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!
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:
-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!
