Daniel Goes Forth to Tel Aviv
Trip Start
Jan 15, 2006
1
4
11
Trip End
Jun 2006
Jerusalem,
Israel
Wednesday, February 8, 2006
So I've been eating many a snhitzel. This is because they have a really cheap meaty cantine on campus that make these amazing shnitzels that are roughly twice the size of my head. It's a very cheap eatery and I often choose the healthy option of munching rice and various salads with my monumental shnitzel. (This paragraph is primarly for the benefit of my grandma so that she knows I've been eating enough!).
It has been a fan-bloody-tastic few days. Ulpan is going really well. We had our mid-term (as the Yanks call it) test the other day. I thought I'd screwed it up. Turned out that I got 95%. I was reasonably pleased. So the Hebrew is coming along well.
On Thursday afternoon the Office of Student Activities organised a trip to Yad Vasham. I'd never been there before and had no idea what to expect. I thought the build and the layout of it was amazing and visually brilliant. However, in terms of a museum, I thought that the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC was much better in terms of the history of the Holocaust. So, by the end of the museum I was of the opinion that DC was better than Yad Vasham. Then, however, they took us into the hall of rememberance which was just awesome. It was quite humbling. I think the thing that I was most amazed by was the forms for Holocaust survivors to fill out. It contained questions like "What camp were you in?" and "Were you involved in any resistance movements?" The fact that these questions are today still asked of living people who survived the Holocaust made it seem more real than ever.
On Friday we had ulpan lessons.
A Bunch of Americans and I on Eric's Birthday
This was annoying because we never usually have lessons on a Friday which is supposed to be the weekend. Anyway, I thought seeing as I volunteered for this course I shouldn't complain and the whole thing is like one big weekend anyway. After ulpan, I headed down to Tel Aviv to spend the weekend at my cousin Zoe's. I sat on the bus with American Eric. At the Jerusalem end station we bought hot dogs for six sheckles with two sausages in them. HOW CHEAP IS THAT!!?? That's under a quid for a kosher hot dog. It was really tasty and I'm sure it was filled with loads of crap that's bad for you, but I still loved every single bite of it. I finished it in ten seconds. On the way to Tel Aviv it rained with the force of a hurricane, which reminds me, on Thursday night it hailed so hard with huge stones it was like the ten plagues had hit. On Friday night, Zoe and I went round to some of her freinds for dinner. Sophisticated chat followed which was great and as most were ex-pats I understood every word of what was being said for once! On Shabbat morning, I went to Shul for the first time since arriving (poor show eh?). It was a great service - really really fast with English tunes. Excellent kiddish. I finally duchened in Israel which was also very cool.So Sunday came around again, and instead of playing football, a whole bunch of us went to see Beitar Jerusalem play at home to Ashdod. The standard of football was poor - like watching Leyton Orient vs some other rubbish team (Arsenal for example). The atmosphere was great though and the fans were supremely yobbish - more so than in England. It was top fun. We all bought scarves and I have worn mine non stop. We've adopted Beitar as our new team and we are planning on going to a few more games because it's so cheap. The best part of the night was teaching the Americans some football chants. Their favourite being "The referee's a w*nker!" It was quite hilarious.
Until next time,
Dan
PS. I'm having my photos put onto CD right now, so I should have them up tomorrow!
Comments
who is this dan person u speak of!?!?!
dan...since when have u been called dan?!?!?!?!
mnyo?
mnyo doniol? It is nice/slightly irritating to see that you are having such a fan-bloody-tastic time. I love israeli shnizel and am therefore slightly jealous.
yours hungrily,
ozro