savoy096

Western Wall, Old City, Jerusalem  Me in red with Julian and Tal. September is almost through and I can hardly believe that I have been in Israel since mid-July.  A great deal of progress has been made on all fronts with regard to academics, housing, settling in, meeting new people, and getting familiar with Be’er Sheva in general.  As summer turns to fall I can see olives and dates ripening on the trees throughout the city.  There is much inspiration in this area for someone with an appreciation for nature, history and ethnography.  I am quite fond of Be’er Sheva and the new friendships I established here.  The MSIH experience thus far has been fantastic.  The classes are coming along well (taking a break from biochemistry reading to write this entry), I am picking up more of the Hebrew language with every day and the local people I have met here so far proved to be incredibly generous and friendly … and I love my new bed!  No more sleeping on an...

This was a week of trying new things. I learned a lot. One. You can’t necessarily see the thorns on a cactus. And if you pick a cactus fruit from the plant and roll it around in your hands, you won’t necessarily feel the spikes immediately. It could take 20 or 30 minutes before your hand becomes inflamed from all of the prickles in your fingers. Two. Cheap brandy is disgusting. Three. When you send registered mail, only the post office from which you sent it has access to the information, and if it gets lost in Tel Aviv instead of being delivered to Jerusalem, you need to complete an investigation form in Be’er Sheva. Four. There’s an xkcd for every situation. I found one that was relevant to today’s biostatistics class , another relevant to our Global Health lecture (the comic itself is a link to a really cool site), and another on people like me complaining about everything . You may have noticed that my first two blogs were considerably longer than the third, which was a bit ...

( Disclaimer: Nothing I say should be taken too seriously or literally; I take a great deal of poetic license with everything.) I know I have an upcoming exam in immunology, and if I don’t study harder for microbiology I’m going to fall behind real quickly, but I promised MSIH that I’d write these weekly blogs for a month. Plus I get a nalgene and gift card for this. So I’ll study a little later. I got an iPad this week, which is very exciting and very useful. A number of students use the Notability app, which lets you import the lecturer’s slides and take notes right on them. Also, all of the textbooks are available in eBook format. All in all, the iPad is a great investment for carrying around all of the lecture slides, notes, and textbooks in a very small device. So when I start studying a little later, it will be on the iPad. Another personal study tool I use is print-out review sheets taped up on my walls. As I walk around my apartment, I quickly look over amino acid structures a...

As anyone in my Hebrew class can attest by now, I love studying grammar and the rules of grammar. So before I begin my discussion on life in Israel, let me tell a short story that lead me to a cool grammar fact. My friend and I had a difference of opinion regarding the proper definition of a word, so I went to the Merriam Webster dictionary website. In any case, this also brought me to MW ’ s grammar videos , from which I learned the following: When the word octopus was brought into English in the 18th century, it was given a standard English plural suffix (octopuses). When fanatic Latin grammar nuts insisted on giving words their proper Latin endings, octopi was entered into the dictionary. Realizing that octopus actually comes from GRΣΣK , other grammarians gave it the proper plural: octopodes (ock-TOP-uh-deez). Incidentally, Octopodes is the name of my alma mater’s oldest a cappella group . That having been said, I was asked to talk a little bit about my experience moving to...

●      Why do I have to go to the post office to pay my gym membership? ●      Why is there a traffic light here? ●      Why are they only open for 3 hours on Mondays... and they take a 30 minute lunch? ●      Why does the English menu have higher prices than the Hebrew one? ●      How does it make any sense to say, “I make for you special deal... buy one for the price of two, get one free!” ? ●      What kind of a name is “Supersol Deal Extra?” Or is it “Supersol Extra Deal?” And why do they sometimes spell it Shufersol? ●      If I wanted a taxi I’d wave one down... why do all drivers ask if I want a ride? Lesson #1: the answer to every question is: because this is Israel. Although when I tried to use that response when my Hebrew teacher asked why I’m learning Hebrew, she said, “But we’re in Be’er Sheva... nobody speaks Hebrew here.” To understand...