Israel 08/19/09, by Joshua Archey

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MA Thesis is Drafted!

After my parents returned to the U.S., and I had recovered enough from our adventures to continue working, I set to work on finishing the draft of my MA thesis, which will become the first chapter of my dissertation on the Thesis make-up track. (I did the non thesis option at the University of Oregon, hence the need for an MA thesis). By August 2nd, I was up to page 37, from page 17 when my parents arrived for their 2 week visit. By Sunday, August 9th,I had reached the end: page 51! Now, the draft has been sent to my advisor for review. Next up is a 10 page paper for my advisor's seminar, Contemporary Topics in Literature. After that, it's back to the dissertation.

Meanwhile, the med school student led Bible Study is slowly getting going again. Nadine, a good friend from Germany I worked with in the German Studies Center is back in town for the 6 week Deutsche Sommer Universitaet. Our Austrian friend Sonja, meanwhile, is preparing to leave us to return to Austria, after spending the last two years in Be'er Sheva at the university teaching German. Last night, we enjoyed a farewell dinner in her honor at Pitput, a nice but overpriced restaurant in the BIG shopping complex. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring our camera along!

Pictures of vacation with Josh's parents

See the slideshow here (the first half dozen pictures are from our friend Bryanna's birthday party):

July 2009 Update, Josh's parents visit

Apologies for the long lapse in communication. My Hebrew class ended June 28th, followed immediately by the arrival of my parents for a 2 week visit. They left late Monday night and arrived back in Kalamazoo last night. I worked very hard in the weeks leading up to their arrival on my dissertation, and after a 2 week "vacation", I need to get back to work. The Graduate School is moving offices this week, to where I don't know, and my advisor and I are once again confused by what I do and do not need to do as far as a make-up MA thesis on the road to the dissertation. I also have a 10 page seminar paper I need to write within the next month, in addition to the end of August deadline set by the Grad School for submitting what I need to submit. We have also had to say goodbye to several friends in the Medical School here who headed back to the U.S. after completing their 3rd year of med school. They'll be back in January, and in the meantime, we wish them well on their rotations around the U.S. The 4th years celebrated graduation in May, and are now also gone from Be'er Sheva. Friends of ours, David, a 3rd year med school student, and his wife Daria gave birth to 6.8 pound Lily Danielle, and will also be heading back to the U.S. in the near future. Our other friends are also in a period of transition, as Andreas, a post-doc in chemistry from South Africa, whose parents emigrated there from Austria, is spending 6 weeks this summer at Stonybrook in New York. Sonja will br returning home to Vienna in August. Nadine will come back to Israel from Germany for a 6 week Ulpan (language course in Hebrew) in August and September.

The following is a brief overview of my parents 2 week visit:

5 nights in Tel Aviv, during which time they recovered from jetlag, toured Old Jaffa, and visited Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, we explored the Mt. of Olives, Garden of Gethsemane, Church of Mary Magdalene, Church of the Holy Sepulhere, and the Western Wall. Dad did not enjoy driving or parking in Jerusalem...next time, the bus!

2 nights in Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee: Visited Mt. of Beatitudes, Capernaum, Galilee Boat, Jordan River Baptismal site, and the ruins of Jewish Korazim, chastised by Jesus in the Bible.

3 nights in Be'er Sheva. Toured the Old City, showed them around the university, did laundry, took Dad to the Israeli Air Force Museum.

3 nights in the Sinai peninsula of Egypt. Stopped at the Dead Sea on the way down to Eilat. It was very hot. The wind felt like a heater blowing on high. We took a day tour to St. Catherine's monastery and Mt. Sinai. Enjoyed the pools at the hotel, and on the last morning, Dawn took me out to the coral reefs. (The hotel had a beach on the Red Sea.) Saw a spectacular sea green fish, almost fluoresent, a purple and yellow fish, and a school of little white fishes. I also finished my 900 page Tom Clancy novel during these 2 weeks, Rainbow Six.

1 last night in Be'er Sheva. Stopped in Mitzpe Ramon Crater on the way back. Parents packed, napped, and showered ahead of their 24 hour journey back to Michigan. 2 airlines, 3 changes of planes (because they stopped to visit friends in Germany on the way to Israel, they had to return through Germany).

