That Time I Played a Guitar in Lecture

I always make it a point to make my lectures really interesting and engaging. Today, I went so far as to play a guitar. As part of an example of how Objects can be used inside of Objects, my students wrote code to create a MEETBand, and one field of a Guitarist. The Guitarist class had strumUp() and strumDown() methods which took arguments of String "chords". In the end, we put it all together, and I played their songs. It was a really rocking example!!

Later, I had an example for method overloading. When talking to Max the night before, he mentioned an example of a greet() method, which might be overloaded depending on the argument of what you're greeting. So, we greeted a Person...

and a Dog!

Ted got pissed, but only a tiny bit. And of course, the kids love him more for it!!

Later in the day, I went to lunch with Max, Ted, and Zach at a restaurant in downtown Jerusalem. I'm getting to the point where I can read Hebrew block letters really well, but not script, and certainly not stylized letters. So I have no idea what the name of the restaurant is!! But, it was really delicious, especially my apple cider with rum.

Next Post: That Time I Met the Student's Parents!

That Time MEET was Half Over

Yesterday I randomly decided to buy a book in Hebrew. It is a children's booked based on the movie Ratatouille, and is written completely in a language I cannot understand. Hopefully, one day I will be able to read it. I felt a little unbalanced when I bought it, so I wanted an Arabic children's book to match. I asked Mustafa if he had an extra one that he could bring me, but I never expected him to follow through. However, bright and early this morning...

Yes, the Farmer and His Animals. Written in both Arabic and English. YAY!

Lunch was sandwich day, so we all sat outside. Lunch also marked the exact halfway point of the summer!

We had just handed out exams right before lunch, so rather than not talking about Java, the kids were comparing answers and getting pissed off about their silly mistakes.

After lunch, we had a lecture about MEET. I found it rather strange that the staff waited until halfway through the program to deliver the message. But, in a way, it made complete sense. To fully understand what MEET is about, you have to actually be living it first. After 2.5 weeks in the program, the kids had an understanding of what MEET means, and what it can be to them.

Before lab, I captured a lovely moment at breaktime.

And then, of course, labaroo. Today's lab was a little more challenging than usual. The students were writing a "Crazy sentence maker"! Which added words to an arraylist and made sentences from them.

That Time I Ate the BIGGEST BAGEL EVER!!

It had the potential of being just a normal Monday. Alice gave the Objects II lecture, and everything was very typical.

Except then we played JAVA PICTIONARY!
Yes, that's right. We sat 20 kids around a white board, and each of them got a chance to silently draw clues to solve for java words like: boolean, String, method, variable declaration, arguments, block, and so on. As is always the case, I don't have pictures of this because... I was having too much fun!

There was lunch, and recitation, and lab, of course.

And then, the biggest bagel of all time! The kids who live far away from Jerusalem spend the weekday evenings at the local YMCA. This prevents them from traveling for a long time and having to go through checkpoints twice a day. The "overnight kids" as they are called, get to do a lot of fun stuff. Every Monday, they go out to dinner, and every Wednesday they have another fun outing. As it is a Monday, they went out to dinner at Tal Bagel.

Tal Bagel is in the German Colony of Jerusalem, which is quite "posh" as Bo would say. The restaurant itself is an overpriced sandwich shop... but soooo good! I got the house special, which included egg, lox, and cheese, plus a ton of vegetables. It was huge and delicious.

But of course, the best part (other than the automatic juicer...) was hanging out with the kids. It's really fun to be around them. They have SO much energy!! And it's great to be reminded of the good ol' days when I was their age... sigh.

Next Post: That Time I Got an Arabic children's book.

That Time MEET Played Sports and the Instructors Got Injured

Sunday marks the beginning of the MEET week, and because we like to start and end with a bang, is usually a fun day, especially for Y1s.

Today, the Y1s got pwned by the second exam. They had to write classes, instantiate instances, call methods, document code... !!! After the exam, I remained in the lecture hall to proctor for Tracy, Tamer, and Katia who traveled from the West Bank this morning and got stuck in a checkpoint for nearly two hours. Tracy and Katia finished before their time limit, but a janitor kicked us out of the lecture hall. Instead, we all located to a grassy area with the rest of the Y1s, and Tamer and I sat at a picnic table while he finished his exam.

Daily Dose of: lolkidz


Yakir


Liel


Mustafa

I graded for a little while afterwards, but the kids had "fun" with Sandra. They had some kind of shoe game where they all traded footwear. I didn't finish grading until later in the afternoon, when they were well underway creating egg-protecting structures for the egg drop.

