barcelona, unexpectedly!

the early cessation of classes left me with a rare and very unexpected opportunity - to go anywhere i wanted! but it had to be the cheapest place to get to. and it had to be warm. and starbucks to study in and subway restaurants to eat at were a priority. for reasons less self-centered than these i really wanted to get into gaza, but alas the only possible way to do that was to feign a career as a journalist, which was a little risky. not too concerned about personal safety, just more, you know, getting deported or something silly. someone i know may or may not have found a way, proving that anything is possible. but this time i made the easier decision and decided to fly to barcelona, spain for a week, before heading to america. got there via kyiv, ukraine, where i spent a night. it was a really nice week in barcelona. i stayed in a rather luxurious art-deco hostel where i slept in a lot and hung out with some random new friends from germany and holland and even america! it was just really great to finally be able to speak english to some new people who weren't medical students, as much as i love my fellow medical students. studied a bit, though not as much as i should have. multiple 3 hour runs along the beach which were glorious. some museums and free walking tours and gaudi's art all over the place. it was an interesting time to be there as the region, catalonia, had a big election in which a majority demonstrated their desire to secede from spain.

one day i went to an ancient monastery on an other-worldly serrated mountain called montserrat. amazing view; highly recommend.

another day i took a bus to a tiny country high in the snowy pyrenee mountains called andorra. admittedly mostly because it was a country that i had yet to set foot in. while there i went to the most amazing spa/swimming pool facility called caldea, where there were all kinds of hot tubs, water jets of varying intensity, saunas with infrared lighting, hamam-themed steam rooms, outdoor swirl pools and jacuzzis, icelandic-style cold pools with ice being constantly shaved into them, aztecian serenity pools with mood lighting and unbelievably relaxing music - you get the idea! it was amazing and the most expensive 3 hours of my life but i justified it because i just left a war zone - right?! beyond the spa andorra can easily consume half a day of your time - it is famous for lacking the taxes and regulations found elsewhere in europe. it is the place to go if you want to buy cheap alcohol or gourmet food or get your teeth whitened without paying taxes or smoke in department stores.

it was an excellent unexpected week!

WAR. and such

as you may have heard, there was recently a rather significant war in the middle east. call it gaza war # whatever we're at now. our city of be'er sheva happened to be right in the middle of it. things really got started when the idf (israeli defense force) surprise assassinated ahmed jabari, the head of hamas' military wing in gaza, as punishment for hamas rockets being fired into southern israel over the last couple years. we got advance warning from the israeli medical students who were taking our neglected tropical diseases module with us - they got some texts from their friends with connections and told us we better go home asap and hide in our bomb shelters, as all hell was about to break loose. and indeed, it basically did. hamas responded with a continuous and sustained barrage of rockets, as did israel, that continued for the next week or so - about 1500 rockets each. it was crazy. no school. no going far from the bomb shelter (which luckily for me happens to be my room). sirens, quickly followed by huge sonic booms that rattled the windows and the fridge. many of be'er sheva's residents as well as most of my classmates fled town; some even left the country. my roommate and i decided to stick around. soon i started getting cabin fever, and would (probably unwisely) go on runs in the eerily deserted streets, sometimes hiding behind something when the sirens went off, others times simply continuing to run and cranking my ipod to drown out the sounds of war. we had the strange and unfortunate honor of being the center of the world's attention for a few days. cnn's wolf blitzer was even tweeting live from close to my apartment - i quickly got on my bike to go try to find him, but he had already moved on to interview some more rocket attack victims.

israel has developed a missile defense system called the iron dome, which shoots down rockets heading toward developed areas with at least 90% accuracy. it is truly beautiful to watch this system in action at night (watch it at work here protecting a wedding - coincidently this is just meters from my apartment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M-BQtp4Www). one concern has become that the iron dome provides incentive for israelis (and me) to go outside to watch "the fireworks" when the sirens go off, rather than to hide in their bomb shelters. despite the dome, some rockets definitely still get through and hit be'er sheva and other towns in southern israel. for example, one shattered the front window of some of my friends' house. 

and of course, the people of gaza have no such protections, as evidenced by the fact that 160-some gazans died in this latest war compared with 6 israelis, a gross disproportion fairly typical of israeli-palestinian violence. i have really tried not to make this a blog about my political positions, but allow me to briefly state what i see as the most important root cause of this particular conflict: life in gaza is hell. no economy allowed; no hope. the vast majority of gazans aren't allowed to leave, ever. they can't get life saving medicines in for their children without impossible-to-get permissions from israel. israeli doctors who want to go volunteer in gaza are barred from doing so by the israeli government. food going into gaza is rationed. fishermen get shot if they stray more than 3 miles from the shore - not really far enough to catch many fish. 95% of gaza's children have clinical signs of ptsd (post-traumatic stress disorder). the list goes on... and on... and on. no one can expect people to live under these conditions without resorting to desperate measures. it is true that hamas is a terrible organization. their stated targets are israeli civilians, which is completely wrong; indeed evil. but the israeli government can't blame anyone but themselves for the fact that hamas is popular in gaza. and the saddest thing is that not much has changed after the now ceasefire. conditions are still horrible in gaza, and pro-violence hardliners retain popular support on both sides. this war will repeat itself, sooner rather than later. okay, enough from my political soapbox (although i would argue that its not really about politics, its about innocent people's lives). of course, there are a myriad of other factors that also play into the region's propensity for conflict, and others predictably point fingers in other directions. just always remember: conflict, especially in the middle east, is invariably more complicated than can ever be described in one paragraph, news clip, facebook sharable infograph, or even dissertation. unfortunately, the only thing that the leaders of both sides agree on is that they probably aren't going to start getting along any time soon. that doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing everything we can to try to help that start to happen.

