akrish

I’m going to continue again from the last post, but as I mentioned here, I skipped several weeks that I promise to get back to. I’ll try to get to writing about the middle bit of my trip over the next couple of weeks.

I’m at home now. I got back two days ago and have been pretty busy or sleeping since then so I haven’t really had time to write anything. It’s really great to be home, I’ve got to spend time with some of my friends and my family and I’ve been playing a lot of guitar because I really missed it in Tel Aviv.

My departure from Israel was sad, but also very characteristic of my trip. The day before I left, Jake and I went to Yafo in the morning (yup we took off the morning) and got hummus at Abu Hassan for breakfast. This was my third trip to Abu Hassan and every time I go there it is simply amazing. One of things I will miss the most about Israel is all of the delicious foods.

That evening I went out for dinner with my lab at this cafe on the pier and that was really great. I had some really good shakshuka. Maybe you can tell that food was a defining factor of my trip… That night I hung out with Jake and some of my friends and unfortunately had to say goodbye to them.

The day of my departure was pretty uneventful. I went to work, didn’t really have too much to do (it was my last day after all) but I showed Igor some of the results of my work and they looked okay. After work, I finished packing, said goodbye to Jake, and Mukul helped me take my stuff downstairs and catch a taxi.

As usual, I started chatting with the taxi driver and he was really cool. We talked for the entire trip to the airport about India, Bulgaria (his country of origin), Israel, traveling, girls, college, languages and everything in between. He was one of the best cabbies of my trip, and it was a great way to end the trip.

After the tedium of airport security I finally boarded the plane from Tel Aviv to Atlanta, Georgia. I sat next to an Israeli-American woman from Palo Alto, and we talked for a decent amount of the plane ride about a hodgepodge of topics ranging from Israeli supermarkets in the south bay to computer science. This was another really pleasant encounter with a stranger, which I really enjoy (see this for why). So the flight went okay and Atlanta was pretty uneventful. The second flight from Atlanta to California was a little depressing because I stopped hearing Hebrew and English had definitely become the default language.

I landed in California, got my bags and my mom was waiting for me outside of the terminal. We drove home and that’s the end of this story!

As I mentioned I do plan on writing more about Israel, especially the middle part that I’ve completely left out, and I’m starting to think I’ll also write something about my parting thoughts on the summer. I’m leaving for Bali tonight and I don’t plan on spending time at a computer there, so this will be my last post for two weeks or so.

So we’re going to skip forward quite a bit in my israel trip to today. I promise to go back and write about the rest of my trip, which was arguably the best part. But now, lets jump to today…

I have 7 days left (by now it’s more like 6). I generally have very mixed feelings about leaving Israel. Part of me really likes everything about being here, except for my dormitory. I have a solid group of friends, I have a great, stimulating job, I get to play ultimate, go to the beach, eat amazing food, you name it. This part of me is really sad to leave.

The other part of me is really excited to go home. I haven’t seen my parents for almost 9 weeks and I haven’t seen my brother for even longer (I think I last saw him in January… ridiculous). Of course I also miss a lot of my friends from home and from college and I’m excited to see everyone. My parents would love to hear me admit this, but I actually miss home-made indian food, though I’m sure I’ll still complain about it when I get home.

So last night I took part in a ultimate game between the two teams in Tel Aviv. In my time here, I’ve gotten to know many players from both teams pretty well, and yesterday I had to say goodbye to many of them, because I’m not sure if I’ll be able to play ultimate again before I leave. And it made me pretty sad. I really liked a lot of the people who I played ultimate with, and unless I come back to Israel or they come to the US, it’s very unlikely that we’ll see each other again.

Fortunately, I did get contact information for many of them, and I plan to keep in touch, but it’s definitely not the same as hanging out or playing ultimate together. I do have a reason to come back though.

And as my time here quickly runs out, I’ll have to say more and more goodbyes to some really great people. I really wish I could spend more time with them before we have to part ways…

Ok wow this post and the previous one were probably really depressing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not moping around and wasting my last days, I’m “living it up”: doing as much as I can, eating great food, hanging out with my friends and making sure I take advantage of being here. But I do think about the depressing stuff every once in awhile.

Oh yeah, one more reason I’m excited to go home. I’m going almost directly to Bali for a solid week and a half of vacation!

