The past few weeks at MEET

I wanted to write a little bit about my students and cultural things that I've learned while chillin. First, I'd like to introduce to the best recitation on earth, recitation 1:


From left to right is Rand, Dana, Dror, Issa, Zahi, Mais, Rachel, and Ghadeer. Missing from the picture is Amir. We got both animations to work in the lightning project, did all of the Outdoor Training Day (ODT) challenges, including a zip line, rappelling, and 8 queens problem (the only group to do it), and invisible stones problem. and got fastest time in the touch all the numbers without talking game. You could say that we swept gold at the Recitation Olympics. You could say that.

For some photos of our ODT escapades:
http://people.csail.mit.edu/bps/7:18:07/

We're the best.

Now onto stories.

First, for those who think that the kids are somehow different and crazier than American kids and if you put israeli's and palestinians together they'll kill each other, let's go over last night visiting them for dinner at sbarro's, and seeing where the out-of-town kids live at the YMCA. First at dinner, when I get there, they've already found the huge thing of straws, so spit balls are flying everywhere. After awhile a group of them gets bored, which leads to an arm wrestling contest (I did not compete and was called a chicken. Yes, they did the arm thing too.), and an old lady yelling at us for being too loud.

Next we went to the YMCA, which is by far the nicest YMCA I have ever seen, it's more like an above average hotel, and better than the apartment where we stay. In one room was the pillow fight room. I was told to enter at my own risk. In it were a bunch of sweating guys (they were all palestinian) beating the crap out of each other with pillow. Apparently they do this every night. I watching this for awhile, and laughed at them.

In the other room was of course, truth or dare. Well, kind of. And also spin the bottle. They spin a bottle to find out who has to do the truth or dare, and who has to give give them the truth or dare. Durring this I found out how well a student can dance to a Pussycat Dolls song, which female instructor was the best looking, and which year 1 female a student would save if on a sinking ship. Oh, and a guy put a lamp shade over his head and then everyone hit him.

All in all, if I were 15 and living with 25 kids my age in a hotel, I would be acting in the EXACT same way, except I would have been too afraid to dance to the Pussycat Dolls.

Next Story

You know how when you're in an airport you have to keep your bags by you at the same time, otherwise they treat it like a bomb? Well, in israel, it's like that in any public place, anywhere. you never leave your bag anywhere, or they will call a bomb squad in and blow up your bag. Seriously. And you never leave your name in your bag in any way, because if they blow it up and then find your name, they find you and make you pay for the bomb squad comming to blow up your bag, which is a real double whammy. Israel is serious about security. Have I mentioned that you have to go through a metal detector to get into hebrew university and that the guards have machine guns? Well, now I have.

Next Story

We watched Ocean's 13 with the YMCA kids last week, and there is a part where there is a strike in mexico and they throw molitov cocktails. A palestinian student noted "I remember when we used to throw those at the soldiers." After further prodding he admitted that he was too young and it was the older kids that through them, but that he had seen them throw them. Yikes!

Next Story

When the YMCA kids come from out of town they have to go through checkpoints in the west bank. Their bags got held up there and they went through so that they could make it to our 9 am start. Zahi, one of my students made a sarcastic comment that, "it's my fault, I left all my bombs in my bag." I acted a little surprised and he said again, "but seriously, I always forget to take them out of my bag." I thought this sarcasm was really hilarious and well above the maturity of a 15 year old to make a joke like that. Some might be offended by a comment like that, but I am a sarcastic ass so I got a good chuckle.

Next Story

Hummus and pita is completely delicious and I have so much of it I can't really explain it well. I'm definitely starting to gain weight and it'll be a good thing for my health that I leave in 10 days or so.

Next Story

I developed this breakfast sandwich that is a version of my roomate Ted's ramrod special. I call my sandwich the "Brennan Sherry Special Middle Eastern Breakfast Ramrod Sandwich". Now admittedly you don't have to use a ramrod (any utensil to push ingredients into a pita), but no matter. I'm still putting it in the same family. It's 2 hard boiled eggs, hummus, cheese, and chopped up cucumber in a toasted pita. It's completely delicious, nutritious, and makes me happy sitting on my patio watching the sun come up.

Next Story

Living with 8 people who I did not know beforehand and working together with them so that for pretty much every waking moment we are together makes me understand that Real World is actually pretty damn realistic.

Next Story

I can't find a god damn apartment in the palo alto area. If anyone has any place they know of please let me know. This isn't actually a story, and I'm ending with it.

The negev desert

I'd first like to start off with correction. In a past post I discussed how a palestinian student had told me that in the west bank there was no voicemail or internet on mobile phones. After speaking with some other students, I no longer think this is the case, and have no idea why he told me that. I didn't really want to pester him about it and thought I would just let it be.

Last weekend all the instructors went out to the negev desert to offroad and camp under the desert stars with two of MEET's directors, Amir and Asaf. I'd like to thank the lovely people at Mitsubishi for their gracious donation of 3 trucks and 1 jeep for our adventure. Here we are starting off, Dan behind the wheel, Ted and Aline in the back:



Oh yea, it's on. So we drive for awhile, we take a wrong turn and we can't U-turn forever, it get's a little bit hot and barren. As Dan said repeatedly throughout our trip "Here we go!" in the voice of mario in mario kart for N64.


Hmmmm, getting to be a bit desert-like.


Unfortunately I can't think of a "Why did the camel cross the road" joke that is either sufficiently good or bad to fit my tastes.


desert-like indeed.


It's official, we're in the desert.


If an israeli tank breaks down, they just leave it there I guess. After all, who cares about the desert?????




Meet the bedouin and his camels who live, and care deeply about, the desert. They are nomadic people by nature who are resistant to living in single spot. Israel has tried to build towns for them to improve their education and health, and while some have, others are still resistant.