anyways, about a week into the conflict, things were looking pretty bad. rockets were hitting tel aviv and jerusalem (for the first time since the 1970s), there was a bus bombing in tel aviv that had every israeli worrying about a third intifada, and an israeli ground invasion of gaza seemed imminent. my school's administration decided that it would be best to end the semester early. ironically, just a few hours after they made that announcement, a ceasefire was unexpectedly agreed to, and actually stuck. so, we got off early, but we need to go back early too, and attend school on weekends to make up the lost time. unfortunately this means i have to miss my main man devin's wedding which i was really stoked about attending, and spend christmas day on an airplane, and have even less time this spring to start preparing for the biggest exam of our lives, the usmle step 1 board exam, but at least my classmates and i can all be thankful that we survived this thing, unlike the 160 or so who weren't so lucky. war is terrible.

fall 2012

-studied a lot; passed some exams!

-we started trying to learn clinical hebrew. i am in the beginner group with 2 good friends, also novices. our teacher is a 6th year israeli medical student and she is really nice.

-got to go on a weekend retreat with some other christians at my school to the galilee! it was so nice to spend some time looking into God's word, relaxing around a campfire fueled by palm leaves, and getting to know some of the first year students. also, one day we hiked upon mount arbel, which has a huge cliff overlooking the sea of galilee. then a few of us did some seriously muddy off-roading in a field with one of our rental cars and it was totes the funnest thing ever! then on the last day, those in my car and i one-upped any other possible thing that could be done by visiting an outdoor roman-era hot spring/spa facility in the golan heights called hamat gadar. it was funtabulous! they have waterfalls of hot sulfurous water that you can sit under and an extensive alligator farm!

-joined some of the visiting international undergraduate students at the university for a trip to the western wall in jerusalem to see the prayers of slichot which occur throughout the night before yom kippur. this is the biggest day for public prayer in judaism, seemingly especially among sephardis. the head rabbi of israel was leading prayers at the wall and there were tens of thousands of people fervently praying in their own unique styles. the university had also hired a guide who had many unique insights; we learned a lot about the themes of repentance and forgiveness in judaism, very interesting time.

-ran a nice 10km race in tel aviv in the night along with 30 000 other people, including about half of my classmates! lots of fun!

the rest of sukkot- in türkiye!

after iraq i got to hang out in turkey for a few days, also a very fascinating country! i arrived at a deserted bus station on the turkey-iraq border in the late evening, to find that there was only one more bus leaving that night, and it wasn't really going where i needed to get to by the next morning. so i got on it anyway, and we started driving west, right along the border with syria. later that night i learned that there were rockets fired from syria into turkey that very evening, and it stirred a lot of talk about a possible turkish invasion of syria. obviously that has not yet materialized, but they keep talking about even to this day. all i can say about syria right now is God help them. i arrived in a tiny town called kizeltepe in the very early morning, and then found my way to a pleasant mountain-top town called mardin where there is an amazing view over the plains of mesopotamia! then a minibus to diyarbakir just barely in time for my flight. southeastern turkey is kurdish. everyone wears little bracelets with the kurdish colors, and there is a very popular independence movement. decades of anti-kurdish policies by the turkish government (like until relatively recently a ban on the use of the kurdish language) have fostered a tremendous amount of resentment. this has resulted in much local support for the pkk, or kurdistan worker's party, considered a terrorist organization due to their history of bombing public transportation in istanbul and the like. the turkish government's war against kurdish nationalism rages on, whether it be in the form of water-cannoning peaceful protestors on the streets of istanbul just the other day or bombing pkk-supporting villages in northern iraq. it is a rather complicated situation, obviously. someone told me that the pkk had tried planting a bomb on the runway at the diyarbakir airport just days before i was there! until recently, the far southeastern corner of turkey was so dangerous that it was off limits to foreigners - now one can go anywhere but there are still countless military roadblocks and the like. i'd love to go back and spend more time there.

i then got to spend 2 days in istanbul! what an unbelievably amazing city, definitely one of the best in the world. i got to spend a week here a few years ago during my college semester in the middle east, so i skipped straight to the 2nd tier attractions that the tourists don't think about, like the largest shopping mall in europe! also, because i love malls! i spent a day studying cardiology there and it was amazing. also, "istanbul hostel" exceeded expectations. then it was back to israel for some serious studying and a big cardiology exam.

on going to iraq for fun!

during the most recent jewish holiday, sukkot, i decided to take a trip to iraq! alone, for fun! because as the kids are saying, "yolo", right?! it was a fascinating time. not least because the tourism scene there is nonexistent, so it was impossible to know what to expect. no such thing as a reliable lonely planet book, advance hostel bookings, or atms that will take your card in iraq! indeed, i was the only caucasian that i saw during the 4 days i was there! i should disclaim that i really only visited iraqi kurdistan, which is a completely autonomous region in the north of iraq. it is populated by kurds, not arabs, and they love america. love it to the extent that they paste huge american flags onto the back of their gas-guzzling suvs. i'd be too scared to go to the "real" iraq :) 

