Trip up north

Justin and I on the trail...

I took a great trip up north this past weekend with a group of 12. Myself, Dovi, Amir, Justin, Jonah, Caroline, Katie, Ayelet, Hadar, Rosy, and Hazel. Justin works for SPNI and booked us two rooms at the field school in Achziv beach in the north, about 15 minutes drive from the border with Lebanon. On Saturday we took a great trip up from the "Arch Cave" down to the Betzet stream and past some cave that I forget the name of. It is about a 4 hour hike, but we took it slow and stopped to eat and such. It is a hike I did probably about 10 years ago, so I was having all of this deja vu. Along the way we saw a goat give birth, which was "interesting" I guess is the best way to describe it.

Dinosaur Jr.

Dinosaur Jr. is coming to Tel Aviv to play a concert on the 9th of June!!! I'm so excited! I hope they don't cancel.

Another Ironic Strike

This morning I was riding my bike to the bank and I heard all this yelling and protesting, and it turns out that the workers of the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf are now on strike! I personally couldn't care less, as I stopped going there (on my own personal protest) because their stuff is too expensive, and the place is allways packed with either obnoxious 19 year old American kids, or with those old Tel Aviv ladies who still speak Polish or Hungarian and allways have issues with the food and return coffees three times because it is too cold or too hot or too much milk and they never give you the spare seat because "my jacket goes here". I long ago transfered to a different coffee shop, Vitali, on Shlomo Hamelekh and Arlozerov. Better food, cheaper, and quieter, and closer to home. I still go to Coffee Bean on occasions, because it is open on Shabbat and you can sit in the back on the couches, and the place is big enough/noisy enough/packed enough that you don't actually have to even buy anything.

I am also trying to figure out if I can finish this degree in the allotted two years now that the strike is over...

Semester has begun

So the first day of the first semester finally started today... the strike ended Friday at noon. I will be in school straight through end of July... awful.

quick update

It has been a while since I have posted, so here is quick update. Basically nothing is going on at all... I am waiting, like all other students, to figure out the future of the semester, and to see how it will affect my time here. Either way odds are about 99% certain that I will have to stay another semester to finish the academic year, if not a whole additional year. I put in a transfer to LSE as a backup option in case things get really bad.

Here is the situation: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/945375.html

In the meantime I'm going to start working on the research I have with Dr. Rosa now that I have the data from the World Bank.

Happy New Year

Happy 2008!

family

My sister is in town this week and we are swamped with family affairs. Today was the joint birthday party for my two little cousins, Tomer, who is six, and Uri, who is two. They are below blowing out the candles of their joint cake. My sister is in the middle..