Happy St. Patrick's Day! Strangely enough, we will be having a friend from Ireland and her fiance over for dinner this Thursday, Serena from my Hebrew class, and Vitaly, a mechanical engineering student in his last year of undergraduate studies.
Dawn's parents arrive for a visit in less than a week. We are both looking forward to their coming! No adventures to report as of late, unless you count mattress shopping for the parents, and dental fillings. I did finish the last of my 5 Stefan Zweig books this week, and look forward to meeting with my advisor in the next few days to decide on a thesis topic for my MA thesis/dissertation. I need to get going on Hebrew homework (no surprise there). We are invited to a potluck birthday party this evening at Jacob and Tiffany's, friends from Bible Study. Plans are pretty well set for our adventures next week with Mom and Dad Ashley. The weather is gradually warming up, with some days pleasant, some days a bit too warm, and some days kind of chilly. So the weather can't quite decide what season it is!
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Flying off cliffs in Norway
This has nothing to do with our goings on in Israel, but it's a very neat video of wingsuit jumping off the cliffs of Norway sent to me by a good friend at the Air Zoo. With all of the traveling Dawn and I will be doing this year, we don't plan on using this mode of "transportation"!
wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.
wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Reading, writing, and Hebrew surviving
Dawn is now walking again, more or less normally, and without crutches, though not for super long distances.
On Feb. 16th, we enjoyed the musical Guys and Dolls (in English) by the Light Opera Group of the Negev, including our friend Jacob playing the lead character, Sky Masterson, and his wife, Tiffany, in the chorus as part of the "Save a Soul Mission". See
http://www20.brinkster.com/lightopera/index.html
for more info. We also enjoyed meeting Nadine's parents on their recent visit to Israel. Nadine was an intern in the German Studies Center during Fall Semester. She left early for home about a week after the war started, but came back with her parents as originally scheduled at the end of the semester. I recently went to see Slumdog Millionare (English with Hebrew subtitles) at the movie theater downtown in the mall with some friends from Bible Study. Hebrew continues to frustrate me, but I continue to do the homework and learn a few new things each class. I have now read 5 of the 6 Stefan Zweig books I set out to read on my dissertation advisor's instructions. I also recently enrolled on the thesis make-up track for the second semester, which starts April 16th.
Andreas (a friend of Sonja's and a chemistry post-doc) had a birthday dinner at a nice but casual restaurant in the BIG shopping center (yes, that's its name) last Thursday evening. The amount of brainpower among the 20 or so people must have been staggering. From post-docs in chemistry and physics to foreign exchange students from Ohio State and Indiana University, there was quite an array of people. Unfortunately, Dawn stayed home sick with a stomach bug.
Saturday night we had Jenny (a Hebrew classmate and fellow Foreign Lang and Lit PhD student from China), and her husband Max, a chemistry post-doc, over for dinner. Sunday night I saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button with Andreas and Sonja and some of their friends at the campus movie theater. It is almost half the cost of a regular theater (19 NIS = $4.75 instead of 35 NIS = $9). Sonja, our friend from Austria, recently introduced us to Andreas, a post-doc in chemistry from South Africa whose parents are Austrian born. He attended German-speaking schools in South Africa, so he is fluent in both German and English. Today, we enjoyed our weekly lunch with Sonja, Andreas, and their friends Silke (from Germany, a chemistry PhD student who is here doing lab work for 2 months), and Silvia, from Italy, a post-doc in biotechnology, but by training a physicist. Andreas and I have plans to go see Valkeryie, the new movie with Tom Cruise as Col. von Stauffenberg, who attempted to assasinate Hitler unsuccessfully.
On Feb. 16th, we enjoyed the musical Guys and Dolls (in English) by the Light Opera Group of the Negev, including our friend Jacob playing the lead character, Sky Masterson, and his wife, Tiffany, in the chorus as part of the "Save a Soul Mission". See
http://www20.brinkster.com/lightopera/index.html
for more info. We also enjoyed meeting Nadine's parents on their recent visit to Israel. Nadine was an intern in the German Studies Center during Fall Semester. She left early for home about a week after the war started, but came back with her parents as originally scheduled at the end of the semester. I recently went to see Slumdog Millionare (English with Hebrew subtitles) at the movie theater downtown in the mall with some friends from Bible Study. Hebrew continues to frustrate me, but I continue to do the homework and learn a few new things each class. I have now read 5 of the 6 Stefan Zweig books I set out to read on my dissertation advisor's instructions. I also recently enrolled on the thesis make-up track for the second semester, which starts April 16th.
Andreas (a friend of Sonja's and a chemistry post-doc) had a birthday dinner at a nice but casual restaurant in the BIG shopping center (yes, that's its name) last Thursday evening. The amount of brainpower among the 20 or so people must have been staggering. From post-docs in chemistry and physics to foreign exchange students from Ohio State and Indiana University, there was quite an array of people. Unfortunately, Dawn stayed home sick with a stomach bug.
Saturday night we had Jenny (a Hebrew classmate and fellow Foreign Lang and Lit PhD student from China), and her husband Max, a chemistry post-doc, over for dinner. Sunday night I saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button with Andreas and Sonja and some of their friends at the campus movie theater. It is almost half the cost of a regular theater (19 NIS = $4.75 instead of 35 NIS = $9). Sonja, our friend from Austria, recently introduced us to Andreas, a post-doc in chemistry from South Africa whose parents are Austrian born. He attended German-speaking schools in South Africa, so he is fluent in both German and English. Today, we enjoyed our weekly lunch with Sonja, Andreas, and their friends Silke (from Germany, a chemistry PhD student who is here doing lab work for 2 months), and Silvia, from Italy, a post-doc in biotechnology, but by training a physicist. Andreas and I have plans to go see Valkeryie, the new movie with Tom Cruise as Col. von Stauffenberg, who attempted to assasinate Hitler unsuccessfully.
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