Wow so I wanted to write about my adventures in Israel every week but that totally has not happened. I’m thinking that this is probably a good thing, because it means I’ve been too busy to find time to write in the past couple of weeks. So, what exactly have I been up to? Unfortunately, since I’ve been up to a lot, this post will only cover really one experience.

When we left off I had just recovered from being sick and miserable, and was starting to have a good time with the friends that I’ve made here. I was planning a trip to the Sea of Galilee and I was really excited to see more of Israel.

I didn’t end up going to the Sea of Galilee, but instead went north to Rosh Hanikra and Akko. Rosh Hanikra is a kind of “natural wonder” right on the border between Israel and Lebanon. The Mediterranean Sea has carved these grottos into the cliff wall and you can walk into them and explore these really cool caves (check out some of my pictures pictures). Akko is also a pretty interesting place; it’s a town at the across the bay from Haifa that was used as a kind of fortress during the crusader period. It was also occupied by the Ottomans, so there are a bunch of artifacts from that period too (pictures).

I took a day off of work, because it’s much easier to travel on weekdays than on weekends here, and took a train from Tel Aviv University to Naharriya, one of the northern-most coastal towns. From here I needed to take a bus to Rosh Hanikra, which is about 10km north of Naharriya. Naturally, I didn’t really know how to do this, so I asked a couple of people and they told me to wait at this bus stop. I waited and waited, and buses passed by, but none of them were going to Rosh Hanikra. Eventually, this taxi stopped and asked me where I was going and said he’d take me to Rosh Hanikra. The taxi, although it looked like a normal taxi, was some kind of shared-taxi. He stopped at all of the bus stops and picked up one or two people, and dropped them wherever they wanted to go. I guess it was good because it was much cheaper than a regular taxi.

Anyway, he dropped me at Rosh Hanikra and I went to go ask about admission tickets (It’s kind of a touristy place so of course you have to pay to see the grottos). You take this cable car down from the top of the cliff to where the grottos are and on the cable car I met a bunch of South African high schoolers, who were on some sort of summer trip through Israel. Their “chaperone” was a college student so I hung out with him and his group for a bit before parting ways and wandering around on my own through the grottos. Of course the grottos were really impressive, but it’s hard to capture that in words, so check out my pictures instead.

After wandering around, I took the cable car back up to the top of the cliff and asked about how to get back to Naharriya. Everyone I asked didn’t really seem to know how, so I kind of started freaking out, but one person told me to go wait at the bus stop and a bus would eventually show up. This was still pretty worrisome as I wanted to get to Akko in time for lunch, and it was already approaching noon. There were around 20 army girls waiting at the bus station, apparently also going back to Naharriya, so I started talking to them asking about how they were getting into town. They had called a sherut (a different kind of shared taxi) and invited me to come along with them. Long story short, I met a bunch of army girls and made it to Akko in time for lunch.

Akko was pretty interesting, but not as incredible as I imagined it would be. On the plus side, the markets were really cool, and there were some interesting artifacts from the crusader and ottoman times. I had heard that there was this amazing hummus place in the Akko market so that was my first stop for lunch. These hummus places are funny, because if your party doesn’t fill up a table, they’ll sit other people with you. I was by myself, so I was seated with a German girl and a Mexican guy, who are studying in England. So we ate lunch together and it was pretty fun, they were both interesting people and had some good stories. In retrospect I really like the policy of sitting you with other people because it makes you’re meal a lot more social. And of course, lunch was amazing; seriously it was probably the best hummus I’ve ever eaten, on par (or better than) Abu Hassan in Yafo.

After lunch, I wandered around the old city, saw the harbor, some of the mosques, the sea wall, and many of the tourist attractions. I also wandered around the market a bit and got to see all of the colorful spice stands and experience some amazing smells from food stands. Afterwards, I wanted to go see the Knight’s Hall (where the Templar’s lived during the Crusades) and ran into this French guy who was literally motorcycling the mediterranean (from Algeria back to France). We hung out together and saw the Knight’s Hall and walked through the market again and then parted ways but he was a really cool guy. As for all of the things I saw, just check out my pictures.

As I was leaving, I walked through the market one last time and met an Arab-Israeli who was trying to buy some fish. He also was really friendly and I walked with him and watched him bargain for fish (which was really entertaining). He invited me to lunch, but as I was still really full from my earlier meal and politely declined. Finally, on my way out I ran into the South African kids again and walked with them for a bit. Then I got on a train from Akko back to Tel Aviv University, took the bus back to my dorm and pretty much just passed out. It was a long, busy day, but totally worth it.