flew first to istanbul, then to diyarbakir in eastern turkey, where i was lucky enough to find a bus heading for iraqi kurdistan that very night (apparently half the time the buses arbitrarily decide not to make the trip). crossing the border into iraq in the middle of the night was relatively painless - they asked me simply "tourist?" and "how many days you kurdistan?" before giving me back my passport, which had already been stamped! this was lucky, as i was hoping they weren't going to ask too many questions and find out that i lived in israel, which they probably wouldn't be too happy about (second passports come in handy :). for the rest of the night and into the morning, the bus slowly meandered deeper and deeper into the remarkable land that i had previously heard about only in the news. above i said that i "really only" visited kurdistan, but the main roads between different parts of kurdistan go through some majority arab cities, including mosul and kirkuk, known as two of the most dangerous cities in the world. driving through those cities was rather exhilarating! its a good thing the bus didn't break down, as word is that the expected lifespan of a white man on the streets of mosul (who isn't "rolling heavy" with armor and guns) would be less than 15 minutes. but the kurdish cities - as i reassured my mother repeatedly - completely safe! :)

i arrived in sulaymaniyah in eastern iraqi kurdistan in the late morning, and decided to take a nap for the rest of the day, as by that time it had been about 55 hours since i had last tasted the sweet bliss of sleep. in hindsight it was really stupid to go 55 hours without sleeping, because i ended up getting quite sick for the rest of the trip and beyond. but i was just so excited to get to iraq asap! sulaymaniyah is known as the cultural capital of iraqi kurdistan, and is surprisingly liberal considering it is so steeped in islam. more than enough liquor stores line the main street, for example. i went to one of saddam hussein's political prisons for kurdish dissidents, amna suraka. saw tiny rooms where innocents would be held alone in complete darkness for months on end, removed only to be hung from hooks on the ceiling while they were shocked with electrodes connected to their ears and genitals. absolutely horrid. saddam hussein - so-damn insane. that night i watched a film called "battle for haditha" on youtube on my iphone. i would highly recommend it - a poignant and complex look at the harsh realities and inevitably/invariably twisted ethics of war in general, and a particular incident in the iraq war specifically. it was rather surreal watching it while in iraq. it made me profoundly thankful that i was lucky enough to be a tourist there in 2012 rather than as a soldier in 2005, or an innocent iraqi civilian in 2005 or 2012 for that matter. life for any of us could easily be so different.

the next day i took a crowded little minibus thing even further east to an infamous town called halabja. this place was where saddam massacred 5000 kurds with chemical weapons in one day in 1988. they have a powerful little memorial there, with a plethora of rather gruesome photographs of what sarin and vx nerve gas can do to the human body. again, absolutely horrid. after viewing the memorial, i walked into the town, which is actually only a few miles from the mountainous border with iran. this border apparently happens to be both unmarked and unguarded. i briefly thought about taking a little hike to flirt with the line, but i didn't, mostly because my mom made me promise i wouldn't. also, because a few americans tried it a few years ago, and even though they didn't actually enter iran, they were captured by the iranian military and incarcerated for 3 years for being "spies". also, because as i was walking through halabja, i was apprehended by a kurdish soldier wielding an ak47. after showing him my passport, which he "inspected" (upside down) for a few minutes, he decided that i needed to be escorted to the police station. eventually found someone who could understand that i was just looking for a ride back to sulaymaniyah.

my next stop was the capital of iraqi kurdistan, erbil, where the temperature seemed stuck at well over 40 degrees celsius (100 something fahrenheit). checked into a "hotel", only to find that there were no sheets on the bed, just some disgusting blanket that looked like it had been... cough... very heavily used. of course the guys who worked there had no idea what this white guy blabbering in white person language was trying to say. i slept on my towel :/  that hotel might have been an anomaly though, as the economy of iraqi kurdistan, and erbil especially, is booming. i found the newest and largest shopping mall in town, which was actually quite nice (for iraq). there was even an extensive theme park surrounding it, and they're building iraq's first multiplex cinema! (but it wasn't open yet). the following day i made my way back to the turkish border, stuffed into a series of share taxis with some really friendly kurds who i managed to have extensive "conversations" with despite the fact that we didn't share any vocabulary. the kurds have a reputation for being the friendliest ethnicity in the world, and they didn't disappoint. genuinely super nice people, and completely honest. where else in the middle east could you reliably get into a taxi, get to where you wanted to go and then ask the driver how much, and never be overcharged? definitely not in israel. it blew me away.

another fascinating thing about the kurds is that a sizable number of them belong to unique ancient religions that i didn't even know existed. for example, the yazidis, who worship a "peacock angel" (that they believe is good) named something similar to "satan", causing many of their muslim countrymen to label them as devil-worshipers. they make pilgrimages to an isolated temple in the mountains north of mosul. or the mandeans, a gnostic religion that reveres noah of biblical fame and his son shem, from whom they claim to have directly descended. kurds in iraq also speak one of two endemic languages - languages which happen to be mutually unintelligible. all this to say, clearly iraq is mind-bendingly complex, and even a single ethnic group such as the kurds that one would expect to be relatively monolithic is, in reality, far from being so.

getting out of iraq and back into turkey was a joke that took essentially an entire day. i had to hire some lanky turkish teen who appeared to work for some kind of border cartel to escort me across in a rusted out van. he insisted on continually retaining my passport. we waited for many hours amidst literally thousands of trucks to finally be searched by some preteen to make sure we weren't smuggling cigarettes out of iraq. promptly after which my escort used my passport to buy a bunch of duty free cigarettes. by this point i was too tired to argue. the adventures continued in turkey, but i think that may need to be another blog post as this has become about long enough!

my parents came to visit me!

