Today’s normally mundane events at work were interrupted when our coordinators alerted us that a Palestinian terrorist committed a stabbing attack on a bus right here in Tel Aviv, injuring 12 people.
It was on the number 40 bus line, a bus that some of us regularly take to work.
Carmel, one of our coordinators, asked for each of us to confirm that we were okay. Dozens of replies poured in; everyone was accounted for.
By pure luck, the people who normally take that bus happened to take an earlier one that day.
This is the reality of living here. We live our lives just like anywhere else, but sometimes they’re interrupted by the gruesome acts of the deranged society that borders us.
In case you’re wondering whether they are truly deranged, Hamas and several other Palestinian groups celebrated the attack, with one Hamas spokesman calling it an “heroic and courageous act.”
Really? Get on a bus in your town and look around. Who do you see? An immigrant just trying to get to work; an elderly man on the way to the grocery store; a teenager going to school. They’re just people trying to get by. Last time I checked, attempted murder was to be frowned upon, not celebrated.
Not all Palestinians are members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, of course. In fact, I’ve heard that a majority of Palestinians want peace with Israel. But until that supposed majority speaks up and forces their leaders to accept peace, this will be their society’s legacy.
Photo: Yaron Brenner
The most we can do in the meantime is simply continue to live our lives, and hope that one day, the other side will wake from their coma of hatred and accept peace.
Not much to talk about today. Just another day spent working with a wave energy company! I did have a slight problem that evening, however, while attempting to make a tuna sandwich…(See left.)
Later that evening, Rebecca had a great idea for something we could all do for Yas’ birthday on the 23rd: She asked us to record a birthday message for Yas, and email it to Mason, who was kind enough to offer to compile it into a video. Sounded like a great idea to me! I figured I’d make mine at work, in front of a nice bookshelf.
January 19th:
Tonight was our weekly enrichment event. This one was regarding professional development: how to sell yourself during an interview, what to put on a resume, etc. I didn’t imagine I would hear anything new, but I figured it would be worth attending, just in case.
Entrance to a classroom or the site of a drug deal?Not exactly welcoming…
The talk was at a new place, just east of my apartment. While trying to guide us to the right entrance to the building, Carmel posted a couple of creepy photos of the place that led to an entertaining exchange on WhatsApp, mostly us asking if this was a classroom or a place where we were going to get our organs harvested.
Fortunately, the building only looked seedy on the outside. It was just fine on the inside. (In fact, there was a small art exhibit just past the roll-up door in that photo on the right.)
The talk was surprisingly insightful. Our speaker had us do a couple of exercises in teams where we tried to discover something obscure that we each had in common. The point was to make a connection with the person with whom you’re interviewing, as that connection can make you stand out to the interviewer far better than your credentials.
For example, if the interview happens to be in that person’s office, and you see a picture of a snowboarder on their shelf, you might mention a cool trip you took to Colorado to go skiing. Chances are, the person will latch on immediately, and the interview will go much more smoothly.
He also asked us to come up with a few odd, obscure stories that we can throw out there during the always-frustrating opening question: “Tell me about yourself.”
For example, one of the people in the room once saved someone from a burning car! Does it have anything to do with the work? Probably not. But will the interviewer remember him? Absolutely. (I’m writing this 10 days after the event, and the fact that that story still stands out in my mind is testament to effectiveness of this method.)
Of course, you have to tailor your answer to the situation. If the room is a completely sterile office space, it might be best to stick to interesting stories related to your career.
Following enrichment, Fjo came to Lunz to do some laundry, and I recorded his birthday message to Yas. I had forgotten to do mine at work that day, but set myself an alarm on my phone to remind me for tomorrow.
January 20th:
Another day at the office! Thanks to the alarm I set the previous day, I remembered to record my birthday message to Yas.
That evening I also recorded Rebecca’s and Daniel’s messages. We made them not a moment too soon, either: Yas returned that evening! Lunz was whole again!
