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.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
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.
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.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
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.
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.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
I have arrived in the Middle East
I arrived in Israel at 4pm today (saturday, 7 hour ahead of EST). I had a very paranoid night of sleep because my cell phone lost batteries and I couldn't use the alarm, and I don't really trust wakeup calls.
A quick note about England before I start talking about the Middle East (ME). It has to be the most expensive place in the world. I had heard about how expensive it is, but until you're there spending your own money, you don't really understand. It's basically the same price numerically as dollars, except it's in pounds, which are worth twice as much. For instance, a bag of chips and a fanta were 2 pounds, a short taxi to the heathrow holiday in was 17 pounds, the breakfast buffet at the holiday in (which I didn't get) was 15 pounds. Good gravy.
I arrive in the ME at Tel Aviv Airport. I'm quickly able to get through security, and the airport has this amazing layout as your walking out. You walk around a circular pathway that is about ~30 feet high. It's glassed in so you can see down to the ground level where there is a food court and some people can see there families there waiting for them, even though they still need to wait for their bags. The high ceiling drops down low in a spherical shape, and a circle is cut out of the bottom of the sphere. Falling from the edges of the circle are drops of water. I really thought it looked amazing for an airport. I would have taken pictures, but as I said, the power had run out of my cell phone.
Amir, one of the members of the board of meet, is waiting there to pick me up. Driving from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, I notice 2 things about the way towns are built. The first is a how groups of houses are tightly built together. When you look at villages across a landscape there is a very clear distinction. A clump of houses in one place, then barren land for a period, and then another clump of houses. It isn't continuous at all, and it seems like where there is a village, the houses don't get much land space at all. Also, as we drove into Jerusalem through the judea mountains, I noticed how prevalent it was to build a village either into a mountainside or on the highground. I suspect, although I'm not certain, both of these layouts are for defense reasons, although that is a guess.
I arrive at our apartment, and it's much nicer than I expected. The view from the patio is great, here are some shots at sunrise and one at dusk.
We leave for a tour and then dinner, but our tour will be shortened for reasons I'll get to in a second. The first place we visit is the wall of the old city. Tali thinks it was last rebuilt by the Ottoman Empire in the 1800s.
In the distance though you can also see the wall that Israel built separating it from the West Bank. You can see it in these pictures in grey at the crest of the hill.
After the wall, we attempted to check out the MEET lab that they using during the year on their year-long projects. I say attempt because half the group got almost to the floor it’s on, and the elevator proceeded to break. They pried the doors open and got out, but we quickly realized that the elevator was no longer going to work. There was an emergency door entrance, however this was locked and we didn’t seem to have the key. So half of the group was trapped upstairs with no exit, and the other half were downstairs at the emergency exit. After entertaining some other options, the group decided that it would be best to smash the lock and try to open the door that way.
As you can imagine, this created a lot of noise, and being Shabbat, the jewish day of rest, we quickly had an old lady who lived downstairs yelling at us. After some angry words in hewbrew (of which I understood none) she agreed to get us some tools and with the help of another neighbor, we were able to get the door open. Inside was a very nice lab where MEET has students work on their yearlong projects.
This brings up something I’ve noticed about Israel that I haven’t seen in other places. When I’ve traveled before, it’s either been to very industrialized nations (around the US, Canada, and western Europe) where everything is very organized, clean, and in working order. Conversely I’ve been to places like Costa Rica that are very third world. Lots of things may be broken, the roads are kind of a mess, and you just have to go with the flow when things don’t work. Israel seems to be smack in the middle of that. The roads are great, and many buildings are very modern. Conversely though there are definitely sections that seem very “unfinished”. As we drove though one of the poorer sections of Jerusalem, the housing seemed to be much worse than anything you would see in the US. The attitude when an elevator breaks wasn’t to try to find someone to fix it, but was instead to “smash the lock in.” While love smashing stuff, I feel like this would never happen in the US. I’m not hating, it was Shabbat and it would have been hard to find someone to fix the problem, so what else can you do? But I found it interesting nonetheless.