Once we got to off-roading (I should mention that I have never off-roaded, but am so down to do it because of how X-treme I am) the scenes really open up. I won't give a desciption.







Only the most rugged men can hike through this rough terrain. GRRRR!




All of the paths that we went alongs are maintained by a group in israel that is basically like the boy/girl scouts. While they did a very good job, we still got quite lost got to our campsite quite late. It didn't matter much thought because we already had some marinated chicken kebab and steak to cook up, as well as a lot of hummus and vegtables. After the sun set, it did turn out that the stars are quite the site because we were in a crater that blocked out outside light, and there was very little light pollution to begin with. I'd descibe further but I don't think I'd do a good job, I don't have any pictures to go with it, and I just don't think it would be entertaining.

Here's something interesting with pictures. These are pictures of nebatean fortresses and the trading paths that they made which went from the east as far as china all the way to the mediterannean. All of this was pre-roman times.





After two days in the desert, we went to the dead sea, the lowest point of land on earth. It is completely saturated with salt, and you float in it all the time. Any cuts you have on your body really hurt and you can't put your head under the water because it hurts your eyes. The water and air are so salty that many old people go here because it helps any skin problems that they might have. The first picture of Josh floating on his back and some other shots of the dead sea. Across the sea is Jordan. You'll see on the bottom picture there are dividers that separate sections of the dead sea. This has been done because the water level keeps dropping and so they have cut off the southern section and allowed it to dry while keeping the rest of the dead sea at a more acceptable level. There is a plan in place to make a pipeline from I believe the red sea to the dead sea, and since the dead sea is below sea level it would flow without power and they could actually use to to make power.





To finish, I'd like to make a few small points. First, I'd like to apologize for the lameness of this post for those who like me cracking jokes. While the desert was interesting, it wasn't didn't have as much comedy.

Also, I'd like to say how bad blogging on blogspot is. Specifically, adding pictures takes much much too long, and they only show up at the top of the page and then you have to copy and past them. Furthermore, vertical pictures that I save as a vertical picture on my computer still show up as horizontal, and I don't know what to do about this. At this point I've done more than half my posts here so I think it would be too much of a hassle to switch so I'll jus stick with it, but it sucks.

Jaffa and the past week

these days are starting to be very busy and go by very quickly. I've feel like I've been under a lot of stress and haven't had time for much of anything. Talking to mother has been tough to do, and I have a big project to finish up for next tuesday. I think given all the circumstances the correct phrase to say now is "oy vey", but I refuse.

Moving on, the other part of last weekends trip to tel aviv was a tour of Jaffa from a former israeli soldier who usually only does tours for VIP groups like diplomats and the like. He's also missing half of his thumb for an unknown reason, so he immidiately had my respect (or at least I was scared of him a little bit). He was actually a great storyteller and brought us all around the city of Jaffa, which is now an arab city next to tel aviv (well, it's actually been absorbed now into tel aviv so I guess is a neighborhood), but was for centuries the major port to come through from the mediterannean to travel into the middle east. After telling us some greek mythology stories, he then took us around to tell us some stories about how much turkish influence there is both in the city and around the middle east from the ottoman empire's rule for a few hundred years.

First he described during lunch about the ottoman armies using the pita and the kebab and spreading both foods all over the region. They'd often be in places with almost no water, so having the ability to put your mean right on your sword and hold it over the fire meant that you had no pots and such to cook. You could then just wrap it in a pita and eat it like that. This way you had no dishes or silverware, and no food got on your hands because you used the pita to grab anything. I thought this was interesting.

As we were walking around we saw a few mosques. Now to be honest, one of these pictures is the main mosque of Jaffa, although I'm not sure which, and it could be both. Similar to the syndrome where people of one race can't tell the differences between the facial features of another race, as I catholic I can't tell the difference between mosques. they all lookt he same to me. Seriously.




He then took us to the gates to the city of old Jaffa. The first picture is the area which was just outside the gates. As Joel described it, this was one of the things you could always count on in an ottoman city. In front of the gates, there stood an arch with running water coming in for travelers and visitors to clean themselves off. You can't really see it in the picture, but there is a very small hole at the bottom where water would run.



Next we saw the actual gates, which you can see here. It was 2 separate gates with space in between. Joel told us that in between the two gates the tax collector would collect money from both visiting caravans as well as from peasants paying their rent on the land. Peasants would never be allowed actually into the city so they were never aware of the opulent lifestyle the people on the inside were living. This double gate also acted as a second level of defense if attacked.




He also described to us all the old fashioned technologies that were used to keep houses cool in such a hot climate. As you've probably often seen, houses in the middle east are made with a dome. This is because heat rises and as long as people stayed low it was much cooler. I think this may also be why when middle easterns sit to eat they sit on the ground and not in a chair. Also Joel showed us houses with small pipes going into the house which would cool the house if any wind blew into them. He didn't tell us how it actually cooled the air, but we thought about two ways. The first is that the clay used to make the walls is very thick and the inside of it is very cool and as the air goes by it gets cooled. Also the pipes could get smaller as the go into the house, thus forcing more pressure and making it blow into the house faster. Here is a picture of this cooling strategy.



Here's another ottoman arch. I thought I'd just throw it up.


As we walked around further we went into what I think was an artist village or something based on all the art stores I saw. We also saw this piece of art which I thought was interesting.


It's a tree growing out of like a huge clay ball filled with soil which is completely suspeded by wires. It's supposed to represent the nation of israel finally growing up. Or something like that. I kinda zoned out right there. Speaking of zoning out, here's a picture of an archeological find. A long time ago, something happened here. That's all I got for you.



He then took us to a high point in Jaffa where we could see the skyline of tel aviv running along the beach. I feel like it could be miami from afar.


Here is also some ancient structure that was up there that is supposed to represent something. I think it's christian. It was remade for our viewing pleasure.