I spent all day today working on my blog–I keep a rough draft of my posts on my PC, and try to write them pretty quickly after the day’s events, in order to remember as much detail as possible. (I call it my “Blog Post Buffer.”) However, I’d fallen pretty far behind, and badly needed to catch up! Luckily, I managed to not only catch up, but also put out a new post!
Lilah and Rebecca
That evening was an event Sharon came up with and Zach organized: Shakshuk-Off 2015! It was a contest between volunteers to see who could make the best shakshuka, a dish of eggs poached in a sauce of tomatoes and other ingredients. We decided to hold the contest at Motskin. The contestants were Sharon, Sarah S., and a portion of the Levinsky crew comprised of Andrew, Garrett, and Jess. Lilah and Rebecca volunteered to be the judges. (It was originally going to be Lilah and Zach, the same people who judged the Halloween costume contest. However, Zach hadn’t gotten much sleep over the past two days, and decided to stay behind at Lunz.)
Sarah’s plates for the judges.The judges were giddy!
I brought plates, and Rebecca made a fruit salad. (Yum!) We headed up to Motskin a little earlier than we normally would have because I wanted to arrive promptly in case they needed the plates.
Unfortunately for me, we ended up being the first ones there, and there was no need for the plates, yet. Rebecca gave me a death stare–she was in the middle of an episode of Gilmore Girls when I said it was time to go. God help me.
Sarah’s “service with a smile!”
We hung out with the rest of the Motskin folks, as well as Lilah’s cousin and Yael’s sister, both of whom were visiting at the time. (Yael and her sister look eerily alike, and Lilah and her cousin both have long, blonde hair and a nose piercing. If you only glanced at the Motskin couch, you’d think you were seeing double!)
The first bite!
Eventually, others arrived, including the contestants. Sharon and Sarah S. were the first on the scene, and they got to work in the kitchen immediately.
While the contestants cooked, the rest of us enjoyed pomegranates and some drinks. The judges also “prepared”. (See the first photo.)
The judges decided to employ some criteria for the contest: Presentation, taste, service (“with a smile!”), and a short, 3-5 sentence explanation/story surrounding their shakshuka. Serious business! (Not really.)
Sharon’s turn!In response to Sarah’s dish.
Levinsky arrived about 20 minutes after the others, and Lilah and Rebecca weren’t too pleased. I believe Lilah subtracted around 2000 points for their tardiness. (They were very hungry.)
As the contestants prepared, they made various moves, both good and bad, that effected their “score” with our drunk-with-power (and alcohol) judges. Rebecca was especially vindictive! “Minus 20 points for looking at me like that,” I recall Rebecca saying. Harsh!
Sharon’s excellent presentation
Sarah S. was first up. She made a somewhat spicy dish, and put tahini on the judges’ plates in the shape of a heart. “25 points for thoughtfulness,” agreed Lilah and Rebecca.
The moment finally came, and the judges took their first bite. They liked it! They took some notes as the rest of us dug into the meal. It was good stuff!
About 15 minutes later, Sharon was ready. Her dish looked amazing! She even served it on ceramic dishes instead of the cheap plastic ones I brought. “Points for presentation,” the judges declared. Clever. The food was also a hit, and the group scarfed it down with vigor.
The Levinsky creation!
Finally, after about another 20 minutes, Levinsky was up. They had a huge pan that they filled to the brim with shakshuka, which is why it took so long to cook. However, that time was spent making their presentation top-notch. The judgment: Another success!
We shared the remaining shakshuka while chatting the evening away. After another half hour or so, as people started getting ready to leave (we couldn’t stay too long as we had work the next day), the results were announced. The winner of Shakshuk-Off 2015 was…Sharon!
The reaction to Levinsky’s dish.
I agreed with the judgment. Sharon’s was the tastiest, in my opinion (though the others were also very good!), and it was served with a restaurant-quality presentation. (There was even an interesting story to go along with it, though I don’t recall the details.) Sarah’s was good, but a little spicy for my taste; and Levinsky’s, while good as well, tasted a little more like a breakfast burrito than shakshuka. But again, all three dishes were great!
