Blogs from Israel, Middle East - page 146

In typical Casey Farin fashion, whenever things seem like they should start getting better, they get worse first. And I usually just respond by laughing. Yesterday morning I woke up with my right eye crusted shut. Pinkeye. My suitemate Debbie woke up a little later and looked in the mirror at her eye all red and goopy and, flustered, says, "I have pinkeye!" So at least we both had it. We ended up going to a doctor who spoke very very minimal English and somehow conveyed to him that we had pinkeye, that our throats hurt, we were congested, and had been coughing and sneezing. After the doctor looked in Debbie's throat, she asked him, "Beseder?" meaning "Okay?" and he responded, "Lo." meaning "No." Pretty much the story of our lives. I laughed really hard. We ... read more

The past few days have been really stormy- we've lost power for 2-3 hours a day for the past two days while it's been snowing in Jerusalem. Last night I studied for my Ulpan test by the light of my computer because the power was out and I didn't want to walk all the way to the 24-hour coffee shop/restaurant where I spend a lot of time. The thing is, Coffee to Go is really close to my dorm, it was just miserable out. My cell phone broke yesterday. I put my purse on a chair, my purse slid off the chair, my cell phone fell out of my purse and landed on the ground. It turned off and I tried to turn it back on but everything was backwards. Then it turned off and wouldn't ... read more

When I visit someplace new, I like to see and I like to eat. For the eating part, I go for street food: cheap, tasty, and local. Here that means falafel and shwarma (the Israeli version of gyros, minus the yogurt sauce, naturally, which wouldn’t be kosher). More about them some other time. Here I want to talk about the bakeries. It’s hard to find a stand-alone bakery in the States anymore, and I don’t even remember many from my childhood. All that remains of bakeries these days is a small corner in the big-box supermarkets. Here bakeries are as numerous as Starbucks in Seattle. It’s important to have goals in life. One of my goals is to sample each bakery. Bakeries stock a number of items, some of which are familiar and some of which ... read more

Ok, I just have to show you what we found today on our eggplant plants: gi-bleeping-normous caterpillars. They look just like the tobacco/tomato hornworm caterpillars I’ve used for years in my Advanced Ecology course, except on steroids. These are apparently Acherontia atropos, or “Death’s head hawkmoth” larvae, so-named for the skull pattern on the back of the thorax of the adult moth. We have 4 of these 10-12 cm long caterpillars, looking pretty close to pupation size. Wikipedia says that when threatened, the caterpillars will thrash at both ends and make rapid clicks with their mandibles, and even bite, as Kaitlin can attest. Zach picked one up and carried it around for quite a while without eliciting any of these responses. Apparently the caterpillar either didn’t realize how threatening Zach actually is, or perhaps it was ... read more

Well, this is it. Last call everyone get on. The bags are packed and the last preparations are made. I hope i haven't forgotten anything. Anyway, its off to Rio. Tomorrow morning, 0640 am the plane lifts off and i will be on it to madrid and then to Rio. I have a hotel already booked and i hope everything will be all right when i get there. 3 month from now i'll be back to see tel aviv. April 6th i'll be back. dont stay up to wait ... read more