That Time We Got To Know Jerusalem

We've been living in Jerusalem for about 3 weeks now, but we did not get a tour of the city until today.

Bright and early, at 9am, our tour guide Yaron showed up at the apartment. We first journeyed into the Old City, where parking is hard to come by. The grey van on the left is our van, and Mike is in the process of squeezing into a space. We were so close on the right side, that the passengers had to exit the car before it was parked.

Inside the city, we began walking through the Armenian and Jewish quarters. As my pictures a few weeks ago also revealed, the streets are often too narrow for vehicular traffic, and pedestrians dominate.

Flowers occasionally dotted the walls.

In the Jewish Quarter, I noticed several street signs were the Arabic translations had been vandalized. In many cases, the black graffiti had been removed, but in other cases, it remained.

As we walked toward Jaffa Gate, we passed by King David's Citadel, a fortress that was last occupied up until 1968, most recently by Jordan.

Kim and Humberto in front of Citadel

We exited through a breach in the wall next to Jaffa gate. Jaffa gate is known as the kind of the "main entrance" to the city, especially for tourists. However, vehicular traffic actually travels through a breach in the wall that was created in 1898 to accomodate Emperor Wilhelm II. The true Jaffa gate is an L-shaped gate just to the left of the breach, and it is only open to pedestrians.

As we walked through the Old City, we spent some time walking through the shouk. The shouk, located in the Muslim quarter, is a series of alleyways forming a large and seemingly endless market. We were only in the shouk briefly before exiting to the roofs, but I did notice an interesting shop.

Didn't catch what was so interesting? Pro-Palestinian apparel adjacent to Pro-Israeli apparel.

To get a new view of things, we headed up to the rooftops. The Old City is built in many layers; partially because it is so old, partially because it's been conquered, destroyed, and rebuilt so many times, partially because space is so tight. Above the market shops are homes, and above those homes, the rooftops are considered proper pedestrian thoroughfare.

We reentered the lower level, made silly faces to mimic a fountain, and then entered the Holy Sepulchre.

The Holy Sepulchre aka The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, aka The Church of Resurrection supposedly marks the site where Jesus was crucified and buried. (Sepulchre means 'burial chamber'). The Church itself was built around 325 AD or so, and has been deconstructed and reconstructed to various degrees since then. Currently, it houses a variety of Christian sects, including: Armenian Apostolic, Greek Orthodox, and Roman Catholic.

We entered, and immediately happened upon the 13th Station of the Cross, the Stone of Annointing, the spot where Jesus' body was prepared for burial.

(I had heard about the "stations of the cross" before, but never knew anything about them. Going to the Holy Sepulchre, combined with Wikipedia, provides the wonderful information related here...)

We then wandered up the stairs to the 11th station of the cross, the Nailing of the Cross. This site is maintained by the Roman Catholics.

Immediately adjacent is the 12th station, the Rock of the Calvary. It is maintained by the Greeks and supposedly contains the rock where the cross was raised.

[stuff i will fill in in the future.]


After leaving the Old City, we headed up to the Mount of Olives. I've mentioned previously that the Mount of Olives is mostly a massive cemetery, because in both Judaism and Christianity, when the Messiah comes/returns, he will resurrect the dead, beginning at the Mount of Olives.

Our tour guide took us to a restaurant at the top of the mount with an amazing atmosphere. (And according to Yaron, it has been in the same family for 300-400 years.) We sat around low tables, and enjoyed a large meal that left no one hungry.

Post-lunch, we went to Pater Noster, a convent which has the Lord's Prayer in 1442 languages/dialects. We walked through the gardens which held a small fraction of those languages written on tiles.

like... Greek

JAVAnese


and GUJARATI!!! (Seema's language!)

[stuff I will fill in, in the future]

We returned to the Old City a little after 5pm to visit the Western Wall. The Western Wall is an ancient wall that forms part of the western side of the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount contains a site known as קֹדֶשׁ הַקֳּדָשִׁים or the "holy of holies", the most sacred site in Judaism. The Western Wall is the only remaining wall of the Second Temple, which was destroyed in 70.

The wall is separated into a men's and women's section. Women to the right, men to the left. To the right I went. A bookshelf full of Hebrew prayer books stood near the wall, and chairs were provided as well. Women recited or read prayers. Some swayed back and forth, some placed their hands on the wall, some wept.

There is a tradition of placing prayers in the cracks of the Western Wall, thus the papers just in front of the wall, as above, and the papers in the cracks, as below.

The top of the wall shows just how blue the sky is here. Ridiculous, eh?

We left the Western Wall, dropped of Yaron at a shuttle station, and returned to the parking lot near home. Everyone except Mike and I returned to the apartment. We returned to Mount of Olives to watch the sunset. It turned out to be a great decision for many reasons.

1) CAMEL!!!

2) KITE RUNNER!!!

3) DESSERT FOLIAGE!!!

4) SUNSET!!!

