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.