scorpions?!?! wtf!

i saw a scorpion.

 

it was traumatizing.  i then spilled a large quantity of powdered laundry detergent, making my room smell like toxic flowers as the result of israel's sub-par tupperware resilience.  but before this, i saw a scorpion. on the wall outside my apartment.  i am not in the desert. i am not in saudi arabia or the negev or the sahara or wherever else one might find scorpions. i am not living in a zodiac diagram. i live in haifa. there are not supposed to be scorpions. it was terrifying.

 

meanwhile, nothing makes a cockroach look quite so harmless as seeing a scorpion on your wall.

 

according to my suitemate netta, who IS from the negev, "the black ones arent as poisonous as the yellow ones, dont worry"

 

thanks netta.

 

meanwhile, so far made a few new friends.  ok one new friend, but he is great. his name is nils, he is german, has his lip and tongue pierced, and in addition to being funny (and g, obv), his area of study?? semitic languages.  where did i find another semitic language person?!? absurd. his hebrew and arabic are about where mine is (probably better, though this is only his first time in israel, and his first time ever on a plane!), and in addition to german and english, he also speaks polish, a bit of french, spanish, and akkadian.  so in case you run into any ancient samarians, nils is your man.

 

in addition to the one great new friend, and a few other friendly acquaintances, so far there are a lot of irritating kids, and most of them are in my face right now, so i shall make this short.

 

my classes dont actually start for 2 more weeks. oops. regular university starts oct 29 (thanks, hezbullah), so for now im just auditing overseas department classes, knowing that i will not be taking any of them. maybe one. i applied for an honors program in peace and conflict studies, the first class for which is tomorrow. so we shall see how that goes.  beyond that, ive taken and voted against a class in arab-israeli relations, spoken arabic (taught in english transliteration... no thanks), and media in times of war and crisis, which i didnt even bother going to when the teacher sent out a pre-reading assignment that was 60 pages... 17 of which was a syllabus. no thanks.

 

we'll see how classes and such pick up in the days/weeks to come. for now, some of the classrooms are wireless, so you shall be hearing more from me.

 

for now, i must recover my clothes from the laundry, and hope to avoid scorpions on the way. seriously. it was terrifying.

 

oh, and if i hear any more about how "the most dangerous city in the country is in my state! yeah! camden!" i might punch someone. so glad im 1/2 way around the world to hear the wonders of new jersey.  where is my german??  (actually, my program is quite international. only about 30-35 of the overseas people are american. the rest are german, french, swiss, swedish, venezuelan, brittish, hungarian, russian, czech, etc. so far, ich lieb der german)

 

must go. write more soon.

-am