The winner: Sharon!!
As for me, I went a little nuts with Snapchat that evening, as you can see from the pictures here. I ended up making a story that was about two and half minutes long! (A Snapchat Story is a series of images and videos that are automatically stitched together and posted for your friends to see. They’re usually no more than 10-30 seconds long.) At one point, Zach posted in our WhatsApp thread, asking how it was going. I told him to just check my Snapchat. I felt like the press for the event! (And said so repeatedly to Rebecca, just to annoy her, as her internship is with the Times of Israel.)
I’m constantly impressed with the cooking abilities of my group. It’s like we’re a bunch of adults or something!
Tonight was a night of merriment at Motskin. This was also the only night I can recall where every single person in Lunz was doing their own thing: Zach was meeting with some of his former camp counselors, Rebecca was having dinner with her sister, Daniel was having dinner with his family, Oliver was meeting with some friends of his from out of town, and Yas was back in the U.K. for, unfortunately, the funeral of her grandfather, who passed away a couple of days prior.
I took a bottle of wine with me, and made my way to Rothschild to catch a sherut. (It was after sunset on Shabbat, so the buses weren’t in operation.) Unfortunately, over the next 20 minutes, three sheruts—not one, not two, but three—passed me by because they were full! I finally said “Screw it”, and caught a cab.
My bad luck continued, however. The taxi driver (who looked so old that I was surprised he was still driving) put into his GPS “Moskin” instead of “Motskin”, despite me clearly saying “No, MoTskin, not Moskin.” He started taking me east instead of north. After a few blocks my protesting, he finally figured out that he had the wrong address, and put in the right one. I asked him to reset the meter, which he did–That put him back in my good graces. However, his GPS navigation was terrible. It had him taking side streets, and basically zigzagging towards my destination. I ended up getting to Motskin about a half hour later than anticipated. Fortunately, the taxi fare was still within reason.
In a slightly irked mood, I made my way up to Motskin with the goal of getting hammered. I only had one beer the previous night at the Rainforest apartment, and wanted to make up for it. The plan for the evening was the pregame at Motskin, then make our way to Jessica’s, a latin bar on the beach, for some salsa dancing.
I arrived to a room full of women, with Lilah and Yael’s sister (who was visiting from The States) dancing and singing in sync. I stated my goal of getting drunk, and got to work.
Garrett and Andrew joined me, which was fortunate, as the estrogen in the room was palpable. A little later on, Oliver and his two Aussie friends joined us. They were brothers, named Nathan and Sam. We got along great, with me and Sam drunkenly dancing at one point while Brittney filmed it and laughed.
After a few hours of fun at Motskin, we made our way to Jessica’s. The place was booming with Latino music. However, after about a half hour of dancing, I grew tired of the scene and took off for home. Still, it was a very fun evening.
Today I had to leave work early to go to the hospital. I was fine, though. I was going there to meet others for a volunteering event in the children’s wing!
I took a bus from Tel Aviv to Petah Tikva, a city about 40 minutes east of Tel Aviv. There, I met Lilah, Natalie, Mason, Morgan, and one of our internship coordinators, Carmel. We met in an arts and crafts room for the kids. While waiting for the hospital staff to guide us around, I made a little butterfly from pipe cleaners, which I figured I could give to one of the kids:
After some introductory information, we were escorted upstairs. (Natalie remained in the arts and crafts room to entertain some of the children in there.) While heading towards the elevator, I made myself a pair of pipe cleaner antennae to wear around.
We went room to room greeting the children, using our limited Hebrew to ask how old they were and where they were from, and giving them gifts made from the pipe cleaners. I ended up making a pair of glasses, a wearable mustache, a heart, and a bunch of flowers, all of which I gave to the children, of course. (I was impressed with my creativity with the pipe cleaners. Perhaps I missed my true calling as a clown?)
