no news is good news, right?

hello hello

 

thought id update since i havent since the beginning of study tour... basically things are fine. nothing too thrilling to report as yet.  things have gotten more tolerable- turns out 2 of the kids in my class arent as weird as i thought, i was jsut grouping them with the third, who legitimately is unbeleivably weird. by this i mean that they are good kids and ive been hanging out with them, which has been fun. their names are austen and liz. they take a lot of pictures (i dont), so once i steal some from them, ill post an awkward one so you can have a visual/see us downing beers during the 10 minute break from class...what? did i say that? this blog makes me look like more of an alcoholic than is actually the case (though nothing like ashwin advani's abroad emails...), but let's jsut say the class has not gotten any better, and i must do what i can to make it toelrable...

 

one thing that has made it tolerable was the discovery of wireless internet in the classroom...this has been both glorious and my biggest downfall...because for the life of me, i cannot force myself to care waht this man thinks of me... im clearly not paying attention in class, w/ or w/o a laptop... w/ laptop at least i get to do something productive...like post pictures or write emails or draw things on "paint" instead of spending my time trying not to fall asleep with just a notebook in front of me.  now the challenge is to make it look like im taking notes on my computer when i blatantly am not.  im getting ebtter... though i have certainly not perfected this skill yet... oh well. the things i have to turn in will be well-written and i manage to chime in with at least 3-4 inspired remarks each class period, so i should be ok... or something.

 

the daytrips have been getting better too... or at least, there is usually at least one enjoyable part of them that leaves a positive impression instead of recalling the preceeding 8 hours of boredom "on site."  last week we went to tzippori, nazareth and tzfat one day, and then did a hike in the gilboa, went to some other places in the galilee that i dont remember (clearly remarkable) and i dont rememebr what we did on that day that was the highlight... so basically week 1 sucked. oh well. this week, we went to the ghetto fighters museum on tuesday (which was definitely not the highlight of anything) and then to zichron yaakov that evening w/ eliad, the madrich (social activities guide) and without the weird/smelly girl or the professor.  this was enjoyable because the company was decent, btu more because the food was amazing. we went to this restaurant owned, operated, waitressed, chef'ed, etc all by one woman... nira.  she was a badass like none other and her house specialty was unbelievable. she gave us her cards and i defintiely put her number in my phone... worth the trek. called "shaweesha"- it was like some sort of heavenly pita-esque dough w/ filling wrapped up and lightly fried to a blonde crisp...mine had sweet potato, leek and goat cheese, and came with several deligthful side salads...basically im obsessed with that dinner, and with nira...naturally.

 

today we were in yodvat (some boring josephus flavius place i think), the some old syrian bunker in the golan, and then went on a hike that led us to an unbeleivably beautiful waterfall, where we had a well-deserved afternoon swim. im not going to lie. it was cold. there was a giant snake (perhaps a water moccasin) in the water, but we went in anyway, and went under thw waterfall (shoutout to arielle @ nahal david...last time i jumped under a waterfall in israel was in december...THAT was cold).  anyway, it was great.  highlight of today's trip for sure.

 

aside from class, yesterday austen, liz and i adventured to netanya after class to meet up with a friend of austen's.  it was quite random, and i cant say that we actually did antyhign in netanya (we didnt even EAT, what weer we thinking?!?) but jsut walked around, but it was a fun lil' adventure. more to come.

 

now im back and hungry (suprised?) and trying to figure otu waht im doing tonight/this weekend/on my break... hopefully good things in store. specifically food. right now. mmm.

 

sorry this wasnt so funny. im tired and hungry, but alive and well and glad to be in israel right now. starting sunday our program is in jerusalem for a few days and we move south, and then as of next thursday (a week from today!) we're done! that means 4 more credits in the bank for me, which means only 29 left to graduate, which, if you know anything about my college credit-earning situation, is unbelievably exciting.

 

thats the good word from here. going to go make food. excited about that. be in touch. ill work on being funnier instead of boring.

 

just know that there was a lot of christina aguilera in my day. ok?