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.)