We walked over to ORT and through them from a high place, multiple times. Only one group succeeded in protected their egg: Mustafa, Dor, Or, Husam, and Ranan!

A fun day of Sandra's team-building activities was capped off with a fun day of inter-year sports competition. For the majority of the summer, the first, second, and third year MEET students remain separated. They have different curriculum, and only meet during lunchtimes and at the end of week wrap up. The sports day allows all years to come together and play on mixed teams in a variety of sports. And most importantly, it allows Ted to hang out with his Y2 friends without feeling too guilty.

Ted and Lamya (aka Labane, who I'm going to put on a pita!)

As should be expected, I chose to play soccer. My team consisted of Salam, Tracy, Mahmudh (?), Chris, Dror, Husam, and I. During the first round, we were less than spectacular. However, the second time we played, Subhe joined in, and we improved greatly.

Hamud(?) leaps into the air to clear the ball


Subhe (?) looks on

Ted shoots on Nir, scoring in the upper left corner

Yarden makes an effort on defense, before being CRUSHED by the boys. ;-)

Tareq (?) being Tareq

Of course, the real fun happened during the 5th game, when we played instructors and Y1s against Y2s and Y3s. This upped the stakes (Laura Harrington would be proud), and suddenly the play became more aggressive. I hung back and played sweeper, and did my part by successfully averting the attacks of the opposition. However, Mustafa gets the MVP award for being friggin awesome in every way.

And here's a picture of Humberto that looks cool.

And a picture of Jon crushing a basketball with his BARE HANDS.

Jon Varsanik: Destroyer of Distances and Sporting Equipment

Froy and I went to the grocery store after the afternoon meeting. I was frustrated with the lack of food in the house, so I was proactive about it! Shopping in a grocery store where everything is in Hebrew is quite challenging. Froy and I decided that the 8 yogurt packs for 25 shekels were a rip off, and instead wanted to buy a massive container for less. Our problem being that we couldn't tell what was yogurt and what wasn't. Froy picked up a plastic jug that looked more or less like a milk jug, and asked a random girl whether it was yogurt. She said it was. Then I asked her where I could find labane (pronounced lah-buh-nay). People are helpful!! Thus, we were successful in getting massive amounts of yogurt for only 12 shekels (two jugs for 6 shekels), plus labane.

Other items in the cart:
- Nutella
- Peanut Butter
- 3 dozen eggs
- 3 boxes of cereal (Multi-Grain Cheerios, Cini-minis, Branflakes)
- 4 quarts of milk
- 2 quarts of soymilk
- 4 big tubs of hummus
- 2 containers of grated mozzarella
- Bags of fruits and veggies: green peppers, onions, tomatoes, oranges, potatoes
- 2 boxes of granola bars
- Crushed chillies spice
- Box of 50 green tea bags
- Rice (x2 bags)
- Lentils
- Beans
- Strawberry jam
- maybe some other stuff.

Yay shopping. Back at the apartment, we discovered that the yogurt is amazing with branflakes and plums and figs. By the way, if you've never had a fresh fig, you MUST. Absolutely. Step away from your computer, and go eat one immediately. It is the most delicious fruit of all time.

Post shopping, I joined the rest of the Y1s in working towards our print deadline. Wednesday I'm giving a lecture on Systems of Objects, Abstraction, and Overloading. Harhar.

Next Post: That Time Jon Left and the World Exploded.

Sometime in the Future: An abbreviated list of random things that differ between here and home, like lightswitches.

That Time We Had a Free Day and Walked FOREVER

Our schedule is generally action-packed, but today we got a repreive from both endlessly chattering students and planned group activities. Instead, we had a day of freedom in our "hometown", Jerusalem.

After our tour yesterday, we were curious about this alternative burial site for Jesus called the Garden Tomb, which is really close to our house. Humberto, MikeR, Kim, Froy, Bo, and I left around 11am to see it.

While the (free!) tour was somewhat informative, to me, it more or less had the feeling of a tourist trap. When you visit sacred places, you get this feeling in your gut that tells you it's special, but the Garden Tomb seemed to be nothing special. Up until 1883, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was unanimously accepted as the crucifixion site and burial site for Jesus. In that year, a man named Charles George Gordon decided the Holy Sepulchre didn't fit with the biblical descriptions. His main disagreement was that the Holy Sepulchre is within the walls of the Old City, and therefore Jesus could not have been crucified and buried there. However, the current city walls differ from the city walls of that era, and in fact, the Holy Sepulchre WAS outside the city walls in the days of Jesus. But Gordon didn't know that, because he never studied history or archeology. Instead, he found another site that fit his expectations, and that developed into the "Garden Tomb" site of today.