The children ranged in age from newborns to teenagers. Some spoke English, allowing us to have a slightly more substantive conversation with them. But mostly, we just entertained them. In addition to my antennae (which I later made into a flower to give one of the kids), I also wore around the pipe cleaner mustache, flicking it to the delight of the kids. Eventually we came across a little boy, to whom I said “Hey, you’re a man! You can appreciate this!” before giving it to him.
Carmel entertained them with some juggling, and Mason struck up quite a conversation with the family of someone from LA. Morgan made some pipe cleaner toys, too, and absolutely fell in love with the small children. Lilah, who has a fear of hospitals, was freaking out a bit, and ended up going back down to the arts and crafts room with Natalie. Still, I was impressed that she chose to stretch herself and come here!
After about an hour and a half, we made our way back down to the arts and crafts room, which now had a fair number of kids in it. I sat down to make more pipe cleaner animals to give to the kids. (I believe I made an ant, and something resembling a millipede.) I noticed Lilah was now all smiles, teaching the kids how to make origami cranes!
After a childhood filled with these kinds of activities, I couldn’t help but smile at how I was now the adult, the councilor, the instructor, in this situation. As a child, I would see my camp councilors make amazing work, and aspire to match their skill. It was fun being on the other end of that scenario! And doing it in a hospital made it all the more rewarding.
The wall that gave The Rainforest its name.
That night, the October Masa session was putting on a party at their apartment building. Oliver, Rebecca, Zach, Sarah R., and I took a bus to the place. The apartment housed seven people, to which I originally was taken aback, before I remembered that I lived in an apartment with six people. (Derp.)
It was a nice apartment! Very roomy. One wall in the living room had an odd wallpaper of a forest, to which the apartment got its nickname: the Rainforest.
The place ended up being packed with people from both sessions. We had a great time hanging out with the October group, which until then I still thought of as ‘The New Guys’–It finally dawned on me that they had been here for three months, now!
I hung out with them for a few hours, striking up conversations with various people, including Mikey, one of the guys I talked to at their welcome party at the Patio Bar back in October (and whom I’ve briefly seen a few times since). He had been growing out his beard, which led to the amazing revelation that we have the same facial hair pattern. I’m tempted to grow mine out just so we can take a photo side by side. (I imagined us showing the photo to some skeptical friend and saying: “See! I’m not the only one! I’m not alone, anymore!”)
The weather finally let up today! It was still cold and damp, but the rain had more or less ceased. Oliver and I decided to visit Lilah at Motskin. She had been out of commission the last few days, as she had an abscess that had to be surgically removed. She was finally allowed to go home though, and was recovering well after a miserable three-day stay at the hospital. The only thing that made it bearable for her were her friends who came to visit.
Goofin’ at Motskin. From left: Andrew, Morgan, Oliver, and Lilah.Yael was not pleased at being left out of the group shot.
Oliver and I arrived to find Yael, Morgan, Jamie, Lilah, and Andrew sitting on the couch around a hookah. Lilah was recovering well, though still in some pain. We ended up chilling with them all day, learning about Lilah’s hospital ordeal and exchanging stories. (I recalled my surgical tale of a deviated septum. When I woke up, I had a huge blood clot in the back of my throat. Let’s just say there was a lot of blood, vomit, and Sprite involved.)
Throughout the day, others came and went as well, including Zach, Lindsey, Sarah R., Daniel V., Adina, and Garrett. We made tea, noshed on snacks; it was a cozy day!
On my way back to my apartment, I stopped by where my parents were staying. (It was only a block from Motskin, after all.) They were leaving Tel Aviv tomorrow and heading to Jerusalem for the next few days before going back home, so this was the last chance I had to see them until I got home. We said our goodbyes, big hugs and all, and I caught a bus back to Lunz.
January 11th-13th:
Not much to talk about on these days. The storm had finally passed, so it was just another typical few days of work.
However, a couple things of note did happen on the 13th. First, I received a package from a buddy of mine back home, containing a book of Scandinavian jokes! (Thanks, buddy!)