there was a long weekend a while ago, and my parents came to visit me in israel! it was so nice to see them and show them what things are like here. the first night was the white coat ceremony for the first year students at my school, followed by one of two gourmet meals of the year provided by the school, and then skits/movies compliments of each of the classes. my parents got to meet most of my classmates which was great! we then went up to jerusalem and saw such sights as the western wall, church of the holy sepulchre, etc., and they even got to experience having rocks thrown at our car late one night as we were lost in the narrow streets of east jerusalem! the next day we went to bethlehem and they got to see the occupation wall and such. after hanging out on the beach in tel aviv for awhile, we headed to the north where we stayed in haifa and went to the historical city of akko, the sea of galilee, and nazareth. considering that i didn't have to pay for fuel, we even made a foray to the illegal israeli settlement of ariel deep in the west bank - on the way out my parents got to experience their first stringent "security check" compliments of the israeli army. on the way back to beer sheva my dad and i convinced my mom to go swimming in the dead sea, which she ended up really enjoying, and then they got to come to the bible study i go to here in beer sheva. it was nice that they got to see what israel is like, and just to spend some quality time with them. thanks for coming dad and mom!

negev style!

this is a music video starring my class! i find it rather entertaining!

will make detour for epic malls!

the cheapest way i could find from china back to israel was rather circuitous, just the way i like it! a 7 hour flight from beijing to kuala lumpur, malaysia only cost a little over $100! kuala lumpur is famous for being a luxury shopping and eating destination. the malls were copious, spacious and extravagant, and there was lots of cheap and delicious food! and one can stay in cheap parts of town which is nice. though malaysia is almost entirely muslim, the food courts were pretty crowded even though it was ramadan! i went up the "kl" tower for an amazing view, and saw the famous petronas twin towers, which way back in the day used to be the world's tallest. malls and food!

the next day i took a bus to singapore to see more malls! singapore is such a nice place. extremely high standard of living and prices to match. for the most part, they've made their cash off naval trade and science. a fascinating cultural (and culinary!) milieu of chinese, malays, tamils and countless others. and the lingua franca is... english! my friend apurva is going to medical school in singapore, and he was kind enough to let me stay at his place! we ate some more amazing food and i spent a few days riding on one of the world's most efficient public transportation systems and endlessly walking around some of the best malls the world has to offer, such as my personal favorite, a futuristically shaped one called the "ion". one day i took a 1 hour ferry to a nearby indonesian island called batam and back! indonesia is a whole other world, and i'd love to go back sometime. i also hit up singapore's resort island of sentosa for some sneaking into luxury hotel's beachfronts and to see one of singapore's 2 casinos - which singaporians have to pay $100 to get into, but is free for everyone else. an arguably overbearing government is about the only drawback of living in singapore - even the sale of chewing gum is strictly regulated.

the next dirt cheap flight brought me to sri lanka for a 30 hour stop! quickly regained my appreciation for the subcontinental sideways head nod! i found my way to the idyllic beachfront town of negombo, and spent the night in what ended up being a room in a family's house. the next day did some body surfing in the indian ocean and then went to colombo, the capital. being white, i was (rather awkwardly) very much the center of attention in an underground restroom "facility". also in a cafeteria style restaurant where every single one of the dozens of clientele literally stopped everything and stared with rapt attention for the entire 10 minutes that it took the white person to eat a plate of food with his hand. no, don't worry - i was using the right hand. overall a really enjoyable time - there is something about the blunt rawness of life in india and its similar neighbors that helps positively reorient a person's perspective on life if one lets it - even in just 30 hours.

i then traveled back to israel through sharjah, in the united arab emirates, and amman, jordan. that made 8 countries in a week, which is sort of crazy! getting from amman to israel turned out to be more of an adventure than i had planned, as it was the eve of eid al fitr (the end of the muslim month of ramadan), which complicated the logistics in a number of ways. but i made it, and 2nd year, starting with anatomy of the thorax has been really great so far!

yeeeeee-how!

the next leg of the trip was a train through the gobi desert from ulaanbaatar to the chinese border. we prepped ourselves because we had heard horror stories about mongolian trains - people being robbed as they slept and how the sheets would reek of mutton. but it was quite nice - probably the nicest train ride all summer in fact! we arrived in the chinese border city of erlian and spent the day wandering the streets until late afternoon when the sleeper buses starting their trips to beijing. these chinese sleeper buses were one of a kind - i'd recommend trying one if you ever get the chance! very early the next morning we arrived in beijing!! at an unknown location. we allied ourselves with a group of austrian bros and sweatily set out down a dark beijing street. a number of hours later, we made it to our destination - tiananmen square! just in time for the morning flag raising! there were tens of thousands of people there at 6 am, and most of them wanted a picture with us, the pasty whites! i knew i was going to love china!

beijing is an amazing city! a few highlights:
-ate 5 inch-large scorpions!
-bubble tea!
-great wall of china! (my sister got groped on the bus, had a very uncharacteristic yet retrospectively funny hypoglycemic breakdown because we didn't get a chance to eat for 13 hours, and i had some very serious and very unfunny issues of my own that resulted from chugging 3 liters of water immediately before a long bus ride, but overall still a pretty good day!)
-some gritty punk rock live in some underground venue in some suburb that took me 4 hours to get to, but it was worth it!
-temple of heaven
-finally tracking down the elusive peking duck!
-oriental plaza shopping mall: kind of - i know i overuse this word especially regarding malls but its because i mean it - amazing!!!
-food, food, and food! 
-hanging out with some of my sister's friends who are in china to teach english - it was a lot of fun!
-forbidden city!

basically beijing was super enjoyable and compared to the locales we had spent the rest of the summer in, quite luxurious and very easy to get around! i mean, subway stops labelled in english? beijing 1, moscow 0! it was wonderful and 30 days would have been better than 4, but life must go on!

mongolia: where the sky is closer!

continued from russia: start here.

