That Time We Broke the MEET Elevator & Ate Falafel

Another day, another round of interesting experiences.

As much as we'd probably like to spend the mornings and afternoons relaxing, exploring, and vacationing, we are actually here for a different purpose. Work work work. Much of the morning and afternoon was spent sprawled out in the flat doing work.

We took a break for lunch around 11am, and walked down Salah E-din St. (the largest street in our area) looking for good, cheap felafel. We were successful, and enjoyed felafel from a small stand in a side alley for only 6 shekels (less than $2 US). Yum.

Later on in the afternoon, we got to experience the first of our lovely teaching workshops. Each of us teaches anything we'd like to teach for 5 minutes. This presentation is recorded, and afterwards, we watch it again on a projector, and everyone critiques the presenter, both positively and negatively. Today, the Year Three instructors presented, with MikeR talking about laser range finders, MikeS about the Old City of Jerusalem, and Sam about robot localization. By watching the presentation styles of other instructors, we will hopefully be able to make positive changes to our own style. I'm presenting on Thursday, topic yet to be determined.

At 4pm or so, we decided to forgo the cars, and walk to the MEET office. This involved following the entire length of the northern wall of the Old City, including the Flowers Gate, Damascus Gate, and New Gate. The Old City has eight gates. The other five are the Lions Gate and Golden Gate on the Eastern wall; the Dung Gate and Zion Gate on the Southern wall; and the Jaffa Gate, which is considered the main entrance, on the West wall. We walked down Sultan Suleiman and Ha-Tsankhanim, then turned right onto Shivtai Israel (or Shivtei Yisra'el says the map...).

Our first encounter with the MEET office involved a ride up the elevator to the 2nd floor (although in the US, it would be the 3rd floor.) We didn't quite make it. You see, elevators have things called "weight limits", like 450kg (~1000lbs). They also have "person suggestions", like 6. But when you cram 8 adults, several of whom are large (like Jon and his 6' billion'' self)... well... the elevators get angry. So angry, in fact, that they refuse to work. So the eight of us got hot and sweaty until Ted came to our rescue after about 5 minutes. My presentation on Thursday may very well be "How to Escape From An Elevator".

Finally we made it up to the MEET office, on the airy top floor. The instructors spread out around the room, tackling laptops for hours, working on curriculum with REAL WORKING INTERNET, as opposed to sketchy internet stolen from a store across the street. Small groups went out at times for food, and then returned to tackle their projects once again.

Around 7:30pm, those of us who had not yet eaten dinner headed out into the city to grab some food. Max, Froy, Mike, and I wandered down Shivtai Israel St, through the Courthouse area, and down Jaffa St. (Yafo on the map...) . Max and Ted ended up stopping at a sandwich shop on Jaffa St. Or, a "toast" shop, rather. Here, toast is not some hard bread with butter and jam. It is a toasted sandwich.

Mike and I opted for the beefy choice. We stopped at a place on Shlomtsiyon Ha-Malka St. I got the smaller beef pita, but he got the monstrosity known as shwarma. It has the same contents as the falafel pitas, except it's much larger, and instead of the fried chickpeas, it has delicious slow roasted beef that is shaved off a large spinning skewer with an electric shaver. It was like an Ana's super burrito, except bigger and less Mexican, and the juices readily flowed out. While we were eating, an Israeli ambulance crew came in. (If you don't know why this excites me, it's because I've been an EMT for about two and a half years, mostly volunteering for MIT's free campus ambulance service. I even spent last summer working for an ambulance service in the Boston metro area. Mike is an EMT as well, but is less apt to be excited by things.)

In the US, ambulances run crews with 2 members, or perhaps 3 if one of them is being trained or observed. This crew had 5 members; 3 were young, perhaps 16 or so, and 2 were older. We thought that perhaps they were doing a shift change and grabbing some food in the process, but who knows. I snapped a shot of some of the crew discretely over Mike's shoulder, and then we went outside to take a picture of their ambulance.

They had a really kickass GPS, that had about a 12" monitor. Pretty awesome, considering the majority of ambulance services in the Boston area don't even have GPS, and those that do (like Fallon!) have smaller GPS.

Then we headed down the street and discovered one of the main pedestrian thoroughfares of Jerusalem: Ben Yahuda St. This is were Andy wanted us to try and meet him during our one overlapping day. If I had any idea where we were then, I think I could have easily made it over to Ben Yahuda, as it isn't all that far from where we were staying. In any case, it's a large pedestrain area that was filled with people, even on a Monday night at dusk. I'm sure we'll go back so expect more. We passed a kosher Burger King, and sadly mused about the fact that cheeseburgers would not be available.

On the way back, we walked back through the Court House area, and I snapped this picture.

Back at the MEET office, we again tackled our work. Makeshift chairs had been acquired for some, an odd assortment of coolers and boxes. The MEET office usually has other, comfortable chairs, but the extras have been relocated to the Hebrew University campus so that our students can use them.

I also took advantage of one of the windows to display the MEET logo until the next rain (which won't be for a few months of course!)

At 10pm, we headed back to the apartment; ie, back to the land of bad internet connections. I started working, and it wasn't until 1am that I finally tore myself away to collapse into bed.

Next post: Hebrew University, or That Day I Drove for the First Time in Jerusalem