Ayana

שלום! Hello!! I hope everyone is doing well. I am currently working on my final papers, presentations, and studying for exams. I just wanted to quickly and briefly update my blog and show everyone some pictures from the north of ISRAEL. I was fortunate to spend Shabbath on the 9th and 10th of November with four of my friends (Arik, Vali, Aviad, and Ben) in the Golan Heights. The Golan Heights (רמת הגולן‎) (هضبة الجولان) is in the northern part of Israel and was originally part of Syria pre-1967; this area of land borders Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. Ben (from Boston) and I traveled with three Israelis by train, van, bus, and car to the north; departing from Beer Sheva. We were even able to visit Arik's home in Kfal Vradim (village of roses) as ... read more

Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing well as usually. I, FINALLY, officially started my semester courses on Sunday and I have a new found appreciation for having class all the time. The past few works have been rather difficult when you are in the middle of the desert with nothing to do. Although I am abroad with the Overseas Student Program for Undergraduates, I have elected to take 4 courses from the Masters Degree Program in Middle Eastern Studies. I promise that I will write an entry at a later date about the progress of my studies and what they specific entail. Today I have finally at least partially updated my blog and I have an entry about my recent trip to Egypt and Sinai. My friends Ben and Natania and I decided to ... read more

Monday night, the 20th, was our first weekly movie night. We watched an Israeli musical from the 1970’s that was a cross between Grease and West Side Story and God knows what else. The movie was about a small village in the desert whose residents didn’t have enough money to maintain their property. The government, refused to help them fund repairs and threatened to destruct their town unless it was properly renovated. Meanwhile, everyone in town has an opinion about the budding romance between the most beautiful eligible bachelorette around and the town criminal, a Moroccan immigrant and gang member. If I remembered the name of the movie correctly I believe it was called “Casablan” but I’m really not sure. After ulpan on Tuesday we traveled to Kfar Adiel, a local student community, and then hiked ... read more

The flight The day before our scheduled departure from JFK, the Israeli workforce announced that it would strike on the Wednesday that our flight was scheduled which put our departure in jeopardy. The program advisor from the New York office was in contact with all of the students via e-mail constantly and we all prepared for the possibility that our plane may not take off. Fortunately, that strike did not last long and our plane was able to depart on time. Unfortunately, in the airport I was flagged along with two other travels to go through special security. Myself, along with an Arab woman and her husband, were escorted throughout the airport at all times separately from the rest of my group. All the other students on my program were situated together in the airport and ... read more