A quick note about England before I start talking about the Middle East (ME). It has to be the most expensive place in the world. I had heard about how expensive it is, but until you're there spending your own money, you don't really understand. It's basically the same price numerically as dollars, except it's in pounds, which are worth twice as much. For instance, a bag of chips and a fanta were 2 pounds, a short taxi to the heathrow holiday in was 17 pounds, the breakfast buffet at the holiday in (which I didn't get) was 15 pounds. Good gravy.
I arrive in the ME at Tel Aviv Airport. I'm quickly able to get through security, and the airport has this amazing layout as your walking out. You walk around a circular pathway that is about ~30 feet high. It's glassed in so you can see down to the ground level where there is a food court and some people can see there families there waiting for them, even though they still need to wait for their bags. The high ceiling drops down low in a spherical shape, and a circle is cut out of the bottom of the sphere. Falling from the edges of the circle are drops of water. I really thought it looked amazing for an airport. I would have taken pictures, but as I said, the power had run out of my cell phone.
Amir, one of the members of the board of meet, is waiting there to pick me up. Driving from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, I notice 2 things about the way towns are built. The first is a how groups of houses are tightly built together. When you look at villages across a landscape there is a very clear distinction. A clump of houses in one place, then barren land for a period, and then another clump of houses. It isn't continuous at all, and it seems like where there is a village, the houses don't get much land space at all. Also, as we drove into Jerusalem through the judea mountains, I noticed how prevalent it was to build a village either into a mountainside or on the highground. I suspect, although I'm not certain, both of these layouts are for defense reasons, although that is a guess.
I arrive at our apartment, and it's much nicer than I expected. The view from the patio is great, here are some shots at sunrise and one at dusk.
We leave for a tour and then dinner, but our tour will be shortened for reasons I'll get to in a second. The first place we visit is the wall of the old city. Tali thinks it was last rebuilt by the Ottoman Empire in the 1800s.
In the distance though you can also see the wall that Israel built separating it from the West Bank. You can see it in these pictures in grey at the crest of the hill.
After the wall, we attempted to check out the MEET lab that they using during the year on their year-long projects. I say attempt because half the group got almost to the floor it’s on, and the elevator proceeded to break. They pried the doors open and got out, but we quickly realized that the elevator was no longer going to work. There was an emergency door entrance, however this was locked and we didn’t seem to have the key. So half of the group was trapped upstairs with no exit, and the other half were downstairs at the emergency exit. After entertaining some other options, the group decided that it would be best to smash the lock and try to open the door that way.
As you can imagine, this created a lot of noise, and being Shabbat, the jewish day of rest, we quickly had an old lady who lived downstairs yelling at us. After some angry words in hewbrew (of which I understood none) she agreed to get us some tools and with the help of another neighbor, we were able to get the door open. Inside was a very nice lab where MEET has students work on their yearlong projects.
This brings up something I’ve noticed about Israel that I haven’t seen in other places. When I’ve traveled before, it’s either been to very industrialized nations (around the US, Canada, and western Europe) where everything is very organized, clean, and in working order. Conversely I’ve been to places like Costa Rica that are very third world. Lots of things may be broken, the roads are kind of a mess, and you just have to go with the flow when things don’t work. Israel seems to be smack in the middle of that. The roads are great, and many buildings are very modern. Conversely though there are definitely sections that seem very “unfinished”. As we drove though one of the poorer sections of Jerusalem, the housing seemed to be much worse than anything you would see in the US. The attitude when an elevator breaks wasn’t to try to find someone to fix it, but was instead to “smash the lock in.” While love smashing stuff, I feel like this would never happen in the US. I’m not hating, it was Shabbat and it would have been hard to find someone to fix the problem, so what else can you do? But I found it interesting nonetheless.
Friday, June 22, 2007
current trip status
I am currently sitting in heathrow at a "internet cafe" (2 computers) being bombarded by commercials on the bottome of my screen. I'd like to review the oddities that have gone on with my trip so far (beginning at noon yesterday EST, roughly 18 hours ago)
-I missed my flight due to an error on my part
-british air has no idea that I even exist (I'm not in the records for the flight)
-the travel agency had booked me under the name Brennan Powerssherry. sigh.
-british air told me I missed my flight and couldn't get any value out of the entire flight
-I find out from tali (meet director who coordinated travel) that I should be able to change the flight
-travel agency no longer picks up their phone. They will repeat this act intermitently for a few hours. they must be traveling. ha.