Next Post: That Time We Had A FREEEEEE Day?!?!?

That Time a Long Day Ended With a Wonderful Moment

Ever have one of those moments where everything is perfect? I had one of those moments today.

But prior to that moment, the day was quite unpleasant. Today we had our second mini-project, the Encoder. The kids were supposed to create a program to perform a Caesar shift on a user inputted message. The Test file was written for them (and took user input from the command line, no less), and the class was already written for them as well, they just needed to fill in one line in the constructor, and less than a dozen lines in the translate() method. We walked them through the algorithm they needed to use, and each step of the program was written in the instructions. A dozen lines of code, 4 hours.

This is a positive blog, so I won't say anything further about any of today. We'll just turn it all around next week. We hope. :-)


I went for a much-needed walk when I got home, and experienced the best moment in Jerusalem thusfar. I was walking through an Arab graveyard that is just east of the eastern wall of the Old City. As I entered, the call to prayer began, and several mosques began the mournful readings. The sounds reverberated back and forth between the hills as I slowly walked south along the path, surrounded by tombstones I could not read. The sun was setting, and the Mount of Olives, previously illuminated by sunlight, slowly grew dimmer. The lights of the city began to glow, lights that are neither incandescent nor flourescent, but purely gold. I found some stairs just north of the Golden Gate, and settled down to watch the hills fade into the evening. I sat amongst the graves of unknown peoples, looking across the valley to another hill with the graves of unknown peoples. The city is all stone: stone sidewalks, stone buildings, tombstones.

I've never seen a shooting star before. Sure, sure, when there's a big meteor shower, I've seen starry fragments. But I've never seen an unexpected shooting star. Tonight I did. And I watched other non-shooting stars slowly appear. First Venus, though that isn't a star of course, then a few other starry specks, then even more. I left both because it grew colder, and because spending nighttime near the Old City is just asking for trouble. But before I left, I waited for the Big Dipper and Orion to pierce through the darkening sky. (Ah, the sky. That's a whole topic for itself. The Jerusalem sky... it feels infinite.)

Back at the apartment, people began to watch "Fiddler on the Roof", but I kind of clung to my moments of peace in a graveyard. I'll be going to sleep very soon, as I'm sure we'll be having an interesting day tomorrow.

Quote of the day: "Maybe if we pay the laundry guys 112 shekels, they'll give us a sponge bath." -me

Next Post: That Time We Finally Got to Know Jerusalem.

That Time the Kids Played Lots of Sports

Somehow, today ended up being much more fun than a usual MEET day.

Lecture was chaotic in it's own way. Besides starting about twenty minutes late, we also had a last minute switch the night before from Alice to Froy because Alice was feeling ill. The snacks were late, the ORT students rambunctious, and to top it all off, Katia's 20 shekels were eaten by the drink machine.

But all of these things were cured by SPORTS. Rather than dealing with another day of Bassem and Shawarma, the kids got to spend the hour after lecture outside in the beautiful sun playing soccer, basketball, or just sitting around looking cool.

Ted is surprisingly good!



We played in a small grassy amphitheatre, with tight boundaries.
This ball was saved by Yahia before it went out.



The pale off-white of the Jerusalem stones provide quite a contrast to the lush green of the grass.



Husam receives a pass.


Chaos. Photo credit to Dor Israeli!


Another soccer picture.

When I first thought about doing some summer fellowships with the PSC, they asked me about my skills. I felt kind of silly saying that my main skills were soccer and photography, but the woman I talked to assured me that any skills might come in handy. There you have it, soccer and photography in one. Reliving my Tech photographer days.

The kids also played a bit of good ol' fashioned b-ball.

Rawan takes the ball up the court.


Or takes a shot


Adam plays some tough D on Sagy

The kids also set around and did lots of nothing.

Or wrote curse words on their hands... (there was an O on her thumb though)

Following sports, we got lunch, and I finally met Roni's boyfriend. I think I scared him, because he didn't say much at all. Harhar.
Post lunch, we survived a praying mantis scare, then headed off to recitation.

(Note: I have nails. I stopped biting them.)

No eventful stories from recitation or lab. (Although I failed to mention that yesterday, I rapped for my students at the beginning of recitation. Rockin' good time!)

Following the end-o'-day meeting, we headed back home. I barely had time to down the last of the hamburger stash before we were off to meet the kids for bowling. The 'overnight kids', ie the ones who stay at the YMCA, have planned activities for most evenings. Wednesday nights involves a fun going-out activity, and tonight, it was bowling or "bowel-ing" as some might pronounce it.

We decided to dress colorfully for the occasion... by which I mean we just coincidentally formed a pseudorainbow.

Mike, Zach, Kim, and me

Finding the bowling alley proved to be a bit difficult. In fact, we ended up in a deserted mall called Pavilion. As if the empty parking deck and deserted stairwells weren't intimidating enough, the ceiling began to light up red.

We realized we weren't in the right location, and relocated to the mall across the street. I was immediately greeted with the sight of several of my students rocking out on the lanes.