Doesn’t nearly do it justice.Much better. (Photo courtesy of Garrett.)
That evening, on my way back from the gym, I noticed a spectacular sunset. The entire western half of the sky was filled with pastel pinks, blues, purples, and oranges! It turned The White City a shade of pink. I was on Ben Tsiyon Boulevard at the time, so my view was obscured by trees and buildings. Still, I managed to get a half-descent shot of it. (See photo at left.)
I made sure to let others know via our WhatsApp thread to check out the sunset if they get a chance! Fortunately, Garrett was home on the top floor of Levinsky at the time, so he managed to capture a couple spectacular views.
That’s more like it! (Photo courtesy of Garrett.)
January 14th:
Today, I went straight to Yafo port instead of first going to the office. There I met Valeri and Andrei. We wanted to see if the waves were calm enough to get a better idea of what was going on with our device beneath the water line. Unfortunately, the waves were still too rough, though far less so than my previous visit on the 8th. Instead, I took the opportunity to take some photos of another prototype which we hoisted from the water a few weeks ago. I figure those photos may prove useful in the future. We spent the rest of the day in the office.
This used to be bright yellow. Three years of constant submersion in salt water, plus the wrong paint for the job, led to this. (Damn, nature! You scary!)
The greatest tragedy of the storm: A dropped piece of Tony Vespa pizza.
The storm was still alive, though by this point, it was more of an annoyance than anything else. The wind was more or less gone, but the rain persisted. By now, everything–even the air—was damp. And it felt cold; far colder than it should feel. While going grocery shopping, I wondered to myself: “I’m from Minnesota! It’s 50 degrees right now! How is this bothering me?!”
After a frustrating internal monologue, I finally realized what was different: It was the humidity! Minnesota winters are usually extremely dry (so much so that you often need lotion to keep your skin from cracking), so while the air can be absolutely frigid, as long as you’re dressed warmly, you can endure. Here, however, despite it being only in the low 50s, the humidity sucks the heat from you no matter how many layers you’re wearing. That is what made this weather truly miserable.
Fortunately, I only had to leave the apartment once. Tonight, Lunz decided to hold Shabbat dinner at our place! The weather forced most people to stay home. (Who could blame them?) It was for the best, though: Unlike Levinsky, Lunz can’t seat 30 people. Instead, we had a cozy Shabbat with around 10 to 15 people. I cooked my chicken fettuccine, and Zach made another chicken dish and some rice. Sharon brought some delicious Challah, and Yael and Morgan brought dessert. It was very relaxing: eating warm food in a warm home, surrounded by friends, while the weather jealously looked on from outside.
The storm let up significantly today–only light rain punctuated the day–but the winds were back. I went to Yafo with Valeri and Andrei to see if the old prototype had withstood this unprecedented storm. As we approached the port, I noticed a haze stretching about 200 feet into the air. For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out what it was. However, once I saw the Mediterranean Sea, it dawned on me: The haze was sea-spray.
The ocean was absolutely nuts!! The waves were around 8 meters high (that’s 26 feet, folks), and were violently crashing into the rocks and each other. (Here’s a video.)
The prototype was not design to withstand this insanity, and indeed, it did not. It wasn’t a major catastrophe: there were only two points of failure. The device was entirely salvageable. We just had to wait until the waves calmed in order to retrieve the device and make repairs. I won’t go into to details, but we quickly figured out exactly what happened, and knew how to redesign it so such a failure wouldn’t happen again.
Eat it, Poseidon.Oliver spotted this gorgeous double rainbow around sunset.
That evening, the festivities surrounding Oliver’s birthday continued. We gathered at Levinsky—which had somehow survived the storm—for some drinking games. (The Levinsky apartment is located on the top of a six story building, and isn’t exactly in the greatest condition. According to the residents, the place was unbelievably loud during the storm. There were some hilarious messages in our WhatsApp thread about it. Basically, no one would have been surprised had the place been destroyed.)
