes I've been on a classics run this week. I've read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and I'm now working on The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. These two novels are on my bucket list of reading. Which is a list of mostly classics that I want to read in my lifetime. Of course once school starts back up I probably won't have as much time for reading as I would like. The fall semester starts this coming Sunday October 10th. I am planning on doing a post listing what classes I'm taking this semester. However I'm going to wait until after the add/drop period just in case my schedule changes. Wow! This was a very long post if you've made it this far thanks for reading!

Rosh Hashanah

Sorry for not posting sooner. Last week was Rosh Hashana or the Jewish New Year. Everything shut down Tuesday afternoon. Rosh Hashana began last Wednesday after sundown and Thursday was New Year's Day. All the stores were closed and the city buses were not running. I don't think the stores were open on Friday morning but I didn't go out to check. Its a totally different way of celebrating holidays that just wouldn't go over well in America.

To celebrate the Jewish New Year Claire made honey cake sorry I didn't get a picture of it. You are also supposed to eat apples with honey and pomegranate. I decided to try a pomegranate since I've only had pomegrantate juice previously. Before cutting into a pomegrante make sure you are wearing something that you don't care too much about. Pomegranate juice is pink and it stains everything it touches. From this point you pick out the seeds and eat them. I think they are kind of bitter tasting so I don't know if I will eat a pomegrante again. Pluse I stained my shirt and I was trying to be careful!

I've continued my adventures in cooking! Here we have my attempt at salsa. It was good but I put too many chili peppers in it so it was very hot. I made the mistake of holding the chili peppers while cutting them so my fingers were burning. After coating my hands with olive oil the burning stopped. The capsaicin is fat soluable in case you ever need to know.

Next I tried Beef hash. Diced potatoes with garlic

onions and beef with scrambled eggs on top.

Here we have vegetable spaghetti! Eggplant,tomatoes, zucchini, red onion, and garlic sauteed in olive oil topped with parmesan cheese.

This is the best thing I've made since coming to Israel!

This is eggplant dip. Eggplant and garlic sauteed in olive oil, add lemon juice, salt, pepper and parsley. Its best when served warm but it still tastes good cold.

I discovered this little gem in the school bookstore. Dancing Cows! I don't know why but a lot of merchandise in the store features these cows, clipboards, stickers, notebooks, and greeting cards. I have no idea where these cows come from but they make me smile. I think I'm going to collect stuff with the dancing cows.

As some of you are aware today is my birthday!

Today I am 26 years old! To the right we have my breakfast from this morning that my roommate Claire made me. "Here's you breakfast! And it's happy to see you!" Trivia question what Disney movie is that from? My friends here have helped make this a special day with well wishes. My classmates sang Happy Birthday to me in Hebrew! Anna K. got me a card and a chocolate bar! The chocolate bar's logo has a cow on it so she is helping me collect the cows. ;)

I also wanted to thank everyone that emailed me Birthday wishes. Thank you for helping make my day special while I'm out of the country. Today is also Grandparent's Day back in the United States. Happy Grandparents Day! Another point of interest today Daylights Savings time in Israel ended so we have fallen back one hour. Just something to keep in mind if you are trying to get in touch with me on the phone.

Just finished my midterm exam

So I kind of disappeared for a while. The modern Hebrew class is very intensive, 25 hours of class in a week. It's 5 hours of class each day then around 1-3 hours of homework. But just doing the homework isn't enough to pass the class you have to study for several hours beyond the homework if you want to be able to actually speak the language. Learning a new language after the age of 10 is supposed to be harder. Almost everyday after class I have a huge headache. I think it's because my brain is trying to categorize the new words I learn each day. My throat is also sore because Hebrew has some guttural sounds that we don't have in English. So after class I have a snack take a short break and read a little in an English book then start homework. I do almost the same things everyday it seems. So that means I don't have anything too interesting to post lately. This is going to be more about everyday things.


School is quite stressful right now so you have to find humor somewhere in the day. I get a kick out of the misspellings on the packages in the store. In the school store they sell ralling stamps (rolling stamps) for kids. When we first got here Claire bought a pillow that said it was hiege quality. So anytime we see something misspelled we just say its another hiege quality product made in Israel.









I made spaghetti I think this was last week. I've made it before but this time was the first time I used gluten free pasta and I didn't fix the recipe correctly for that. The sauce is olive oil, green peppers and garlic. I didn't think about the fact that this pasta wouldn't absorb the oil like normal pasta so it turned out a little too oily. I think I should mention we do have flatware other than the maroon ones in the pictures. I just noticed that the food looks better in the pictures on the maroon flatware.