-I try to catch later flight, but british air supervisor won't let me change the flight. Travel agency offers no help, and me and tali suspect the travel agency may have made a mistake booking (that's OTT travel, waltham, MA)
-A nice british air desk lady tells me very quitely that if I come back in the morning I may be able to switch my flight and get on standby for $200. When I talk to her about it she tells me to keep her voice down. It reminded me of the incredibles where Mr. Incredible was giving advice to get the most out of insurance to an old lady. Yes, I am the old lady.
-Tali is able to get me on the morning flight, but for $800. I won't have to be on standbye, but it will be expensive. Woot/d'oh. I'll get on a 10 pm flight to tel aviv. I am "booked" for these flights.
-I get to the airport in the morning, and the desk lady tells me I can not get in the 10 pm flight to london, and will have to stay over in london. But she tells me the additional cost will be only $220. D'oh/woot.
-She has me stand at the desk for 20 minutes so she can change my seat to an aisle seat.
-I arrive at my seat, it's a middle seat. sigh......sigh.
-I arrive in london, i can't call home, and I can't seem to get in touch with hayley (friend's girlfriend who goes to school in southampton), the numbers all don't work.
-I try to get a taxi to the hotel my mother booked for me in london. There is either a bomb threat or a fire (they don't seem to know which), and all roads are closed to the hotel. sigh......sigh.....sigh.
-someone left 19 minutes of free internet on a computer at the airport! VICTORY IS MINE!
-I missed my flight due to an error on my part
-british air has no idea that I even exist (I'm not in the records for the flight)
-the travel agency had booked me under the name Brennan Powerssherry. sigh.
-british air told me I missed my flight and couldn't get any value out of the entire flight
-I find out from tali (meet director who coordinated travel) that I should be able to change the flight
-travel agency no longer picks up their phone. They will repeat this act intermitently for a few hours. they must be traveling. ha.
-I try to catch later flight, but british air supervisor won't let me change the flight. Travel agency offers no help, and me and tali suspect the travel agency may have made a mistake booking (that's OTT travel, waltham, MA)
-A nice british air desk lady tells me very quitely that if I come back in the morning I may be able to switch my flight and get on standby for $200. When I talk to her about it she tells me to keep her voice down. It reminded me of the incredibles where Mr. Incredible was giving advice to get the most out of insurance to an old lady. Yes, I am the old lady.
-Tali is able to get me on the morning flight, but for $800. I won't have to be on standbye, but it will be expensive. Woot/d'oh. I'll get on a 10 pm flight to tel aviv. I am "booked" for these flights.
-I get to the airport in the morning, and the desk lady tells me I can not get in the 10 pm flight to london, and will have to stay over in london. But she tells me the additional cost will be only $220. D'oh/woot.
-She has me stand at the desk for 20 minutes so she can change my seat to an aisle seat.
-I arrive at my seat, it's a middle seat. sigh......sigh.
-I arrive in london, i can't call home, and I can't seem to get in touch with hayley (friend's girlfriend who goes to school in southampton), the numbers all don't work.
-I try to get a taxi to the hotel my mother booked for me in london. There is either a bomb threat or a fire (they don't seem to know which), and all roads are closed to the hotel. sigh......sigh.....sigh.
-someone left 19 minutes of free internet on a computer at the airport! VICTORY IS MINE!
Thursday, June 21, 2007
trip goal #1
It's now 4 hours before my flight leaves, and I've had many many people give me some heartfelt goodbyes (after jerusalem I am moving directly to san fransisnco after living in boston nearly my entire life) Durring these goodbyes, I keep hearing a common message from people, "Don't get yourself killed." Well that's settling. But with that message, comes:
trip goal #1 Don't get myself killed.
And you know what, I'm gonna throw in the other instructors with this one too:
ammended trip goal #1 Don't get myself or any of my other instructors killed.
