Tel Aviv and Jaffa

I took this tour on July 8th. I'm getting better about posting. This trip was really fun but it was so hot out that day and we did a lot of walking. The sun was so bright so all of this combined means I had a migraine headache by the time we got back. The tour started in Jaffa a really old port city. I loved getting to see the ocean.

I loved the winding streets and stone buildings of Jaffa. The guide said that the real estate in Jaffa is pretty expensive.  This picture was taken around 9am I think that's why the shadows are so strong.

Jaffa is mentioned in the New Testament Peter visited here. According to the book of Acts Peter stayed with a man called Simon the Tanner. The picture to the left is the house of Simon. I'm not sure if it is the actual house where Simon lived we didn't get to go inside but it is at least the traditional site where Simon lived. Simon the Tanner is mentioned in Acts 9:43,10:6 and 10:32. Depending on what translation you are looking at it might say Peter went to Joppa. I'm guessing this is because of how the name of the city is written in Hebrew. The same letter is used for f and p the only difference between the two letters is a dot in one of them called a dagesh. I think Acts was originally written in Greek so I can't check to see how they rendered the city name since I don't know Greek yet.

Jaffa was a very important port city in the ancient world several famous figures passed through this town. The Romans came through Jaffa. Richard the Lionheart and many Crusaders came through Jaffa. And Napoleon came through Jaffa there is a statue of him in the picture to the right. In fact there are several statues of Napoleon identical to this one throughout the city.
Our guide told us the story of Napoleon coming to Jaffa. He didn't actually plan to conquer the city. Napoleon sent one solider with a white flag up to the city gates. The problem was the inhabitants of the city didn't know what a white flag meant. So they cut off the man's head and mounted it on the city wall. Napoleon was of course upset so he then proceeded to conquer the city. The only problem was the plague was in the city and a large number of his soldiers got sick.

This picture is looking over at the larger city of Tel Aviv. The picture appears darker because I am standing in the shade of a palm tree. It was really hot.

I have no idea what this statue is supposed to represent but it definitely looks interesting.

I was very lucky to get this picture. Our guide was talking about the history of Jaffa when he suddenly stopped and pointed out this bird. This is the national bird of Israel it's called the Hoopoe. You can read more about it here. When I took this picture the bird was just at the limit of my camera's zoom capabilities so I wasn't sure if it was going to turn out. I had to fix the photo a little in photoshop so the bird was more in the center. I felt like a real photographer getting a wildlife shot like this.

Jaffa is known for its orange orchards at least it was in the past. Jaffa used to have large orange orchards but it doesn't today. However you can still find Jaffa oranges in your local grocery store. The rights to use the name Jaffa oranges has been sold to orchards in Spain and Italy. This orange tree is art by one man who has hung different trees in a similar manner in different cities all over Israel.  Today Jaffa is known for its art galleries.

Because I haven't shown a cat picture in forever. Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the Jaffa alley cat! Notice his ears are really short all the cats I saw in Jaffa had really short ears. When I first looked at him I thought maybe he had been in a fight and lost part of his ears but his ears are just short.

Church of Saint Peter this church is strange because it is facing west. Most churches face east to the rising sun. I think this church is facing west in order to face the port. I am standing close to the church so you can't see the steeple in this picture.

Inside Saint Peter's church.

A beautiful view of the ocean. The tower is a minaret of a mosque. You can't see in this picture but there are a few rocks out in the surf. The Greek myth of Andromeda and Perseus took place here in Jaffa. The myth says the port was plagued by a giant sea monster and every year they sacrificed the city's most beautiful maiden. One year Andromeda was selected and tied to one of the rocks. Perseus riding on pegasus rescued her and killed the sea monster.

We walked from Jaffa over to Tel Aviv. I didn't take as many pictures in Tel Aviv. When ended our tour in the local craft fair that happens every Friday. I did take pictures of the craft fair. These were puppets on strings. I think they are seahorses. The seahorses appear to be wearing lipstick which I thought was odd.

