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 I [View Full Entry]

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Hello again!!! (lol...I know I just sent out an e-mail like 30 minutes ago). This weekend my friends Aidan, Leslie, Aly, Kelly, and I traveled to Jerusalem and Nazareth. I am planning on writing a long blog entry about all my trips to Jerusalem together so I will just update you on the day we spent in Nazareth. We arrived on Friday the 7th right before the start of Shabbath and checked into the Sisters of Nazareth Convent for the night. We were trilled to have heat as it has gotten rather cold at night and it was raining. We spent [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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October 3rd After my first train ride ever, Natania and I met one of Atef’s agents who took us to our cruise ship. After a brief lunch and some exploring of the ship, we took real showers for the first time since Karim’s hotel. At 1:30 pm we met our guide for the remainder of our cruise, Hatim, who took us on a tour of Aswan. Aswan is Egypt’s sunniest southern city that considers itself to have somewhat of an African atmosphere. Along the Nile near Aswan there are deserts, granite rocks, and beautiful islands with palm groves and tropical [View Full Entry]

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Hello Everyone!!! First let me apologize for taking so very long to contact everyone and update you all on my 1st month in Israel. As most of you know, I will be spending my first semester of Junior year studying in Israel through the Ginsburg-Ingerman Overseas Student Program at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. I will primarily be residing in Beer Sheva in the Negev desert. I have chosen this particular abroad program for many reasons and I am very fortunate that it appeals to a wide array of my academic interest. I am still a pre-medical student but also a [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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For the first 6 weeks of my study abroad program, I have intensive Hebrew classes, referred to as Ulpan, for three hours a day, five days a week. During the Ulpan sessions we have group trips every weekend to familiarize ourselves with the country and to encourage travel before the semester begins. Ulpan began Monday, July 20th and the class ideally covers two semesters of Hebrew in six weeks. Ulpan generally runs Sunday through Thursday and I have found it difficult to wake up for classes so early as I have been spoiled at Davidson with 9:30 classes only a 5 [View Full Entry]

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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 immigra [View Full Entry]

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FIRST I STILL APOLOGIZE FOR THE LONG/ RUSHED SUMMARY OF THE PAST FEW WEEKS: Sunday brought us back to classes in the mornings with afternoons spent doing homework by the pool. Monday night was our second movie night, and this time we watched a film called “Sof Ha’olam Ssmola” or “Turn Left at The End of the World” made in 2004. It is very popular film here about new immigrants to Israel in the 60’s who discover that the desert was not at all what they had expected. Furthermore, it dealt with racial divisions of those who moved to Israel during [View Full Entry]

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