One thing I really liked about this day in particular (and most of my time in Israel) is that you meet a lot of random people and all of them are really interesting. Maybe it’s partly me becoming more engaging with strangers, but I find that here I interact with “strangers” a lot more and consequently get to see new perspectives and learn about cool places and things to do. Like on this trip, I met and hung out with the South Africans, shared a taxi with some Israeli soldiers, had lunch with the Mexican and German, explored Akko with the French guy, and wandered the market with an Arab-Israeli. I cannot imagine meeting such a diverse group of people at school, and this is definitely something I’m going to miss about being here.

Definitely this wouldn’t have happened had I been with a big group, which is part of why I really like being here by myself. I’ve made a completely new group of friends, and we’re a small enough group that we still interact with new people. I think if I were here with a bunch of friends then I wouldn’t have met a lot of the people that I did, and consequently I would have missed out on a bunch of great stories and experiences.

So despite planning to spend the day by myself, I met some great people and had good company throughout my trip. I ate good food, saw some pretty spectacular things, met interesting people, and of course, skipped a day of work!

So I took this day-trip the week after I wrote my last post. A lot of time has passed since then so I still owe you many more stories. Work has been keeping me pretty busy but I’ll see if I can find some time to write more during this coming week.

It’s been awhile since I wrote about Israel and what I’m up to so here goes…

If you read my last post about Israel, you’d know that I played in an ultimate tournament, met a bunch of people through ultimate and have been having a generally good time. So that was two weeks ago (the week of June 14-18th) and yeah that week was pretty awesome. I hung out a lot with people I had met through ultimate and had a lot of stuff to do.

That wednesday, I hung out with my friend Steve, and in part of our hanging out we went to a Falafel stand in town. Now this is ordinarily uneventful news, except on Thursday night, I went to play ultimate with a local team and got dropped off pretty close to my house, but I was so weak that I could barely make it up to my room. Fortunately, the next day was Friday (the weekend), so I spent that day pretty much sleeping. I think I slept like 18+ hours on Friday alone.

Turns out I got food poisoning. I’m pretty sure it was from the falafel, because that was the only out-of-the-ordinary thing I had eaten that whole week. So Friday I was really miserable but managed to sleep a lot and I felt quite a bit better by the next day. On Saturday, a family that I know here offered to pick me up and let me get better at their house. They called a doctor who, although he barely spoke english, managed to diagnose me and prescribed me some antibiotics. I spent the day and night at my friends’ house and they really took good care of me.

I took Sunday off, but I was feeling much better and moved back to my room. I decided to go to work on Monday. From then on the week was fairly uneventful, work had its share of ups and downs; there were times when I didn’t really have anything to do, and there were times when there was tons of interesting work to do. This coming week, Igor (the grad student who I am working with) and Professor Shamir will be away at a conference, so they gave me a bunch of stuff to do that should keep me busy.

Other than that, during the week, I really didn’t do much. I was still a bit shaken up from being sick and didn’t want to push myself and get worse. I pretty much hung out in my dormitory and kept myself busy.

Yesterday though, I went into town with Jake, my neighbor who is pretty much doing the same thing as I am in Israel. We wandered around for awhile and found a place to eat when my friend Jesse (from ultimate) called and said he was having a barbeque and invited us to stop by. It turned out the place we were eating was directly under his apartment so we ate and headed up to his place. The barbeque was awesome, I met a bunch of naturally english speaking med students, ate some really good food, and had a great time hanging out on Jesse’s roof.

And today, I went into Jaffo with two of my friends, went to an amazing hummus place, wandered around the flea market and then went to the beach. The beach was relaxing and I’m disappointed that I haven’t been spending more time there. I guess it wouldn’t be as much fun if you go by yourself, but now that I have friends to hang out with, I think I will be taking advantage of the beach that’s 10 minutes away!

So the last couple of days have been pretty jam-packed and fun, but the week preceding was horrible. And of course things are exaggerated because I was sick, but I think I’m going to have my ups and downs here. There’ll be times when I have a bunch of stuff to do and will barely realize I’m away from home, and there’ll be times when I’m just dying to fly back to the states. There seems to be an inverse correlation between how social I am and how much I want to go home. When I was sick and couldn’t hang out with people, I really just wanted summer to end and to go home. But these past couple of days, I’ve been kind of sad that I only have a couple of weeks left here.