Colorful hand made toys. Many of the vendors had signs that said do not touch in multiple languages.

This craft fair even had live entertainment. This guy really surprised me. Guess what genre of music he was singing? The answer Italian Opera....and he was really good. When I first heard him I thought one of the stands had a radio playing or something then I saw him. Wow. Notice the guy bending down near the motorcycle....that's a painting on the wall.

Just around the corner from the opera singer there was an escape artist. After getting out of this knotted mess, he had a tourist strap him in a straight jacket.

These ladies were selling a wrap with some kind of cream cheese,pesto and something else in it. It smelled really good but I wasn't hungry at the time.  I hope you enjoyed the tour!

May Flowers Part III

I had my oral exam for modern Hebrew this morning. We had to write a dialogue with a partner, memorize it and then preform it for the teacher. The second part of the exam was individual. We had to choose one text in the book and be able to summarize it and answer questions about it. I was very nervous but I think I did okay.

Since I haven't been doing anything exciting lately I have more flower pictures for you. I really can't get over how beautiful the campus looks with all the flowers.

I was playing with the close up mode on my camera for this one. I this flower has the same yellow color I like from the previous flower post.














All the flowers featured in the post line one of the ways that I leave campus. So I get to walk down flower row almost everyday. These flowers come in several different colors.

Here we have the same flowers as above only in purple. I think they look better in purple. I was lucky when taking these pictures there didn't seem to be any bugs flying around. Right now the bugs are everywhere. I guess that last year arriving in the middle of June I missed the bug season. Right now there are lots of gnats and mosquito type bugs flying around. The mosquitoes are the worst if they bite you it swells up and itches like crazy worse than in the states. It's a good thing I brought Benadryl with me.









For those of you that were interested in the post on the Western Wall tunnels I found this article on Yahoo this morning talking about the tunnels. The picture that is in the middle of the article is the claustrophobic tunnel I mentioned in my post on the Western Wall tunnels tour post.



From the last post:
Uncle Joe- You are right it is called Turkish salad. I had been calling it Turkey Salad as a joke and I guess when I was writing the post I just typed the wrong word. I had never heard of lip dubbing before I don't think I will be attending the event anyway. They do sing Hava Nagila here in Israel. I think it might have been one of the songs they taught us last summer but I don't remember.

N.T.- How busy the garden is at any given time is rather hit or miss. The weather has been nicer lately so there have been more people in the garden.  The garden is undergoing some renovations of its pathways and stone staircases so some days its too loud to sit in the garden.

There are several nice smelling flowers here. I love the plant I called lavender in my post titled So it's Spring Now. The bell shaped flowers above also have a nice scent. My favorite smelling flower was blooming back towards the middle of March and the start of April. They were little yellow flowers on a bush that was on the way to school. I never did get a picture of that one though. The national flower of Israel can be seen here.

The tower in the background of the desert garden picture is the Hebrew University tower. I'm not sure what is in the tower. It's one of the landmarks that you can use to oreint yourself when your down in the valley as it can be seen easily. It has also featured in a few other posts of mine I think I've mentioned it to help show where I am in relation to campus. I think it was in the post titled Misadventures in Israel when I was walking to the post office. I think the tower also appears in my post titled Geography of Jerusalem.

The corn chip Doritos in the last post do not taste any different that the ones in the states. However the other flavors of Doritos do taste a little different here they have more oil on them and sometimes you taste the oil more than the flavoring.

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.

May Flowers

Today I have a long break between the end of modern Hebrew and the start of Archaeology. So I decided to eat lunch out in the garden. Since it was such a pretty day I decided I would wander around and take some pictures. To my surprise I had a furry friend join me in my walk through the garden today. I think she was with the tour group of students that were touring the garden but she found following me more fun.

As usual I don't know the names of most of these plants. The garden is a great opportunity to practice my photography skills.  Its also a great opportunity to practice my avoiding the buzzing bees/ other nasty bugs skills. :)

I loved the color of these flowers. This one was taken with the closeup mode on my camera.

