"Things I Learned Living in Beer Sheva" by rising second year student Chelsea Powell



At this time last year, I was anxiously preparing to leave for my first year of medical school at MSIH.  Here are a few things I wish I knew before I came.



-  There will be cats!  Lots and lots of cats.

Cats are everywhere in Beer Sheva.  They are in the streets, on the walls, in garbage cans, on campus, and even inside campus buildings!  Some cats became familiar to us; one of my favorites learned how to open the motion-sensitive sliding doors of the Faculty Building, and would frequent its halls. Another tried to ride the elevator to the histology computer room with me, and often a feline greeting would lend a warm touch to our late-night histology study sessions.


-  How fun autotranslate can be

Looking for an apartment in Beer Sheva after arriving in Israel forced me to rely on autotranslate to decipher apartment listings.  One particularly attractive apartment feature seemed to be “Uncle Sun,” and many listings advertised that the apartment came “with an emperor in the kitchen.”  I later learned Uncle Sun (שמש דוד) is a homonym in Hebrew for a solar water heater, but I have yet to figure out what the emperor is doing in the kitchen.  Recently, somebody from my building’s facebook group asked to borrow, according to autotranslate, “a cargo of galaxy.”  With autotranslate, there are always linguistic adventures to savor.


-  How supportive my classmates would be.

Finding yourself ankle-deep in water in your apartment is always disconcerting, but when you’re in a new country, you don’t speak the language, and it’s a holiday so all repair shops are closed, it becomes a minor crisis.  Luckily, a desperate plea on my class’s facebook page elicited many offers of help.  Within minutes I had instructions on how to turn off the water to my apartment, a Hebrew-speaking classmate to translate a conversation with an emergency plumber, and two other classmates who came to offer moral and technical support.  This response demonstrated how MSIH students will come, at a moment’s notice, to each other’s aid.  (For the record, they will also do this when your apartment door handle breaks off at 11pm on a weekend when, once again, all repair shops are closed, and the malfunction causes one roommate to be locked out and two to be locked in).


-  That grocery shopping is a contact sport.

I had been warned about the lines at Israeli grocery stores before I arrived, and my first attempt to buy some food proved that warning to be true. It seems that in Beer Sheva grocery stores there are exponentially more customers than cashiers, and securing a place in line requires some fairly skilled jockeying.  As a junior varsity player at this sport, I must have stood out, because a kind Israeli noted my polite but totally ineffective attempts to get into position.  He confirmed that I was new, and suggested that I follow him and “learn how this is done.” He then commandeered my cart and I trailed him as he merged seamlessly, but with some assertiveness, into line.   Since then my game has improved, but I will admit that I try to avoid the scrum by shopping at less busy times.


-  BGU has many resources for MSIH students

MSIH students are also BGU students, which means we have access to everything BGU has to offer. Because the majority of our time is spent in the hospital and the medical school faculty, and not on the main campus, it becomes easy to forget how many BGU resources are available.  It took me a while to discover that there is an excellent library, 24-hour study spaces, an Overseas Student Office that connects international students, and an Olympic-size swimming pool students can use for free.  So venture out and explore BGU. You will benefit from what you find.



To the incoming first-years, welcome to the MSIH family!  We’re so glad you’ll be joining us on this journey, and we can’t wait to meet you in August.  Since we won’t be in Beer Sheva when you arrive, we took a picture to greet you instead.  If you look really closely you’ll see that we wrote “Welcome MSIH Class of 2020” on the board.  Please believe me when I say our welcome is stronger than our whiteboard markers. 

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