We also got a long story about why the people of israel respect the late King Hussein of Jordan, and I debated writing about it, but I'm not going to.

One more thing that I'll mention about Jaffa. You know as you're going into Jaffa because the you notice the city getting much more run down. I don't want to harp on this, and especially in this case Israel may have nothing to do with it, but the Arab city connected to a very modern city (Tel Aviv) seems very run down with empty buildings, small shops, and much more dirty. I don't really want to talk about this any more, but it's noticable.

And so ends my Tel Aviv/Jaffa experience. I hope to go back before I leave. Oh, and here is a picture of Christine wearing a green dress, sitting on a green chair on top of a green pedestal. She is one crazy bitch.



This week at MEET

This week in the program was another wild one that absolutely flew by, but I wanted to share a few stories.

First of all, people here don't drink chocolate milk out off a carton.....OK, after a few minutes of settling down, I hope you're ok to continue reading. They drink it out of a plastic bag, seen here:



I made my first student friends by asking them what these were and how I even drink them, and they thought it was hilarious that I didn't know. Just for your future travel knowledge, you bite off a corner and then suck it in. It is extremely dangerous and of course got chocoloate milk on my white shirt and then cleaned it off in the bathroom and basically was doing a wet t-shirt contest for an entire morning.

Also, it was a girls birthday this comming saturday and so some kids were singing happy birthday to her. I sang the "you look like a monkey and smell like one too" version, and the kids had all never heard this and acted like it was comic gold. I have not used that song as a joke in at least 15 years. They also thought the "high five, down low, too slow" prank/rhyme was great. This makes me realize that pretty much any joke involving an english rhyme they probably never learned about in school and will think it's hilarious. If anyone has any other ideas of stuff I could use I would love to drop it on them. I also wish I had a doctor suess book because I bet they would find that stuff pretty creative and funny.

I have a really tough time telling palestinian and israeli kids apart, especially because there are many palestinians who are much lighters skinned than I thought they would be. However, a very easy way to tell a palestinian from an israeli: israeli's will hug hello and good bye to good friends, and palestinians high five. This seems to be a pretty strict rule.

I got a free lunch from MEET every day this week. (free meal count: 16.5) Also, the Falaffel at the cafeteria I think is delicious and is only 9 sheckels ($2.25) which is practically free, but I won't count that as a free meal. I also am not counting my daily free snacks in the morning and afternoon of chocolate milk in a bag, a pastry, or some fruit. But I most certainly get my money's worth out of it.

The first week of MEET ended with me presenting how to write methods in java. No one died. Great success! (Borat) The students also filled out some surveys about how they think the program is going. I have never seen such an abomination of English spelling. (and yes, I am including this blog.) Granted they are 15 year olds who don’t speak English as their first language, but my name was spelled Brinon, that’s hilarious.

Tel Aviv vs Jerusalem

The weekend we spent 2 nights in tel aviv. A 45 minute drive from Jerusalem, the two cities could not be more different. For starters, the jews that live in each place are obviously very different. In Jerusalem you’ll see many unlta-orthadox jews who wear large hats and black suits all the time, and even more jews who wear a yarmulke of various sizes. When we were in Tel Aviv, it wasn’t until my second day that I saw anyone wearing even a yarmulke. We went out all night on Friday night during the Shabbat, and everything was open. By contrast, all of Jerusalem (west Jerusalem, I should say) shuts down for Shabbat. (see “Brennan vs. Shabbat” for further info)

Second, the climate is very different. Tel Aviv runs entirely along the Mediterranean sea, and as a result is very humid. (People say this is a contributing factor to…..how should I say this…..the overall lack of clothing in Tel Aviv.) Jerusalem, inland only 45 minutes, is much much drier. The Judea (and potentiallythe sumeria, but I’m no sure) mountains separating Jerusalem from the coast also probably contributes to the different climates.

The geographic layout of Tel Aviv is also very different from Jerusalem, as well as from any other city I’ve seen. Tel Aviv was all built in the past 100 years, and it shows that it was not built in any kind of old-style defensive way. By this I mean that they just looked at a beautiful beach that was a few miles long and said “let’s make a city right here”. For a city like Jerusalem, the thought seemed to be “let’s make a city on top of a mountain with really steep hills so horses and men will have a tough time running up, and we can shoot arrows down.” A city like boston the thought seemed to be, “there’s a lot of rivers coming from every direction and there is good cover from the ocean for a good port. It’s also in a weird egg-shape and has a rocky, freak-nasty coast line that’s really hard bring men onto in a random spot.” So with Tel Aviv, it’s very different. You’re always near the beach. And the beach, by the way, is magnificent. The water is very warm and clear, and there are decent waves. The sands slopes down very slowly into the water, and you can wade out for 100 or more feet.

Here is a shot of my view from my hotel my hotel room, as well as a picture of the beach which was about 50 yards from the door of our hotel.



In case you haven't noticed yet, but Middle Easterns don't really "do" clouds. It's just not what's done. It's also important to note the security that is in tel aviv, just like jerusalem. Here is a picture of the siren in our hallway that goes off when a bomb is coming into tel aviv. Seriously.

Tel Aviv Night Life

Here's a random picture of a place called the alcohome. We thought it was funny, and I really looked like a stupid tourist taking the picture.



I don’t see any better way of describing the night life other than to just tell what I did for the two night and throw in some comments along the way. We started out Thursday night by going out to dinner at about midnight. After that we headed out to kind of a fancy bar. I reminded me of a place I would see in new york, with prices simlar. Despising new york, I was happy when we left.