Roni laughes before picking up a spare; she works well under pressure from the paparazzi!


Yohanan tries to kill Adam; Abeer approves

Aaron's method for the 10th frame actually knocked over 9 pins

A few of the Y1's who weren't part of the overnight group got their parents to drive them to the bowling alley.

Ron, Or L., Me, Or G.

Since they ended up arriving too late to join in the game, I offered to let Ron and Or G bowl in my place. They were both hesitant, but I convinced Ron to give it a go. He bowled a strike!!! When Or's turn came up, she was less than perfect with two gutter balls... so in the end, I think it balanced out.

Post bowling, I hung out around the arcade for awhile. Eventually we made an effort to leave, but Humberto, Zach, et. al were distracted by the fabulous fries/chips of the Tal Burger across the street. In the end, Noa drove Bo, Aaron, and I back to the apartment, and I spent the rest of the evening working.

Quote of the day: "It's like crack on crack." - Froy

Next post: That Time We ENCODED MESSAGES!!!! ZOMGZOMG.

A Brief Note

Family and friends,

I finally did some proper updating (I got some free time!!!!... sort of... I should be doing work...)

-7/18 (Friday) - That Time I Went to Tel Aviv and Didn't Bring My Camera
-7/19 (Saturday) - That Time Tea was "On the House, On the House"
-7/22 (Tuesday, today) - That Time An Israeli Touched a Palestinian

Still yet to come:
-7/20 (Sunday) - That Time I Hit a Car
-7/21 (Monday) - That Time I Got a Recitation Group


And for those that were wondering about this story...
Don't worry, I'm okay.

<3,
Sally

That Time an Israeli Touched a Palestinian

I've gotten a little behind in my blogs, so I'm just starting with today, and I'll retroactively post for previous days when I have a chance.

Today I delivered my second lecture to the 40 wonderful students of year one. The topic was Data Structures and ArrayLists, but it began with this slide:

and a discussion about the Word of the Day: Responsibility. The Y1s are just 15 years old, and have not yet learned how to clean up after themselves. So I claimed the task of mentioning the meaning of "responsibility", and encouraging them to throw away their trash so I don't have to.

Having covered responsibility, I proceeded to ArrayLists. Alice was kind enough to snap some pictures of me lecturing, further proof that I DO exist, and that I actually AM teaching. Check out this gesture as I talk about iterating through the ArrayList elements:

Towards the end, we had an interactive example with a BuddyList and Buddies, including some spontaneous clapping. This completely balanced out the fact that a student on the front row fell asleep during the lecture (not my fault... I hope).

Bassem and his new pal have been the low point of the day for the kids; Java makes them much happier. However, today things took a turn for the better as the kids spent a large portion of thieir time juggling.

Liel


Salam

General Chaos

Or balancing balls on their faces:

Lama

Even instructors and staff were juggling:

Alice


Mustafa
(not quite successful in this shot...)

About half of our students can juggle, but all of the instructors can juggle. This further cements our status as incredibly awesome in their minds.

Post-juggling, and post-tales-about-magnets, we enjoyed sandwiches outside on a grassy lawn of Hebrew University. I managed to get all the kids in my recitation to sit together (plus a few stragglers), and we played a singing game which Lama called "Superstar". A person sings a line or two from a song, and the next person must sing a line from a different song which begins with the same letter as the end of the previous song. For example: "When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are" could be followed by "Everybody, rock your body" which could be followed by "Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away." It was quite interesting to see how many English songs these kids know, and also how even the shyest of the shy can overcome their inhibitions in the proper situations.

During recitation, we reviewed concepts from lecture, and then went through a long example with an ArrayList. One of the things I like most about teaching these kids is that I can convince them to do some kind of ridiculous things. Like barking. We created a list that held three different dogs, and then had a for loop iterate through the elements. Three students represented the dogs, and when Java called a bark() method on them, they barked. Heehee. :-)

The lab today was challenging, and few (if any) students completed it. In the first part, they created a shopping list, and calculated the total quantity and total price of their items. In the second part, they created a deck of cards, and then shuffled the deck. Much concentration was required.

I also got a nice Froy-helping-a-student shot:

En route to the busses, I walked amidst a large flock of Y1 sheep. I noticed that two of my sheep seemed to be a bit connected. And then I noticed that of my connected sheep, one was Israeli and one was Palestinian. Love knows no boundaries.

Because we enjoy making fools of ourselves, and because we all throw footballs far better than the MIT stereotype might suggest, a rousing game of non dominant football took place. The righties became lefties; the lefties became righties; the ambidextrous observed without participating.

For my end-of-the-day photographic pleasure, Abeer and Mustafa decided to coordinate their outfits.

Following the end-of-day meeting, it was back to the apartment for work and/or blogging.

Quote of the Day: "I hate you ... toilet paper ... hee hee ... hey we're not that
different after all" -Ted

Next Post: That Time I Learned About Meet