Claire made pasta and meatballs. The meatballs were made with the help of a packet of spices. The instructions on how to make them were of course in Hebrew but there are pictures as well. Claire was cooking while I was doing my homework and I asked how she knew what to do. She said she was following the pictures. Since she is in the Hebrew level above me she knew what half the words in the directions were. Just for fun she started reading off the directions and came across the word for egg which we know. This surprised her and she exclaimed "There's an egg in this?" We had a good laugh about that one. So cooking using just the pictures is not a good idea.



Claire and I made chicken in a bag! I still don't understand how the bag doesn't melt in the oven. It actually came out pretty good and it was nice to have meat. The oven belongs to our Israeli roommate.










As I mentioned in my last post there are a lot of cats living in the student village. Below our balcony there is a garden that the cats like to hang out in. These two kittens were napping under the tree while there mother was off somewhere else. They have another sibling but that kitten was under one of the bushes.










I've named a few of the cats if they are distinctive enough that I can't think of a name quickly. This is Smokey Jones. He likes to pick on the kittens I think because he doesn't have any family in the student village but he keeps trying to join other families and getting chased off.









Claire named this one Angler after the Angler fish because of the white tip of his tail.














These are the twins we've been watching them grow up since we got here in June. I love watching the kittens play fight in the garden. We aren't allowed to keep pets in the student village so a lot of students adopt one or more of the cats. Its fun to watch people feeding the cats some people sneak over like they don't want anyone to see them feeding the cats. The garden always has several paper plates of food and bowls of milk and water.




Ever since I got here in June the weather has been the same everyday. Sunny and hot once or twice it was cloudy but other than that its been the same. So imagine my surprise when two mornings this week we woke up to fog on the Mount Scopus. The fog didn't last for long but I have the picture here to prove it!









Back in the botanical garden Claire pointed this tree out to me. The branches are covered with these sharp thorns they are really strong you can't break them easily. The trunk also has spikes on it. The leaves are strangely small looking.









Here is what the entire tree looks like. I have no idea what kind of tree this is.


















The tree across the path looks similar but its covered with blossoms so I'm not sure if they are the same tree or not. Does anyone know what kind of tree this is?










If anyone is interested my roommate Claire also keeps a blog. You can follow her blog to get a different view on life here. Since we live together and are both in the Bible and the Ancient Near East degree plan we tend to do things together so you might end up reading about the same things just different perspectives. Her blog can be found here: http://claireregan.blogspot.com/

Questions from the last post:
Uncle Joe- I live on the third floor of my building the picture of the dove was taken from my bedroom window. I had English breakfast tea with the eggs and chocolate rolls. I think I had coke zero with the chicken, high class yes?

Nikki-Yes we had enough room in the freezer for the chickens.

Chicken and Eggs

I know some of you are going to find this one amusing. Claire and I went to the grocery store yesterday. They were having a sale. If you bought 150NIS worth of groceries you got a good deal on meat. We got 3 whole chickens, half of a fourth one, and about 2lbs of ground beef for 60NIS. Meat is expensive here normally just the 2lbs of ground beef would have cost 60NIS. The chicken was so fresh it still had some feathers on it. :)

Now for the amusing part neither one of us had ever cooked a whole chicken before. Claire had to call her mother for instructions. Notice they give you the chicken with the neck still attached. I had never seen a chicken with the neck still attached like this. Claire and I weren't sure if you could eat the neck or not so she cut it off. It turns out you can eat the neck so we will know for next time.








Here we have the chicken cooking in our oven. Its a real oven just very small we had to convert the temperature to Celsius. The pot is thin enough that the chicken would cook through it. We don't have any baking pans currently.










The finished product Claire used a chicken seasoning mix. The chicken was wonderful. It was nice to have meat again.












I think I mentioned in my food post how fresh the eggs are here. I decided to show you. Also notice the pastries. They look like cinnamon rolls when you first look at them but its better than that. They are chocolate rolls! And yes that is a spork!










I forgot to include this in the food post. As you might be able to tell from the logo these are Doritos. These are just plain corn chips, we don't have this kind in the United States. This is slightly larger than the lunch size sold in America I think it's 70 grams of chips. This is the largest bag of chips they sell in Israel. I'm not sure if chips aren't as popular here or if its difficult to make kosher chips.













I managed to get this picture out my window yesterday while the chicken was cooking. The mourning doves here look almost exactly the same as they do back home. I've been trying to get pictures of the wild life but the birds aren't being cooperative. I'm also going to try to get some pictures up of the cats that live in the student village.







I also wanted to mention that starting after sundown on August 10 it is the month of Ramadan. Ramadan is a Muslim fasting holiday. The Muslim calendar is lunar so the dates of their holidays change every year. During Ramadan Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset this includes no drinking, no eating and no marital relations for the entire month. Muslims pray more often during this month asking for forgiveness of sins. The fasting teaches patience.