We then went to a place that I think is what gay clubs looks like in America. I guess the way to really describe it was that it was very European. Techno was blaring, there were some couches that were surrounded by cages, and there was a swinging chair hanging from the ceiling. Along with that were groups of guys dancing together all having a little bit too much fun, if you know what I mean. But you know what they say, "when in rome"……and that was my first homosexual encounter. Wait, no, that didn’t happen. But I do remember thinking “when in rome”, and so I had a few drinks, closed my eyes, pretended I was alone, and danced in a circle of guys that I had come with.

After that is was about 4:30 or so, and we tried to get into The Breakfast Club, which I think is known for being a best late night club in tel aviv. That night though however, we were a group of 7 guys all together, and I think the place was already packed. At all these places there had been no cover, but we were told here there would be a 50 sheckel cover ($12). While this is completely reasonable in the US, to Amir, who was bringing us around, it was unacceptable. I think most of us were also tired, so the idea of paying a cover on top of everything else wasn’t too appealing, so we retired to our hotel.

******WARNING: HATER ALERT******

I’d like to now discuss places that are “so awesome” for having bars that are open all night, places like new york, tel aviv, and probably a bunch of other cities, as well as places that “totally suck” for having bars that close at 2am. Let’s have a little look at the average night out in both boston and new york, I’ve spent summers living in both. In Boston, you go out to dinner at maybe 7, that goes until 9, and then you can have some casual drinks before really going out and your home by 2. Now lets talk about going out in nyc. You have dinner at 10, go out for casual drinks at midnight and then really go out, home around 4 or 5. Notice that the night lasted THE SAME AMOUNT OF TIME! (and note, this is when people and boston and new york go out to dinner. I didn’t just make those numbers up.) The only difference is that new yorkers have stayed out later. Now, there was a time in my life when I loved staying out late because it showed my parents that I was a grown up, just like them. I think I was 12. Then 11 years happened and I no longer feel the need to show anyone that I have the ability to stay out late. So I really don’t see what the big deal is, unless you do exctasy and go out from midnight till 8 am. Another caveat; I agree that it completely sucks that the T in boston only runs until 1 am so people can’t use public transport. That is horrible and nyc is definitely a better city for that.

*******END OF HATE****************

The next night the rest of the group had joined us, and after dinner and a desert at a chocolate bar (an interesting place) we began at the Breakfast Club at about midnight, the place we had failed to get into the night before. I would describe it as a standard techno club (apparently they were playing house techno, I have no idea about the differences). There was, however one interesting thing to note, and I noted it quite well. On a series of televisions above the bar was a 1970’s……well, it wasn’t a porn, it was more of a…..topless film? Basically it showed a lot of women topless running around, having a good time. There didn’t seem to be much of a plot other than “what might the topless girl do next?” mystery that had me on the edge of my seat. I spent the rest of the night pondering the artistic significance of the film. Wait, no, that didn’t happen either. Some of the group weren’t able to get into the Breakfast Club (you’ll notice I’m beginning to develope a theme about this place) and so we went to a lounge.

This new place was more open air and didn’t play as much techno. The crowd was a little younger and the music was more stuff that I had heard of, so I like it. They even played “gold digger”, however when the always famous line, “say we want prenup” I found myself the only one in the crowd yelling back “we want prenup!” God damn foreigners. Later on there was a rock song in Hebrew they all seemed to know. I had never heard of it. It was probably a stupid song. Later on in the night, “Gansters Paradise “ was played, and I had a flashback to my 6th grade middle school dances. It was wonderful.

We then tried for the third time to get into the Breakfast Club. While some of us got in, others were once again turned away being told that it is 27 and up, which is appalling and the woman just said it so we would go away. We then had a kid with a stamp on his wrist press it up against the wrist of kid who didn’t have a stamp, and it smudged off and he was able to get in. Totally MIT. After hanging out there for a while (it was absolutely bumping from 4-5) I ran out of money and went home. I then swam in the ocean as the sun came up at 6 am, which was lovely.

Looking back on my summary, my time out on the town may sound a little sucky. I feel like I mainly only mentioned that bad parts, because the good parts were just listening to music, drinking, and dancing, which aren’t really fun to describe. I did though have a very fun time, and combined with the beach is one of the most fun weekends I have ever had. The night life is really great and the women were “Very nice!” (Borat)

I’m going to stop here and give another blog post about our tour on Friday in Jaffa, as well as what’s been going on in the past few days in MEET.

There was a free lunch at MEET on Thursday, and on Friday morning I got a great free breakfast form the hotel. (picture seen below. Free food count: 11.5)

Some Anecdotes

I wanted to tell few stories about my first few days of classes, but first I have to do a little introduction of someone who’s very important to my life right now (and I know she reads the blog so she’ll love this.) Aline Lerner is my roommate and another instructor for meet. More importantly, after graduating from MIT in 2004 she worked as a chef for 2 years. Yes, a chef, so she can cook pretty much anything. And as I sat at the dinner table yesterday eating homemade chicken fried rice, I thought to myself, “this girl needs a shoutout!” Aline makes my world a better place.

Anyway, to the stories.

Several Palestinian girls wear a hejab about their heads. This is basically a thin scarf that covers their hair. This is not to be confused with a burka, which covers most of a womans face and all of their bodies. No one at MEET wears a burka. Anyways, a female instructor said in the bathroom a girl took off her hejab and had absolutely gorgeous hair that fell down to below her waste. It kind of makes sense since they never use any abrasive hair products and their hair is away from the sun all the time. I think it’s crazy that the girls have like beautiful hair, and I will just never see it. But I guess to show it is probably like a girl walking around topless in the US (which I still don’t understand why women aren’t ok with.)

Along those lines, I found the scene of 2 girls wearing a hejab listening to “smack that ass girl” (or whatever that song is called) on their phone to be pretty funny and kind of odd. This of course is a little ignorant of me to think that because something where’s something on their head they’ll act a certain way, but I’d like to remind everyone that I’m a white American male in my twenties, so I’m pretty sure there’s a law that allows me to be culturally close-minded.