“Hospitals = so fucking fun 😦 ” — Lilah
Well, for most of us went to Levinsky. Poor Lilah spent the entire day in the hospital, still recovering from surgery. Many in the group were sweet enough to spend a lot of the day with her to help her get through her ordeal. Others gave our well-wishes over WhatsApp (me included, and I still feel guilty for not visiting her in the hospital). Garrett definitely won the award for Best Get-Better-Soon Note with “Rest in peace Lilah.” Hilarity abounded following that gem!
Around 1AM, Oliver asked were everyone was. Instead of just telling him I was back at the apartment, I decided to send him a picture. (That flag is mounted in my room.)
Anyway, Oliver brought three bottles of vodka with him to Levinsky, and I believe they were gone by the time the evening wrapped. We played Kings, a card game were you go around in a circle picking cards until the deck is empty. Each card has a rule associated with it. For example, if you pick a six, all men have to drink; if you pick an ace, you give a nickname to someone, and any time someone calls that person by something other than the nickname, they have to drink. It was a great time!
The wind and rain returned by the end of the evening, so most of us quickly scurried home following the party. However, Oliver, Yas, and Sarah S. soldiered on until around 4:30 in the morning! They ended up at the burger joint Moses (which I went to upon my return from Jerusalem after Yom Kippur). There, Sarah took the sexiest photo of Oliver I have ever seen:
Today was nuts. The winds were howling, thunder was clapping, and the rain—oh, the rain! It was intense. Our WhatsApp thread was full of chatter about whether we should go into work.
Since my work was so close to my apartment, I figured I could make it. I left during a relative lull in the storm. On my way into work, I saw the first casualties: small tree branches, lots of leaves, and a couple broken umbrellas littered the sidewalk. More broken umbrellas poked out of the trash cans lining the streets. I must have counted at least a half dozen!
The last road crossing before I get to work is a major intersection. The road here is so wide that there’s nothing to slow the wind, resulting in massive gusts. Aware of the carcasses I passed on the way here, I grasped my umbrella tightly, and began to cross. Despite my efforts, however, a large gust caught me by surprise and flipped my umbrella inside out! Fortunately, I had the wisdom to immediately turn the umbrella into the wind, which flipped it back to normal. The covering was a little stretched, but the umbrella was saved! I quickly folded it up, and let the wind and rain have its way with me.
By the time I go to work, I was soaked from the knees down. (I wrote in our WhatsApp thread that I felt like soggy oatmeal.) I hung my socks from my desk to dry, and for the rest of the day I walked around my office in bare feet like a hobbit.
Across the street from my office is a massive construction site. (The largest in Tel Aviv, I think.) While looking out at the storm, I noticed that a scaffolding rig holding up some lights had been blown over in the wind the previous night! That’s the first real damage I’d seen from this storm.
That inspired me to check the news. I found that this storm was clobbering the country: There was snow in Jerusalem and Haifa, shutting down those cities; the main road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem had closed due to snow; a huge, five-story sign had blown over in northern Israel, crashing onto the street below; and car crashes abounded throughout the country (though fortunately with few, if any, fatalities). My Israeli coworkers who also braved the storm were amazed at its magnitude and intensity: This was unprecedented.
Global warming in action? Perhaps. One severe storm doesn’t make a trend. Still, there is a relation between this extreme weather and my reason for coming to Israel: I want to gain experience in the renewable energy sector so I can dedicate my career to fighting global warming through the development of clean energy sources.
I managed to get a lot of work done, despite the storm constantly distracting me out the window. Throughout the day, the skies went from dark as night to a dull gray and back again, with the rain changing in intensity along with it: From steady rains to downpours with winds so heavy it sounded like a freight train. (Video courtesy of Mason.) At a few points in the day, the rain changed to sleet, maybe hail! (Though no bigger than a grain of rice.)
Fortunately, I managed to leave work during a lull in the rain, and got home just in time: Not 15 minutes later, the wind and rain were lashing at our apartment windows, and it started hailing again! (Though again, only rice-sized.)