These are the benches next to the tombs from previous posts about the garden. I like that they have let the flowers grow on the steps. I think these flowers are snap dragons but I'm not sure.

These look like peppers. I wonder if they are?

And here we have the one of the greenhouses in the garden.

And now for a little humor. When I went home in February for winter break I got a Mac for a late Christmas present. I started to put some of my photos into the iphoto application. Iphoto is smart and can be taught to recognize faces. I forgot I had a few pictures of the paintings of Jesus from the Holy Sepulchre. My Mac quickly caught on "Is this Jesus?" Yes Mac, yes it is.  I laughed for a good ten minutes over this. My Mac knows Jesus!






That's all I've got for today.  I hope you enjoyed the flowers.

So its Spring now

Wow I haven't posted in a while and midterms are next week. Grad school is difficult for me and as always school comes before the blog. I have several posts planned in my head I just haven't had the time to write them down. Next week starts midterm exams so we are already halfway through the semester and I haven't even posted about what classes I'm taking. So first things first my schedule for this semester:
Monday 8:30-10:00 Modern Hebrew
10:30-12:00- History of Israel and Judah through the Assyrian Sources
12:30-2:00 Biblical Hebrew
4:30-7:00 Akkadian
Tuesday 8:30-12:00 Modern Hebrew
6:30-8:00 Archaeology
Wednesday No classes
Thursday 8:30-12:00 Modern Hebrew
12:30-2 Biblical Hebrew
4:30-7 Akkadian
As you can see some of the classes did not change from last semester. The Archaeology class this semester is taught by Dr. Ben-Ami however this class does not include tours. Dr. Ben-Ami did say that we would have one day of excavations in the City of David! I'm really looking forward to that. The History of Israel and Judah through the Assyrian sources is particularly enlightening. In that class we are discussing the book of Kings in the bible. We compare the information in kings about a certain ruler then check the sources we have from the Assyrian empire at the time. In some cases we are able to fill in more information that the writer of kings left out. Sometimes the sources add more information that we wouldn't otherwise know. Not all of the kings are also mentioned in the Assyrian sources but the ones that are mentioned are interesting. The text book for that class is called The Raging Torrent by Dr. Mordechai Cogan who is also my professor. I love the title if I just told you the title I bet you would never guess its a history book.

I want to mention a Jewish holiday that I had March 20th and 21st off from school. This holiday was called Purim. I had heard of Purim before coming to Israel but I didn't know it was a holiday still celebrated today. Purim celebrates the deliverance of the Jewish people from the Persian Empire more specifically Haman. The book of Esther is read and people cheer when Mordechai and Esther are mentioned and boo and the name of Haman. Traditionally people dressed up as Mordechai and Queen Esther but these days Purim is more like Halloween with all the different costumes. I think candy is given out based on the candy displays that appeared in the grocery store before the holiday but there is no treat or treating that I know of. I don't have any pictures of the holiday because I used the days off to write a paper.

Earlier today I was on campus for a seminar by the Accordance Bible software company to learn how to use my new software. The campus is mostly closed down on Friday so I was rather eerie walking through the abandoned hallways and closed down cafes. After the seminar was finished I wandered around campus taking some pictures. It was easier with no one that would look at me strangely for taking pictures. I was mainly taking artsy pictures of plants. There are some very interesting looking plants on campus and I have no idea what they are called.




This was more impressive looking earlier in the semester now it's a little wilted.















This is a view of the pathway that runs through the middle of campus.



















I'm rather proud of this picture. I managed to capture a bee on the flower. I got away without being stung by the other bees in the area.














I believe this one is lavender. I love the color. This was a brief tour of the plants around campus. I haven't taken pictures of the plants in the botanical garden yet. I'm planning to do that soon.


Earlier today there was an earthquake off the coast of Greece. We felt a little tremor here too. The building shook for a few seconds. A few minutes later Claire came in to ask if I had felt the building shake too. I was tempted to look puzzled and say no, but I admitted I had felt the building shake too. :)