For the first two weeks of the program we are working at a vocational school called ORT. The period bells which run for both the beginning and end of periods are atrociously loud synthesized music playing children’s songs like London bridge, happy birthday, and things like that. Generally they’ll play 2 and a half of these songs for each bell, lasting a half a minute or more. It’s really awful. When I made a comment to a student about how bad the bell is, he said, “I don’t know, this is pretty much the same bell we have in my school.” Wow.

As we were introducing ourselves in our recitation (small group of 10) I asked the students for what they want to get out of the MEET program, a talent that you have, and for their favorite ice cream.

1 student said he came to MEET because he wants to go to MIT, he heard this was taught by MIT students, and so thought it would be a good thing to put on his college application. I should mention that he’s 15. Wow, he’s gonna fit in great in America. At least he’s honest.

A girl said for a talent she was very good at French. She placed first second in her school in a French exam, and won a trip to Paris. She instead chose to do MEET. Some of these kids are dedicated.

Another student said that he had been to America and that his favorite ice cream was fried ice cream that he had had in America. None of the other students knew what that was, including the TA. I explained that it was ice cream that was breaded and then fried for short time. Everyone agreed, including the TA, that this sounded disgusting and they wanted no part of it.

This is my first ever july 4th away from America, and it’s pretty weird having to just go to work and act like it’s normal day. Obviously I’m not heartbroken that I can’t celebrate my beautiful nation’s independence in style, but still, I have gone to a fireworks show on this day for as long as I can remember. I didn’t mention it all day, but as the children we’re leaving I made an announcement. “On this day in 1776, America rid itself of the evil british. Happy independence day everyone.” That will be my celebration this year.

At lunch we all started discussing the iphone, which some had heard of and some hadn’t. One student was really interested in it, and thought it sounded cool when I talked about the features but basically said, “the 1 cell phone carrier in Palestine doesn’t have internet, so we couldn’t use that, and it doesn’t have voicemail, so we couldn’t use the voicemail feature either. It sounds cool but I don’t think there’s any reason for me to get it.”

Another student when we were playing basketball said that his father had what sounded like a very successful factory building industrial stone cutters. After the second intifada (1999), the factory shut down and he didn’t have work for 7 years. He finally left for yemen to start a factory there, leaving behind his wife and child.

As I’ve said before, I don’t think people in the US know the type of lives and the lack of infrastructure that the Palestinians have.

And I just thought of this point that I’d really like to make. Some people might say, “well if they stopped doing so much violence then Israel wouldn’t have to cripple them the way that they do.” There are areas all over the US with crime and violence. For instance if there is a bad neighborhood in the Bronx with lots of violence, I think the last thing people would say to do is clear out the area and do things that will hurt the already floundering economy in the area. Not only is it counterproductive, but it’s also not fair because the vast majority of people are not doing crimes and violence. I don’t know why people don’t think the same about this area (or they just don’t know the extent to which it’s being done.) I know the violence has been much worse than anything that would happen in a US city, but so has the response. The vast majority of Palestinians are not blowing themselves up or throwing rockets into Israel, but they are all paying the price.

Free lunch at MEET yesterday and today. (free meal count: 9.5)

After tomorrow I will be going to tel aviv for the weekend (the weekend is friday saturday) and I will not be writing. Not only will I most likely not have internet, but I'll be in no condition to for sentence. (or at least my version of sentences which I put on this blog.)

Day 1

Today was the first day of MEET, and we got to finally meet all of our students. Already we're down to 39 students because at the last minute a girl bailed on the program. Her loss I suppose. The day was an introduction, some icebreakers, and then our first lecture and lab.

Ted gave out some candy at lunch and I sarcastically said, "Boy guys, this is special, candy all the way from America." Even though it was fireballs bought in logan. A student then told me, "You don't have to talk so slow to us, we're not retarded." I guess he can understand english well, and tone pretty well, but not well enough to tell I was being sarcastic. He also lived in cleveland until he was 7, that punk.

That's my only story, except we did indeed have a free lunch. (free meal count: 7.5)

Brennan Vs. Shabbat

After our team building on friday, we were in desperate need of grocery shopping, however it ended too late and we weren't able to go before the grocery store closed for shabbat, the jewish day of rest, which runs from friday at sundown until saturday at sundown. Once this happens, everything closes, including all restaurants and stores.

Now normally I'm all for religion. Well, no, that's not true. I'm not really all for religion, but I am all for people doing what they want, so in that sense, I'm all for religion. But I definitely am all for taking a day off to do nothing. Even a week or month off is alright in my book (Of course I think the jewish folks would say they are doing something, just not work. Listen, I don't want to get bogged down in the details, this isn't the point).

The point is that I'm all for it, except when it gets in the way of my hunger. All saturday I sit around with nothing to eat. I have one measly bowl of frosted flakes for breakfast cause we're running low. And you know what I have to put in it??????? Soy milk! That's right, soy milk, cause we're out of regular milk, but you can't go to the store, now can you. Some may argue, "Brennan, maybe you should have planned this out better." Now listen here, I'm just an ignorant tourist. And now I'm an ignorant starving tourist. Do they want my death on their hands?

So after that cereal, I had a bowl of very unsatisfying ramen for lunch. I don't know why it was unsatisfying, I think it may have been just my worry that there was no other food. Normally ramen is pretty good. After that I just squandered the day away thinking about how hungry I was, then took a nap at like 7 oclock just because I wanted it to be sundown so someone would go to the grocery store so I could eat again. And my plan worked!

So that was my first shabbat. I give it a straight two thumbs down. (On a somber and thumb related note, longtime ABC movie critic Joel Seigel died yesterday of colon cancer. I know he actually didn't do the thumb thing, but you know exactly what I mean so shut the hell up.)