My grandfather told me to, "Watch out, the people are crazy over there, they really are." I really hope that they're not. If I leave this trip with the conclusion that israelis and/or palestinians are really crazy, I'm probably going to be pretty sad. (I just realized this blog doesn't have a very obvious way to put in smiley faces. Now I'm really sad)
My best friend John Berry's parents told me that they had a present for me that was going to "save me out there". When I unwrapped the gift, it was.......(drumroll please) a yarmulke. Har har. But seriously it's a good thing they gave it to me because I had lost my other one from Josh Rosenfield's Bar Mitzvah in the 8th grade and I was worried how I was gonna show everybody that I was a "cool dude".
trip goal #1 Don't get myself killed.
And you know what, I'm gonna throw in the other instructors with this one too:
ammended trip goal #1 Don't get myself or any of my other instructors killed.
My grandfather told me to, "Watch out, the people are crazy over there, they really are." I really hope that they're not. If I leave this trip with the conclusion that israelis and/or palestinians are really crazy, I'm probably going to be pretty sad. (I just realized this blog doesn't have a very obvious way to put in smiley faces. Now I'm really sad)
My best friend John Berry's parents told me that they had a present for me that was going to "save me out there". When I unwrapped the gift, it was.......(drumroll please) a yarmulke. Har har. But seriously it's a good thing they gave it to me because I had lost my other one from Josh Rosenfield's Bar Mitzvah in the 8th grade and I was worried how I was gonna show everybody that I was a "cool dude".
Why am I doing this trip?
Today I should have been flying to tel aviv via london, but due to some stupidity that I won't get into on my part, I missed my flight. Luckily there is always a silver lining, and with my extra time I have created this blog. I'm not necessarily looking to always write something that is profound, but instead I'm looking for this blog to be kind of a diary for me to look back on, and if anyone has a good time reading it, then fantastic. But let's get down to business.
Why am I doing this trip?
Well, for starters, I like computer science, and I like education. I TA'd introductory computer science last spring at MIT which I had a great time doing (6.001 Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, a class which very sadly will be discontinued next fall after at least 26 years at MIT) I've tutored in other subjects and have always had a good time making a connection with a student and helping them learn, which I think this program will definitely allow me to do.
I like to travel. Observing cultural differences, learning about history, seeing things you would never see at home, all that jazz, I find it all pretty cool.
I want to make a difference. Often people at MIT talk about being in the "MIT bubble". You're so focused on work that you can't lift your head to see what's going on around you or help people. I've refered to this before as being an "academic animal" where your entire thought process revolves around "what work do I have to do today that will get me through my classes tomorrow?" I've definitely felt this happen to me before (I was about 4 days late on hurricane katrina) and wanted to do something with my time that made a difference before going on to "real" work. I think this program is really acheiving its goals: bringing israeli and palestinian kids together to work together towards a common goal. That it doesn't always have to be a political discussion, that just by bringing them together it builds an inter-cultural network that hopefully these kids will hold on to. Sounded pretty good to me.
It's free, and I really like free stuff. If someone offers me a free lunch there is pretty much no way I'm saying no, and this is a free trip to israel (with free lunches, by the way).
Why am I doing this trip?
Well, for starters, I like computer science, and I like education. I TA'd introductory computer science last spring at MIT which I had a great time doing (6.001 Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, a class which very sadly will be discontinued next fall after at least 26 years at MIT) I've tutored in other subjects and have always had a good time making a connection with a student and helping them learn, which I think this program will definitely allow me to do.
I like to travel. Observing cultural differences, learning about history, seeing things you would never see at home, all that jazz, I find it all pretty cool.
I want to make a difference. Often people at MIT talk about being in the "MIT bubble". You're so focused on work that you can't lift your head to see what's going on around you or help people. I've refered to this before as being an "academic animal" where your entire thought process revolves around "what work do I have to do today that will get me through my classes tomorrow?" I've definitely felt this happen to me before (I was about 4 days late on hurricane katrina) and wanted to do something with my time that made a difference before going on to "real" work. I think this program is really acheiving its goals: bringing israeli and palestinian kids together to work together towards a common goal. That it doesn't always have to be a political discussion, that just by bringing them together it builds an inter-cultural network that hopefully these kids will hold on to. Sounded pretty good to me.
It's free, and I really like free stuff. If someone offers me a free lunch there is pretty much no way I'm saying no, and this is a free trip to israel (with free lunches, by the way).
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