the next leg on our trans-siberian journey was an extremely warm and slow bus ride to mongolia! the bus was much cheaper than the train. i sat beside a girl who spoke perfect english who was from yakutsk, a republic in the far north of eastern siberia - she told me all about her homeland! traveling up there would be an epic trip - the road is called the "road of bones" because so many people die en route! anyway, a few of mongolia's superlatives: coldest capital city in the world (but it gets pretty darn hot in the summer); lowest population density of any country in the world; fastest growing economy in the world (mining, mining, mining). a fascinating place! the real mongolia is out in the steppes, where nomads herd yaks and drink their fermented milk in their yurts. but because we didn't really plan things out as well as we could have and didn't have tons of time, we spent most of our time in the capital city, ulaanbaatar.

the night we arrived, there was a huge party in the street around a massive television screen because a mongolian was about to win a very rare olympic gold in judo!! but then he lost to a russian. the crowd dissipated rather fast. mongolians don't really like the russians, partly because they used to have an ancient tibetan-like vertically written script of their language, but the soviets forced them to start using cyrillic. unlike russia, where we went for 2 weeks without meeting another western tourist, ulaanbaatar was hosting a very large quantity of tourists, mostly of the dreadlocked, spiritual pilgrimage type. indeed, literally most of them were israeli. we spent an enjoyable entire day looking for a place to do laundry (the sink in our hostel wasn't an option as there was one sink for the 80 people staying there = craziness). we also went to a mongolian "cultural" show, which was actually one of the most entertaining things imaginable! they did a bunch of dancing, some contortionism, and what everyone comes to mongolia to hear - throat singing! we found a huge buddhist temple with lots of pigeons and prayer wheels and a three-story high buddha. we also went to the movie theater for some mindless indulgence that i craved all year as i was studying microbiology - it was the new batman and everyone cheered whenever batman saved the day and it was amazing! ate lots of meat soup and thick noodles.

we ended up staying an extra day in mongolia because the trains to china were sold out, so we decided to make our way to a national park outside the city called terelj. we were too cheap to go any way other than public bus, but were getting all kinds of conflicting information in mongolian about which one was the one, so we chose one at random and hoped it would get us close. it kinda got us sorta in the right direction! because we didn't have any idea we'd be going there we had no idea what to expect, but it was very beautiful, with jagged rocks jutting up out of the steppe! we eventually found a huge rock that resembles a turtle and hiked for a few hours to a buddhist monastery on top of a mountain, and i had a terrible fever and barely made it, but thanks to maria we survived! we found the correct bus for the 2 hour ride back to ulaanbaatar, and it ended up being quite a memorable time. all seats were taken so we had to stand, no problem. but every minute or two the bus would stop to pick up another 4 passsengers, or 12. it became unbelievably crowded, with 3 or 4 people in a seat and literally about 100 people squeezed into the isle. i was standing at the front, right between the driver and the gear shifter that he had to grab every 15 seconds. memorable!

next up: china!

russkiiiii summer! part 2

continued from part 1: here.

yekaterinburg to novosibirsk was supposed to take 30 hours, but it ended up taking closer to 45! for a reason unknown to anyone on the train, we turned around at some point and took a very circuitous detour... through kazakhstan!! so i'm not complaining; another country! they even gave us an assortment of complimentary carbs for the trouble: bread, instant mashed potatoes, ramen noodles, and biscuits. and the train was full of little kids which made it more exciting! there was a little girl in our bunk area named dacha. we knew because mom kept yelling at her "dacha!"; "dacha!". upon our almost sunrise-arrival in the smoggy, uninspiring city of novosibirsk we sweatily lugged our backpacks and 10 liters of water >1 hour to a soviet era (lacking the kitsch) "hotel", thinking "wasn't this supposed to be a holiday?", but then we woke up, went on some runs in a theme-park themed park with camels and got some subway sandwiches for breakfast and guzzled some amazing rye bread-based liquid called kvass and thought "there's no where else i'd rather be right now than in siberia!" then we rushed to the train station ...

the next train to irkutsk was another 30 hours. by this time we were getting used to being on trains! irkutsk is a fascinating city: the de facto capital of siberia. we learned about the white army and their eastern resistance against the bolsheviks during the russian civil war, led by kolchak. a statue of him was recently erected in irkutsk: they had to make the sides of it super steep so that modern day communists wouldn't deface it. also, much of the city's rich cultural history can originally be attributed to the decembrists, political exiles to siberia in the early 1800s. we found a nice monastery and stuck around for a service. everyone stands the whole service in a russian orthodox church... also, you come and go as you wish as the service is happening. our second day we got up early to attempt to travel to lake baikal but trying to find a certain very-hard-to-find hydrofoil station ended up being an epic fail that involved many hours of hiking and eventually severe dehydration and hypoglycemia. the problems for me reached a vivid climax when, after purchasing a bottle of fermented sour goat milk that had become a personal rehydration favorite, the entire bottle exploded into my eyes and all over my body because i didn't know that this particular product happened to be carbonated. yes, carbonated fermented goat milk - only in russia.