Anyways, today we worked some more down at the lab to get ready for our first day tommorrow with the kiddies arriving. I learned about batch files and setting the classpath variables. While that means nothing to you, it means something to me.

We also had an all staff meeting to get ready or tomorrow where we went over the rules and scheduling. I had suspected that I would get a free meal out of this, even going so far as to predict that the free meal count would go up to my friend samantha. As with anytime I get arrogant about anything, it blew up in my face, no free meal. Well, I shouldn't say blow up in my face, baklava was served at the end. I had never had it before, and it was completely delicious, but since it was a dessert I choose not to count it as a half meal as I have done a hummus and pita snack. I am tempted to give it a quarter, but refuse to go to fractions lower than one half. A man has to have his principles.

Tomorrow will be our first day with the students. I'm in charge of the first lab. If the kids can't get "hello world!" to print out on their computer screens, I will walk back to boston with my tail between my legs. (only someone who has written computer code will understand that, I think) I will, barring an act of god, also be getting a free lunch there. If an act of god does prevent me from having this meal, I will never again reference any free meal, past, present, or future. Even my mothers delicious ham and potatoes. (originally the "ham and potatoes" said "marinated loin" which I changed for what I would think are pretty obvious reasons. But I just want to go on record that my mom actually makes a delicious marinated loin.)

Tours of Jerusalem Part 3

The past two days have been very uneventful in blogging terms. Yesterday was curriculum meetings and a public speaking worshop. (At the meeting Yaron, one of the founders, brought pastries and bagels, which I turned into both breakfast and lunch. That brings the free meal count to 5) The year one instructors (I am a year one instructor, I don't know if I've made that clear) got to meet their TA's. The TA's are last years graduates of the program. They've done meet for 3 years and were the first class to graduate from the program. For all of their hard work, they get to be my bitch for a summer. I picture myself throwing a sandwich down on the ground and screaming at the top of my lungs like I wanted dijon and not yellow mustard. I like daydreaming.

Anyways, they all seemed like nice kids, and one of the palestinian students will be going to MIT next year. They should be a good help because we have knocked down the number of year one instructors from 5 to 4 and upped the number of year one students from 30 to 40, so things could be a little hectic. They're mainly going to help out with recitations and labs so we can get a more 1-1 connection.

Today we did team building in a nature reserve somewhere in israel (our director abeer kept it very shady beforehand, I think it was somewhere northwest of jerusalem). For the most part it was team building stuff, it was fun, but the sort of stuff you'd expect. At the end we did make rafts from large plastic drums, small logs, and rope. We got to the other side of the pond, the other teams raft fell apart and they all got wet. Brennan likes to win. The nature reserve though was rather interesting. Apparently it's written in biblical texts that the area of israel and palestine in ancient times was covered in forrests and animals everwhere. Since then I guess some people were in the area, some problems or something happened, people built some stuff (is my sarcasm translating to text?) and the land got pretty stripped down. An israeli had some money and didn't like this, and so he bought some land and made it a kind of man-made nature reserve, which is kind of the opposite of the way nature reserves usually work. He bought some barren land and then planted various flora and fauna that was written in biblical texts. At lunch they gave us some humus with tihina (ground up sesame paste) and labene (kind of like cream cheese made from goat cheese). (I will count this as a half of a meal, I had to have ramen when I came home. Free meal count: 5.5)

But to complete our tours, which were now 4 days ago, we went to the museum on the seam, a museum built directly on the border between east and west jerusalem. The museum was modern art about labor and the way people work. While I have loved everything that I have done so far in the Middle East, this sucked. In general I don't like modern art, and that is one thing, but I didn't really like the art especially because of the subject matter. It dealt a lot with basically the downtrodden workers around the world but I thought a lot of it was kind of winey. Worse still, the curator was constantly trying to force conversations about the art, and we had just finished all of this israeli and palestinian perscpective stuff and she would stop us from discussing that, which was very annoying. At the end she had us all sit down and talk about "how we felt" (sigh). It felt like a sophmore year english class discussing art where no one cares, everyone is tired, and no one wants to talk. An awkward time was had by all. Still, the meet batting average for events is quite good. Afterwards we went out to dinner for falafel, and when the bill came, meet paid! (free meal count: 6.5)

In general, I have a few points about the two tours (I'm not gonna talk about the museum on the seam)

