Catching Up

Hey everyone!

I’m back in Israel, and have been since the first of October. I got back after a wonderful, relaxing vacation in Konstanz. I promptly came down with a cold when I arrived and spent the first few days sick in bed.

The most depressing thing about the situation is that there was no one here. After the Ulpan ended everyone took off. So I was bored, sick and lonely.

I slowly got better and on the first Sunday of the month I went and met with the professor I am doing my internship for. Since I was still feeling a little under the weather we agreed that I would come and start the following morning.

I worked all of about two days. In those two days the extent of my achievement was the successful installation of a program on my computer. Doesn’t sound like much, but this is a very specific piece of software used for a very specific type of problem in nonlinear dynamics. As such, the documentation is horrible and the amount of information to be found on the internet leaves one wanting.

I then had two weeks of vacation. That Thursday was Yom Kippur, which is one of the most important Jewish holidays. Because the Jews are not allowed to use any electronics or any sophisticated technology the streets are empty. This means that the streets of Tel Aviv are then filled with cyclists, especially little kids, and just about everybody else. I joined in the fun and walked down the main highway into town and back.

That night one of my roommates, Joe, got back. It was actually a surprise for me, because I wasn’t expecting anybody for over a week. I spent the next couple of days trying to stay sane. A little over a week ago Felix also got back. With the three of us here, and one more week of nothing to do remaining, we decided to rent a car and go to the Golan Heights.

The trip was amazing, and will be the subject of my next five posts. My plan is to do a post a day, each post describing what we did that day along with pictures. I am doing it like this because there is a lot to tell, and a lot of pictures to sort through.

Tomorrow I’ll post about the first day of the trip. We saw Nazareth and went on to Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that I had a few visitors while I was alone:

The first cockroach I found in our appartment