the next day we did manage to find our way to lake baikal - on a minibus. the night before i happened to be bitten by 1 million bugs in my sleep; thankfully maria did not desert me despite my unsightliness. lake baikal is the deepest lake in the world!! we love superlatives! a few facts: 2600 species endemic to the lake. including a species of tapeworm that eats entire fish from the outside! the only freshwater seals in the world, the nerpas (they're really cute!). 20% of the world's freshwater finds itself in lake baikal at any given moment in time! we hiked along the shore to a tourist-oriented and garbage-strewn town called listvyanka, where we ate some freshly smoked omul, a fish that lives in the lake. absolutely unbelievably tasty! we then climbed around with a super friendly russian preteen in some mostly destroyed communist era warehouses where we found some nice views of the lake! we climbed a mountain... to discover that there were so many trees up there that there was no view, but it was still fun! to get back to irkutsk we took the hydrofoil. those things are exhilarating! we chilled on the roof with the wind while a chubby, gold-necklaced guy who apparently avidly hunts wolves and used to be a kgb agent shared a bottle of fine moldovan wine with us. it was nice! :)

our final russian train ride took us around the bottom of lake baikal, where a 2 minute stop was enough time to frantically fight back the restraints of the provodnitza (carriage attendent) to buy some last smoked omul through the train door, and on to ulan ude, the capital of buryatia. made some friends on the train, including a pro boxer and a guy named sergei who shared exactly zero common language with me, but we still managed to have a 2 hour conversation! something i didn't really know about russia before: there are 160 indigenous ethnicities or "nationalities" in the russian federation! indeed, that's why they call it a federation, because many of its parts are relatively autonomous republics. the friendly owner of the hostel we stayed at was ardently "not russian!", rather buryat. the buryat people are related to the mongols and are big into shamanism and ancestor worship and the like, which made ulan ude about the most exotic place we had been to yet on this trip. we learned that the most revered site in shamanism are some random rocks on an isolated island in lake baikal - people make pilgrimages there from all over the world! the biggest thing to know about ulan ude: it is home to the largest lenin head in the world! the buryats also make a mad tasty version of dumplings that they call booze. overall a pretty good time in the republic or buryatia!

the journey continues in mongolia: here.

russkiiiii summer!!!! part 1

i was very blessed this summer to be able to go on an epic month-long journey with my sister maria: the trans-siberian railroad! its been THE item on our sibling-bonding bucket list for as long as i can remember! after a very enjoyable couple weeks at home in canada after a study-filled first year of medical school, my sister and i made our separate paths to moscow, me arriving with little more than some short shorts, as airlines recently seem to becoming more adept at loosing luggage. not to worry though, turns out short shorts are the russian way! we spent three glorious days in moscow - perusing shopping malls, grocery stores, the kremlin, subway restaurants, more grocery stores, and a ubiquitous and amazing russian cafeteria chain called mu-mu (they have life-sized, ride-able cows out front if you're ever there and looking for something to get up on!). moscow is superlative central: home to more billionaires than any other city in the world; most expensive city in the world, and... well that's enough! some particularly vivid moscow memories include peering at vladimir lenin's wax encrusted corpse in his mausoleum in red square, being refused entry to the epic cathedral of christ the savior (of recent pussy riot infamy) because i was "immodestly dressed" (the short shorts), and a whole lot of walking! my valiant sister also managed to book us all our train tickets across russia in russian (the agent thought we were insane for wanting to go to siberia)! maria's russian skillz were lifesaving as it turns out absolutely no one speaks any english and you are gauranteed to be indefinitely lost if you can't read cyrillic. thanks for saving my life so many times maria :)  she also taught me a lot about russian history- those tsars, those commies, those oligarchs...  those old believers that nobody knows about...

our first of many train rides was one night to the east to niznhi novgorod, where my sister happened to spend a semester a couple years ago! what a nice little city - it used to be the capital of russia! a highlight there was being invited over for dinner by a middle-aged english teacher who maria worked with when she lived in niznhi. first question asked: "do you like mayonnaise?!?" we ate a lot of mayonnaise that night, and it never tasted so good. this particular woman also had a pet crow in the house and a propensity for telling really interesting stories! also there was a girl who came to learn some english from us, and the english teacher's son who is apparently great at english but refuses to speak it (we bonded over this fact!). over the 8 hours of deep conversation there were many champagne toasts; we all were required to give at least one! we also went to maria's old university, where she regaled me with tales of the horrid soups that the communist kitchen commanders would force them to eat lest they die out in the cold. we snuck into some academic buildings with some stray cats and managed to escape before security locked the place up for the rest of the summer.

the next train ride was a 24 hour one, to yekaterinburg in the heart of the ural "mountains"! most of of train rides we took the platskart, or "most budget" cars, which are 60 people sleeping in one big train car room. actually pretty fun! (at first at least :)  those were sold out for this particular trip though, so we ended up being stuck in a "kupe" compartment with an aging pervert. i'll spare you the details but lets just say i couldn't step out of the compartment for 10 seconds without this guy making maria reallllly uncomfortable. we finally arrived in yekarterinburg, having no idea what to expect, but knowing that anything would be better than the reality on that train. the hostel we booked turned out not to exist, but no problem! our 24 hours in yekaterinburg were quite enjoyable. we chanced upon a real tgi fridays, and decided we deserved juicy burgers! we also found what is probably one of the nicest shopping malls in russia. more uniquely, we visited the church that marks the spot where the last tsar, nicholas, and his family (except anastasia????) were murdered by the bolsheviks. the church was only completed a little over a decade ago, and it and the family burial site have since become something of a pilgrimage destination for those in the russian orthodox church who view the tsar as being a little closer to g-d than the rest of us.

continued in part 2, here.

semester 2 complete!

it was a good one! thankfully i passed all my exams, and now we're into "2nd year" - systems! this means we will now study just one subject at a time and have an exam every three or so weeks. we recently finished hematology, and now we're into endocrinology!

a few happenings of the last semester:

-holidays: purim (think jewish halloween), hag b'omer (collect scraps of wood all year so that they can be thrown into a huge bonfire that can be partied around), holocaust remembrance and israeli independence day (minutes of silence during which everything in israel stops, including all traffic on the freeways, followed by a huge party with epic fireworks right outside my apartment), ben-gurion university student day (live music all night; pool party all day).