-I wish there had been more time with the jewish soldier. I feel like we didn't have enough time to get a good, real discussion with him. We spent about 4 hours on the palestinian tour, and had lots of time for questions. We got about an hour with the former jewish soldier, and we didn't get too much time to answer questions, and he seemed to be very knowledgable about subject matter and I think, given the chance, he could have defended many questions that we might have had having seen the palestinian tour.
-Both sides don't aknowledge that the others' problems exists. This is one of the most frustrating things I find when talking about people about the conflict. For instance we had a meeting at MIT which was the israeli and palestinian perspective from 2 students at the kennedy school of government. When I asked the palestinian, who was a moderate, what percentage of palestinians support terrorism, he basically replied "you have to understand what causes people to do terrorism." He basically completely avoided the question. On the palestinian tour of the region, there literally was ZERO mentions of terrorism. Then they scoffed at anything israel was doing because of security concerns, acting like all of them are a farce. Similarly, the israeli soldier didn't deal much at all with the checkpoints in the west bank which basically cripple the palestinian economy (we were told by the palestinian at our meeting at MIT that coca-cola says the west bank is the most difficult place in the world to do business because of the checkpoints) or the house demolitions (he claimed that in the late 90s the israeli supreme court ordered them to stop). They both seem like they have their own agendas, and don't deal with the others. (This somewhat makes sense, because for both of them, their livelihoods revolve around the conflict. No conflict, no job. It doesn't pay for them to see the other sides perspective.) This is very dissapointing because if I think someone is being closeminded or has an agenda, I'll tend to block them out, because I don't know what to believe. I found myself doing this on both sides.
-I don't think the palestinian perspective is shown on TV. When I watch the news, I feel like I get a good deal of stories on palestinian terrorist attacks on israel. Stories might even try to be even and explain what the terrorist attacks are in response to (and israeli incursion into the west bank, maybe some bombings of some houses, etc.). But what I never understood is how the occupation effects the day-to-day lives of palestinians, and quite frankly, how hard lives are for the palestinians. We could have saw the worst of the palestinian's neighborhoods (again, the agendas of the tour guides make it tough for me to see reality) but Max, our israeli head of curriculum, thinks it gets worse as you go further into the west bank, let alone the gaza strip, and this neighborhood we saw was awful. Lots of rubble, skeleton houses, trash everywhere, I talked about this 2 posts ago. I feel like worse than anything you would see in the US. I'm sure there are nice places in palestine, but I think life there is really hard for a lot of them, and its not portrayed in the American media.
-I'm feeling pretty sympathetic to the palestinians. I obviously don't condone their violence. I think they would get a lot more sympathy if they tried non-violent means, but looking at the discrepencies between the lifestyles of a fairly rich country in israel which is so close to a country that seems so poor with people feeling downtrodden, and with the situation constantly being exacerbated by israel, its tough not to sympathize. Of course, I tend to change my feelings about this whole thing every 10 minutes, but that's how I'm feeling right now.

Tours of Jerusalem Part 2

Today was mostly filled with curriculum preparation and getting computer in the lab ready. While I'm proud of my while loop example, I don't think the masses will be, including the future me looking back on this, so I'd like to talk about the second "tour" of jeruslaem.

Unfortunately because our first tour and lunch took so long, we were nearly an hour late to meet our second tour guide. He was a 6th generation jewish jerusalemite who had worked in the military for many years including anti-terror intelligence. While we talked we had a great view overlooking many sections of jeruslem, but unfortunately we never moved, it was mainly a question and answer with him. Here are some of the photos from our perch.





He began by showing us a layout of the different neigborhoods around jerusalem and specifically the areas of east jerusalem, which formerly was a part of jordan before the 1967 war, and what neighborhoods, both jewish and palestinian, had been built since that time. Much of east jerusalem is palestinian, and he said that most of the areas shown in the photos above are palestinian.

Of course, the term palestinian is tough to use. As he explained, there are 3 clasifcations of arabs in the area. The first is arab-israeli. These are palestinians who stayed after both the 1948 war for israeli independence as well as the 1967 war and are israeli citizens who pay tax to the israeli government and have the right to vote. The next classification is a jerusalemite palestinian. This group lives in east jerusalem but chooses not to become israeli citizens. They still pay tax and receive all the same services as israeli's, however they do not have the right to vote in the kenesa, the israeli parliment, but they can vote in municipal elections. The last clasification is a palestinian, who, which not having palestinian citizenship because it is not yet a state, is governed and pay taxes to the palestinian authority government.

Most of the villages in east jerusalem are jerusalemite palestinians. There are also two villages further east of them which are israeli villages. Even further east still is the anti-terror wall, which I'll get to in a second. But I asked him why the wall wasn't carved out more carefully to include the jerusalemite palestinians in the east with the other palestinian villages. He said that the jeruselemite palestinians would have petitioned the israeli high court to stay within the wall because they want the services that the israli government provides for them.

Our guide spent awhile talking about the anti-terror defense wall. He repeatedly described it with a set of the same points:
-it is there to fight terror, it is not a political boundry
-it is temporary and would be taken down when an agreement was reached
-it is not electrocuted
-it has prevented many many terrorist attack (I can't remember the actual numbers, but he used specific numbers very often.)

He brought out a map of all of israel and the west bank and described the terror attacks that israelis faced durring the second intifada (I believe beginning in the 1999). since then there were over 300 suicide bombing attacks, he mentioned that one of which even occured in the malha mall. Malha is the area that we all live in at MEET, and I've already been to the malha mall to do shopping. although there was a heavy security precence as well and metal detectors when you entered, it still makes you think.

He descibed all of the different areas and cities in the region, including the west bank. He didn't describe much about the gaza strip because gaza has been surrounded by a fence as party of the oslo agreement that the palestinians at the time were in favor of. As a result not many suicide attacks have come from that area. The average suicide attack kill 4.5 people, and since the second intifada began, I believe he said that 1100 people were killed, about 600 of them civiilians, while another 9000 were injured. He also gave us facts about the profile of a suicide attacker. they generally are males, 18-37, and many were from the northern regions, specifically jenin, which is known as the home of suicide bombers. He said that the majority were well educated, 40%. I realize this statement is contradictory, and I don't know what to make of it, but that's what he said. (I should talk a little bit about his delivery. While the palestinians tended be talk with passion, he delivered this in a very straighforward manner. He talked a lot about numbers, about death numbers and terrorist attacks being prevented. He probably could have talked pationately in the same way the palestinians did families being effected by terrorist attacks, but that was not the route he chose. Perhaps it was from his military background to not be as emotional, or perhaps it was done on purpose, I don't know.)

He also described for a long time about why the anti-terror wall was needed. What often isn't understood in the west, and something that I didn't understand, is how small the area is that we're talking about. 75% of israels population lives on the coast, but even still most of the northern areas are within 10 miles of the west bank border, including tel-aviv, haifa, and other major coastal cities. As a result, with a long unchecked boarder a palestinian could be a 15 minute drive from any of these cities. He claimed that with the checkpoints in the west bank as well as the the wall, this prevented many terrorist to be able to move quickly and easily into israeli territory.