From the Garden Tomb, we headed down Derekh Shekhem Rd. and entered the Old City through Damascus Gate. Humberto wanted to return to the Holy Sepulchre, Mike wanted to get this sweet stuff sold on the market road, Bo wanted postcards, . Lots of differing opinions! We wandered down Suq Khan Ez-zeit (Bet Habad) through the markets in the Muslim quarter. The crazy market, which is called a souk, sells everything imagineable (from live chickens, to sides of meat, clothing, spices, antiques...) and is at times packed with people. I want to go back alone sometime so I can take lots of quality photos... but I took some snapshots today.

Our group first split when Humberto, MikeR, and Kim headed off in the direction of the Holy Sepulchre, and Mike, Froy, and I began the searched for the mythical "Luna Cafe". The Luna Cafe was recommended by Froy's friend as the best place to get falafel in Jerusalem. We tried our best to find it, making a circle by a going down Suq El Bazar, Christian Quarter Road, then St. Fransisco which turned into Via Dolorosa. While on the Christian Quarter Road, I had my first experience with haggling. I'm not very good, but I did get some money off, and I got the kind of bag that I've always wanted, for much less than it would cost in the US.

The mysterious Luna Cafe was supposed to be on Via Dolorosa, but it was nowhere to be found. Froy even approached the a pair of IDF soldiers to ask them, but no luck. However, we were redirected to the Austrian Hospice, which provided some interesting views of the city from its rooftop.

Back to Luna Cafe searching we went. Earlier we had passed a "Lina Cafe", and figured that might suffice. En route to this non-Luna Cafe, we encountered another Russian-speaking Mike, of Mike Store.

At Lina Cafe, we split Hummus, Labane, and whatever Froy got, which started with an M. The hummus was some of the best I've had here, and the pitas were also super-tasty. More than enough fuel for the trek to Jaffa gate.

We all wanted to walk along the walls of the Old City, and at Jaffa gate, we were able to do so. We headed toward the Southern Wall, and got some great views of the west and south of the city. And, additionally, our student status got us a 50% discount on the Ramparts Walk.

The walkable part of the wall ended at Dung Gate, near the Western Wall. We sat together, talking about religion. And then I lay back on the warm stones, and fell asleep.

Eventually, we walked back toward Jaffa Gate, this time without using a map and without trying to hard. Froy and I split a DELICIOUS corn on the cob, which he haggled from 10 shekels to 5 (nothing has a set price in the city), and then Froy split off from Mike and I to head back home.

We headed southwest of the gate, through a park that sits between Hativat Yerushala'im and David Hamelekh streets...

And then up Emile Bota, past the "winking" cat...

And into the King David hotel, the most famous hotel in Jerusalem. You only need to visit one room to judge a building, so we did.

Inside the entrance, there were names and signatures placed into the tile in a long line, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the hotel, which was celebrated in 2006. I took pictures of all the ones I recognized, but here's a varied selection:

We wandered out back to the pool. Jerusalem is full of security. You have to walk through a metal detector to get into the mall, the guards make us pop our trunk every morning at Hebrew University, and I've had to open my purse to even go to the grocery store. Yet, at King David hotel, where Barrack Obama stayed just this week, there was no security at all. We were able to wander around, stick our feet in the pool, and sketchily take pictures without ever being approached.

(Note the rockin sandal tan!!)


(Hobbies: Taking pictures of old men in/near bodies of water)

Around the pool, we discovered some interesting vegetation...

A Plant, of unknown name.


Aloe Vera

Including this plant that my Mom used to plant in our backyard.

Dusty Miller

I even taught Mike how to eat Honeysuckle, though that plant is so common in NC, I didn't think to photograph it. One "eats" a honeysuckle flower by removing the flower from the stem, breaking off the end, then pulling the piston through the flower, revealing a single sweet drop of nectar. Yum.

The First Pizza Crusade began, but shabbat had other plans for us. West Jerusalem was silent, including Ben Yahuda, so we had to rely on our own East Jerusalem neighborhood to provide sustenance. Pizza House in the house.

Next Post: That Time MEET Played SPORTS Out In the HotHotSun, and Everyone Got Dehydrated.