-a disaster management module that was quite interesting

-ran the dead sea half marathon with a number of my classmates; the lowest race on earth!! 1:37; i was happy with that. afterward we got to swim in the extremely salty dead sea water, which felt great on some our freshly chaffed nipples - you can imagine the yelps!

-had the opportunity to go to two christian "student conferences" that involved jewish as well as arab believers. really good times and great to meet some people outside of beer sheva.

-msih prom: bringing the american high school experience to israel!

-some unplanned school-free rocket days (they come from gaza). after one, we made some young israeli friends hanging out in a bomb shelter. they took us to where one of the rockets had hit that day - it decimated a school. good reminder that it is important to hide when that siren goes off.

-during one rocket day i decided to head up to nablus, one of the largest palestinian cities in the west bank. its quite a trip from here - a bus to jerusalem, another through the checkpoint to ramallah, and yet another to nablus. really interesting place. i spent a few sweaty hours climbing mount gerizim which overlooks nablus, home of most of the last remaining samaritans of biblical fame. quasi-jews, they believe that the true site of the original temple was on mt. gerizim as opposed to in jerusalem. every year they hold a big ritual/sacrifice thing there. they even have their own ancient language. its a small community of about 800, and until very recently they strictly disallowed intermarriage with anyone else, so unfortunately they have all kinds of rare genetic diseases. from the mountain one looks down on the balata refugee camp, the most populous in the west bank. 30 000 people live in an area of 0.25 square km. in nablus i also went to beer yakoub/jacob's well, the place where jesus met the woman at the well, and ate the local delicacy - kunafa, which is made from soft goat cheese, butter and honey and comes in flourescent orange and green varieties. unfortunately, nablus has a reputation for being a very hostile place for anyone suspected of being israeli. i was approached by some young guys who tried speaking a few hebrew phrases to me to see if i knew it. that day i didn't know a word of hebrew - slightly less than what i'd know on a normal day. rumor has it that if they find out you speak hebrew, they'll lynch you right there on the street :(

-perhaps the most profound 3 hour conversation of the semester was with an american college student who had just finished 3 months of nonviolently documenting abuses of the occupation with christian peacemaker teams in hebron, palestine. check out some of his documentation of what's going down in hebron here: http://www.cpt.org/underattack. the occupation is so messed up, yet so intractable; so seemingly impossible to do anything about. but this guy found a way to really put himself out there in a politically poignant yet very Christ-like manner, and i found it nothing short of inspirational.

-to celebrate the end of 5 straight weeks of second semester exams, 5 of my 33 favorite classmates and i took a 3 day trip to the ancient nabeatan city of petra, in jordan! it was a really enjoyable time. we hiked for an entire day around the expansive site, which includes much more than the infamous treasury (of indiana jones fame). the place is huge, and the rugged mountainous vistas from such locales as "the end of the world" unbelievable! we also went to little petra the next day before heading home through aqaba and eilat on the red sea. turns out you can discreetly sneak into the eilat hilton's glamorous pool area, which turned out to be quite relaxing!

spring break scandinavian style!

pesach (passover, i.e. spring break - in april) provided a good opportunity to get out of israel and forget about being a medical student for a couple days. my initial well-planned plan was to make my way to afghanistan (for serious!). i have a friend who lives in kabul, had a place to stay, and was two clicks away from some cheap airline tickets. unfortunately however, they decided to reject my visa application. maybe it was for the best though, as the taliban decided to mount a sustained attack on kabul right around the time i would have showed up.

instead, i chose to head for another exotic destination: scandinavia! on the way up i had what was initially to be a 24 hour layover in prague, czech republic. what an amazing city! some tasty bratwursts and beer, unbelievable views from tops of towers, a colorful wall named after john lennon, an amazing castle, some fascinating jewish history, etc.! indeed, it was so epic that i unfortunately missed my connecting flight (also because my alarm clock didn't work). after a few panicked hours under the impression that my tardiness was going to be the worst financial mistake of my life, an empathetic airline manager was able to hack into the computer system and salvage the situation and i was able to continue to copenhagen, denmark.

at this point plans (which had involved going to norway) were things of the past, so i randomly hopped on a train across the oresund bridge (one of the longest in the world) and then up to gothenburg, sweden (pronounced - get this: yo-tee-boor-ee)! i learned that it is the home of volvo and unequivocally the friendliest city in sweden! i then continued to a nice little city in central sweden called orebro, where my friend barrett lives. barrett is amazing; he was the program assistant when i studied abroad in egypt (before which he had taught himself fluent arabic), after which he got married to a nice swedish lady and has since learned perfect, accent-free swedish. we went to a house on a secluded lake for the weekend with a bunch of their friends who had names like hilda and johan and mats - it was rather enjoyable! there was an easter egg hunt, some really tasty food, and a late night bros only sauna session which of course had to involve dips in the 1 degree lake! they taught me a phrase in swedish which i used repeatedly; i was able to teach them one english word (they already knew all the rest). we also got to go to barrett's church on easter morning which surprising was very similar to a typical church in small town north america, except that in sweden they do gourmet espresso in delicate china instead of folgers in styrofoam cups. we also got to go to some really friendly (physician!) inlaw's architecturally avant-garde home for lunch! all in all it was an immensely enjoyable and enlightening couple of days; thanks barrett!

i then took a train to stockholm for a few hours, where i browsed through about 2 dozen h&m stores (that's where it started!) and sauntered along some picturesque waterfront walkways. then took another train south back to copenhagen. initially the plan was to also visit my friend karin who lived in the south of sweden, but she decided to move back to america. karin, you'll be pleased to know that i still had a good time! my new friends from northern sweden made sure that i understood that people from southern sweden are unintelligible to them, and that the southerner's habit of flying a flag that is a hybrid of the swedish and danish flags is kinda insulting to them. its strangely relieving to know that even scandinavians have divisions!