And that’s the last couple of weeks. Up next, I’m working tomorrow so that I can take Wednesday off and go travel to the the Sea of Galilee. And I’m also planning a trip to Petra in Jordan, which is supposed to be amazing. Stay tuned!

I wanted to write about israel about once a week, but this past weekend was really busy (read on for why) so I didn’t get around to it. Plus my weeks have been pretty uneventful (until now…) so there wasn’t much to write about.

So last week (week 2 of work) was, as mentioned, pretty uneventful. I’ve gotten used to going to work in the morning, spending most of my day there, coming home and working, watching tv, or otherwise passing time at night. In my previous post, I commented that the dormitory isn’t a very social place and that definitely still holds. In fact, now that I’ve stopped trying to be social, it’s become even more so. Thus, I typically come home, make some dinner, and head to the lounge where I do work, watch tv (online), or otherwise waste time on my computer. So usually life is just that.

Last Tuesday, I went to play ultimate with the Holy Landers, one of the few teams in Israel. We “practiced” in a town called Rishon, a bit South of Tel Aviv, so I got a ride from one of the players. Practice was really fun, it was good to get back into playing again. I also met a bunch of people from the states, who have been playing ultimate for years and are quite good.

I’ll get back to what I did on Friday, but on Saturday I participated in a Hat Tournament at the nearby Hayarkon Park. The tournament was very different from the tournaments I’d been to, in that teams were created on the spot (I guess that’s how hat tournaments work) and the games were very relaxed. There were two “divisions,” a youth division and an everyone else division. I was amazed that the youth division had like 25 people and the adult division had around 50. People came from all over Israel, but I definitely did not expect to see such a good turnout. There were 5 teams in my division and consequently I got to play 4 games.

Apart from the ultimate, which was pretty awesome, the tournament was a great chance for me to meet a lot of different people here. I met some of the kids, some other natives, and a lot of people who are originally from the states or other english speaking places like Canada and New Zealand. Since the tournament, I’ve been hanging out with many of these people, and I think they will be my core group of friends during my stay.

Even at school, ultimate was my way to meet people and branch out from my existing group and I felt that this year was a lot more interesting because of ultimate. Now in Israel, ultimate is again a really great social tool. Since I’m not really in a happening place, and since my living environment isn’t that social, I’m relying on ultimate to kick-start my social life and so far it’s working. How ironic is it that I just met someone from the states in my dorm, and he seems pretty cool.

So this week, I was supposed to play ultimate yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and practices got cancelled so I went to throw with a couple of the people that live “close” to me. And it’s definitely good to get out of the dorm and to go around town and stuff. Tomorrow, hopefully I’m going to go into Tel Aviv to hang out with someone else from ultimate. So life is good this week. I’m actually pretty busy and unable to deal with the minor crisis of choosing what I want to study in grad school.

In other news, on Friday I went to Haifa to see the Baha’i Garden. The gardens were amazing and Haifa seems like a really cool town. I only wish I could have spent more time there, but it was Friday, and everything stops/closes early to prepare for Shabbat, including the trains. I took a bunch of pictures but I don’t have any more space in my Flickr account until August. As soon as I get space, I’ll upload them.

Work is also going pretty well. I’m still working on the same project, but basically we are happy with how fast things are running and are now looking at improving “correctness” of the results. By correctness I really mean, massaging our algorithms to spit out solutions that are biologically significant. We are also trying to make the algorithms find similar quality solutions. So this week I’m mostly generating a bunch of statistics and analyzing them so we can figure out how to move forward.

I mentioned this mid-life crisis I’m having and it’s pretty serious. I plan to apply for graduate schools in the fall, but I don’t really know what area I want to focus in. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and researching about it and I think it merits its own post (I’ve noticed myself saying this a lot recently…).

Finally, some food related things: croissants here are really good, I’ve been eating a lot of them. I also went to a really good hummus place with some ultimate players after the hat tournament. It was a small place, near the harbor, and unfortunately I don’t remember the name, but their hummus was excellent. In haifa, I ate at a really good cafe near the entrance to the Baha’i Garden, where I got a mozzarella, pesto sandwich and a salad. The sandwich was one of the better ones of that kind that I’ve had.

In summary, things have really picked up here. I’m really glad that I play ultimate, and that it’s a pretty big thing here too.