Fortunately, the wind finally died down as the evening wore on. It was Oliver’s birthday today, and the group was planning on going out tonight to celebrate. It was still raining, but it was tolerable without the wind.
Unfortunately, Lilah couldn’t join us. She had developed an abscess that had gotten so bad it had to be surgically removed! To make things worse, Lilah absolutely hates hospitals. Fortunately, it was minor surgery. (Plus, Lilah’s distaste for hospitals made for some very entertaining talk on WhatsApp!)
Clockwise, from top: Garrett, Sharon, and Brittney
The rest of us braved the rain to go to a bar/restaurant on Mazeh Street just off of Rothschild called Tangier. I arrived a little late with a few others to find about 10 people already gathered around a table. We joined them, and started drinking while noshing on appetizers. The place was a wristband bar, where you pay a certain amount and get to drink as much as you want. Garrett, Jess, and I paid the same price so we could get unlimited wine. Three glasses of white wine later and I had a blast, chatting with Garrett, Jess, Mason, Sharon, Starr, German Daniel, Brittney, Yas, and others.
At one point, a bunch of us decided to continue a little meme that Garrett, Oliver, and Jess started during their trip to Prague, and took selfies imitating Garrett after he took a shot of some strong alcohol:
Today was the start of a major storm forecast to hit all of Israel. Thunderstorms, high winds, and heavy rain (and snow in Jerusalem and Haifa) were forecast for the next three days! The storm began not in the form of rain, but of wind.
It started in the morning, as I walked to work through mostly calm skies interrupted by unusually strong–though not alarming–breezes. However, as the day wore on, the winds picked up steam. Strong gusts punctuated my journey to and from lunch. After I returned to the office, I periodically glanced up from my work to look out the window, and noticed the sky turning more and more orange!
There’s no filter applied to this image.
As first, I thought maybe it was my imagination. But after mentioning it to my coworkers, they confirmed that what I thought was happening was indeed in the forecast:
A haboob—a dust storm—was upon us.
It was a minor one; there was no dramatic wall of dust racing towards the city, enveloping all in darkness. However, as the day went on, the breezes and dust only got more intense. On my way home, I could see a little bit of dust in the headlights of the cars, and my view of the Tel Aviv skyscrapers was somewhat obscured. It felt like I had something in my eye, but it was the sky itself that had something in it: dust from the Negev desert!
For comparison, here’s what it normally looks like out my window. (Photo taken on October 2nd, 2014.)
That evening I had plans to introduce my roommates and others on my trip to my parents, and I wasn’t going to let a little wind and dust stop my plans. I made reservations at Hashdera 34, the same place as the going-away party we held for Danny back on December 28th.
After hopping on a bus, I arrived to find my roommate, Daniel, waiting for the rest of us. My parents arrived shortly after, followed by Yasmin and Oliver. By this time, the winds were truly howling: The treetops were shaking violently, and leaves and branches littered the sidewalk.
This spooked the rest of my Masa group, so dinner ended up only being with me, my parents, and most of my roommates. (Rebecca was still recovering from a stomach virus, so she sat this meal out. Zach overslept and didn’t end up coming.) That was fine, though. My roommates were the ones most interested in meeting my parents, anyway.
Dinner went very well! It was fun introducing everyone to each other, and they got along great! Yas and my Dad especially hit it off; they were talking up to the moment we left! Oliver, Daniel, and I had to practically pry them apart in order to get home before the rain started (which had thankfully held off). Stories exchanged over dinner included Yasmin and my mother each killing mice, and Oliver misunderstanding my mother’s story and thinking she used a shovel to hit an ostrich!
After my roommates and I arrived safely back at my apartment, we gathered in Rebecca and Yas’ room while Oliver conveniently sat on the couch using his computer (and wearing his silly onesie that his Secret Shlomo bought him). His birthday was on the 7th, and Yas and Rebecca bought him a cake! As the clock struck midnight, we lit candles and brought the cake out to the living room, surprising Oliver while singing ‘Happy Birthday’!
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Aaron In Israel 