i got to spend a day in the bicycling capital of the world, copenhagen! after a lot of wandering, i chanced upon a famously overrated mermaid statue which was gifted to the city by the founder of the heineken company. just north is a more modern version with substantially larger breasts. just north of that is a "genetically modified" mermaid. it'll be interesting to see what they'll build just north of that!

i also went to a crazy community in copenhagen called christiania . the danes are known for being very straight-laced and obsessed with rules, so the "free town" of christiania developed as something of a cultural antidote to that. its a car-free community of continually high, dread-locked hippies who live in slum-like dwellings on an island in the middle of copenhagen. some highlights: a place where you can leave your rancid tie-die t-shirt and take another one that someone else left, a horse farm run by children, their own flag, their own currency, barrels of burning stuff that you can huddle around for warmth, and replicas of buddhist temples. main street is known as the "green light district", and there are just 3 rules: 1. "have fun"; 2. "no running - it causes panic"; and 3. "no photos - selling hash is still illegal". quite the place.

on the way home i had another day in prague. my last few few hours in europe were spent enjoying cheap food and bottomless coffee at ikea with what must have been a substantial proportion of prague's homeless population. then it was back to reality and the semester's final exams!

winter in the desert

4 months later, i think its about time for a post!

what's gone on since the last time:

- so very much studying. it is, after all, what medical school is all about!
courses this semester include: pathology, pharmacology, physiology, epidemiology, microbiology (continued), hebrew and a dash of anthropology and history taking!

- a couple amazing thanksgiving potlucks around that time

- the cinematic event of the year: the beer sheva premiere of "twilight: breaking dawn part 1"!

- a retreat to the sea of galilee with some of the other christian students at msih! we did some hiking and went to capernum and the mount of beatitudes

- unexpectedly frequent homemade korean cuisine fests!

- some ups and downs in the ol' personal life

- got to go back to the usa to visit my family for christmas! houston, texas and new orleans, lousiana! i wont elaborate because traditionally this blog is only about stuff that goes down in the eastern hemisphere, but i will say that it was really nice to see my family again and there were numerous trips to walmart!

- had a 12 hour layover in germany on the trip back, during which i went to heidelberg - it was nice!

- watched the superbowl live at the local shanti bar until it finished at 5am! then got some breakfast, and went to 8 hours of class the next day! gotta get ready for those 36 hour days in residency!

- went to jaffa (which is the historical area / "ghetto" / rapidly gentrifying part of tel aviv) one friday to visit a clinic run by physicians for human rights - israel (phr-i). they are an ngo run completely by volunteers that provides free medical care for the migrant worker/non-jewish immigrant/refugee population in israel. there have been tens of thousands of refugees coming to israel in recent years from places like sudan and eritrea, but these people are not covered but israel's universal healthcare coverage, have no mechanism for becoming citizens as they're not jewish, and typically can't legally work. its a huge, intractable problem for the government, and really sad on a personal level. these people risk their lives journeying across north africa in the hopes of making it to the "free western world" - many of them end up in protracted slavery in the sinai or even having their organs harvested at the hands of the human smugglers on which they depend. then, even if they make it across the border into israel without getting shot, they can't work, so many end up sleeping in a park in tel aviv indefinitely. phr-i also does mobile clinics in the west bank and gaza, where people are also definitely not privy to government funded universal healthcare. i think that phr-i is amazing, especially considering its all fueled by volunteer health professionals!


- last week was special: all our classes were devoted to issues relating to cardiovascular health and atherosclerosis! we also, for the first time since my class has been here, did everything that week with our colleagues at the israeli medical school. it was great to meet some new friends, especially considering that sometimes our classes are in the same buildings! we made posters in groups and presented them outdoors in the february warmth that only beer sheva can provide. i can tell you all about statins now! we also had fun stuff like yoga and zumba classes! zumba is my new favorite sport! turns out my default dancing technique has always been zumba inspired - i just didn't know what to call it until now!

- the biggest highlight of the year so far has definitely been once-a-week clinical days. in small groups we get to go to various wards in the hospital or clinics in surrounding towns and learn how to interview patients. the language barrier can definitely be a challenge but that's just the way it is. this week i to went to a bedouin family's house in the nearby settlement of tel sheva. they even made us a huge lunch, which we ate from communal plates while lounging on their floor!

the bedouin are an interesting people group. traditionally they were pastoral nomads who wandered around the deserts of the middle east. with the creation of secure borders between modern nation-states like israel, however, they found themselves hemmed in. at the creation of the state of israel 60 years ago there were 10 000 bedouin in the negev desert around beer sheva - today there are 100 000. that's a steep growth curve! they also have a tendency for consanguinous marriage (ie. with their cousins) which inevitably leads to high prevalence of rare genetic defects. indeed, beer sheva's own soroka hospital (where our classes are) is internationally famous in genetics circles. generally speaking, all the children at soroka are bedouin and all the elderly are russian. maybe thats a phenomenon for another blog entry. anyways, the bedouin live in towns and villages that spot the desert surrounding beer sheva. some were set up by the government, while others are "unrecognized". the government likes to periodically bulldoze homes in unrecognized villages to remind everybody who is in charge. i went to a lecture (in an underground bomb shelter!) the other night by a bedouin guy who is getting a law degree in part so he can work to protect his unrecognized village. he was a good guy. i'm sure the guys who operate the bulldozers are too, its just too bad they can't be using them to do something productive.