Unfortunately after about an hour he had to wrap things up because of how late we had been to our meeting. One of the final questions that he was asked was by one of our directors Tali. She asked if the price the palestinians paid was worth the security that israelis were allowed. He said that he really wished palestinians could have a good life, that he really did, but unfortunatley he had to protect his family and do what was best for them. He didn't really answer the question, it was a very tough one to answer in the 30 seconds he was given. He just reiterated how tough it was for him every time one of his daughters wanted to go out to a cafe or a mall, and that he wanted to protect his family.

Tours of Jerusalem Part 1

Today we took a tour of Jerusalem from the palestinian perspective, and the then had a talk with a former israeli soldier who worked on anti-terror. We were supposed to get a tour with the israeli, but unfortunately our palestinian tour ran long and we weren't able to talk to him as long as we'd hoped. We finished the day with a trip the the Museum on the Seam, which is located on the boarder between east and west jerusalem. I'm going to break this day up into 3 blog posts over the next few days because so much stuff happened, and so many photos were taken. Today I'll cover the palestinian tour, as well as the museum on the seam, the next post will deal with the israeli talk, and the the last will have my conclusions on the whole affair. First, I'd like to talk a quick second to talk about what I've been doing for the past few days.

Before today we had mainly been relaxing for 2 days, preparing material for the campers (lectures, labs, ect), shopping, getting our internet up and running (thanks to Mike, a roomate. And ours is better than the other apartments, but we don't tell them cause they might come down and take our bandwidth) We also got to go down to the ORT technichal school where we'll teach for the first 2 weeks of the course (due to an israeli student strike a few months ago which pushed back the end of classes at hebrew university) as well as Hewbrew University (the new campus, which houses the science, math, and engineering buildings) and the classes that we'll be using. We also got a free lunch and Hebrew University. Should I keep a running tally of free meals on the trip....? Yes, yes I will. Including dinner my first night in, our grand total is.....2. Not much, but it's a start. As confucious said, "Even the longest journey begins with a first step." Or some shit like that.

Before I start, I will be stating things a fact which are things that were stated to me as facts. I'm not saying they facts, but it's was told to me, and I'm gonna get bored of writing "they believe" every sentence. I'll get to my opinions in a later post.

Anyways, we were bused around for the morning by the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). They generally take a very pro-israeli stance and fight the demolition of palestinian homes. Over 18,000 palestinian homes have been demolished since the 1967 war, almost always because they were built without a building permit. The building permits however are extremely difficult for palestinians to get because israel does not want palestinians to prosper or expand in any way. (again, their opinions) We then go on a tour of jerusalem to show the the state of the palestinian people.

We begin with some fantastic views of jerusalem.





The first picture is Mt. Olives cemetary which is a famous jewish cemetary. (I should mention here that we're kind of taking an outside-in discovery of jerusalem, so a lot of these sites I haven't seen yet and found out the significance of, so I apologize when I say "so this is site X, apparently it's kind of a big deal) The next photograph is of the temple mount, and you can also see the walls of the old city. After that are two photograph of the security wall that israel has built to stop the movement of terrorists into israel. We travel next to the garden of david, run by israel in a palestinian neighborhood. And acheological peice of land, it was allegedly a garden for kind david back in.....well, way back, I don't know when. Here we can see some soldiers with their M16s at the location, as well as our tour guide suleiman's grandmother's house, which is not in very good condition, which is next to the garden. She is often harassed by the Israeli government to get her to move out of her house.



As we travel further we get a better view of the temple mount, the al-asqa mosque (which according to one of our instructors emray (sp?) who is turkish, is the second most visited muslim site after a site in mecca, I can't remember the name of it now), as well as the walls of the old city, and a greek orthodox church (which our instuctor Ted, who is an American-Greek pointed out, but is in the distance in the picture because of my slow camera work.)





Next we visited the security wall up close and personal. A you can see, there is a lot of grafiti on the wall. We are told that it will electrocute you, and that is not made for security reasons. The last two give you a good perspective on the size of the wall.








(also, apologies for some pictures being not rotated. It's almost 4am. I'll clean things up later.)

After this began the more depressing part of the trip. As we traveled into the palestinian neighborhoods and eventually into the west bank, the areas became noticibly more run-down. There were empty houses, horrible roads, rubble, and trash everywhere. It was very noticable as soon as you went into the neighborhoods. Worse still is the houses that have been demolished. This photograph is of a 7 story house that held 21 families.



As the tour guide pointed out, not only our houses demolished, but the rubble is left there, making it almost impossible to build again without a lot of work. Our tour ended at a house to hear a palestinian story of home demolition, and were given and free lunch of rice, chicken, and mediteranean salad (free meal count: 3)



The speaker unfortunately told a very sad story about his pursuit to own a home. He graduated from college and traveled to saudi arabia to work. When he returned with enough money, he hoped to build a home. He attempted to get a building permit 3 times (each costing $5000) and each time was rejected for a different reason (the last of which being that he forgot 2 signatures). After which he gave up and built the house on his own. The israeli military came to his house, beat him, arrested him, and demolished the house in front of his family. The ICAHD came to his aide, and got news attention at the site. Vollunteers helped to built the home while his family lived in red cross tents. Once they finished the frame of the house in about 3 weeks, the israeli military came again, destroyed the house, and took their red cross tents. His house was destroyed 5 times before they changed it into a center for ICAHD and demolition awareness. It was the building we were sitting in to hear him speak. The building still has an order from the israeli government to be demolished.

On our way back from the west bank we were stopped at a checkpoint. An israeli officer came into our bus with and M16 to check all of our ids. He first was upset with one of the instuctors for taking a photo, and was using some harsh words with us in hebrew, even though we were continually telling him we spoke english, and he obviously could speak english once he finally started talking to us. He was not a very happy dude. It could have been the long pants in the heat, who knows, but it wasn't a pleasant experience.