I will post the link to the vacation photos on Picassa when available.

May 2009 Update

Well, life continues here pretty much at a steady, predictable pace. I finished the last (for now) of the stack of books I had collected (about twice as many as I started out with in April), around 10 for those who are keeping track, and was able to create an outline for my dissertation today AND write two and a half pages, all in one day (the book was finished yesterday)! Hooray!! There was a nice potluck and Bible Study last night at Vina's. Bryanna read from a book that was titled something along the lines of "The Final Conflict", which deals with a battle between God's Army and the forces of Satan. It reminded me of what I have read of Revelations, yet have yet to finish. Then we played a name game where evenly divided teams were handed out little pieces of paper with our name on them in random order and the goal was to get one team off the couch and your team on the couch by remembering who had what name. (Every time you called a name, you switched cards with the person who held the name you called on their card). The group met on Wednesday night because of the Shavuot holiday that started today. Shavuot marks 7*7, or 49 days, since the end of Passover, and is evidently the last holiday for quite some time (Maybe even September?). I'll have to check. The weather has cooled off to a more comfortable range this week after being in the mid-90s most of last week. One more month of Hebrew class left to go. As much as I struggle (and a good part of the blame must fall on me for putting my dissertation ahead of spending more hours learning Hebrew/doing homework), I have come a long way since November.

Dawn is currently presenting at 2 conferences in Canada and the U.S., COSY (Canadian Operators Symposium) in Regina, Saskatchewan, and GPOTS (Great Plains Operator Theorists Symposium) in Boulder, CO. I hope her talks go well. Recently, she found out that one of her papers was accepted for publication in the Rocky Mountain Journal of Mathematics. Hopefully, she will receive similarly good news with the second paper she submitted, though the approval process usually takes several months.

Finally, I have been enjoying the NBA playoffs online at NBA.com. (I paid for a subscription, I was in such basketball withdrawal). Unfortunately, the two teams I have little to no interest in, the LA Lakers and the Orlando Magic, look poised to head to the NBA Finals. Oh well, whatever happens, it should make for exciting games. The first four games of the conference finals (2 Western, 2 Eastern were separated by a combined 7 points!!! (Two one point games (Cleveland-Orlando), a two point game, and a three point game (LA-Denver). Hopefully Denver can come back and win their series, but in reality, I expect an LA-Orlando NBA Finals. Cleveland has almost no chance at this point.

Pictures from Germany Trip

Please see the following link:

Germany and Israeli Independence Day

(The first several pictures are from Easter egg coloring with Dawn and her student Hannah, and Dawn's aborted trip to the zoo with Hannah and her family, which ended up at the Negev Brigade Monument). Pictures then follow in chronological order, beginning at Tel Aviv Airport (refer to post on trip to Germany for specifics).

Dissertation Update

Since I returned from Germany, I have been busily reading and brainstorming on my doctoral thesis. The Berlin conference (see previous post) gave me several intriguing ideas to pursue. Following a meeting yesterday, Thursday, May 7th, with my advisor, I am happy to report that I now have a topic! It still deals with Stefan Zweig's novellas and novels, but now it is more concrete.

Specifically, I will be researching Stefan Zweig's philosopy of freedom as expressed across several of his novels and novellas, and comparing them to the views of some of his contemporaries, probably including Rudolf Steiner. For those that are wondering what books they should read of Stefan Zweig's, I recommend:

Clarissa
The Royal Game (or Chess Story) Original: Schachnovelle
The Post Office Girl (published for the first time in English in 2008) Original: Rausch der Verwandlung

Trip to Germany April 15th-26th, 2009

OK, I've been slacking off on the blog. I'm trying to focus on research to get as far as I can in the PhD before we leave Israel in August 2010. I was also in Germany for 11 days in April.

On Wednesday, April 15th, I flew to Germany to visit friends, and most importantly, attend an international Stefan Zweig conference co-organized by my PhD advisor along with another Dr. from the university in Potsdam. What followed was an exhausting yet rejuvenating 11 1/2 days. I took the train to Kaiserslautern when I arrived in Frankfurt, and spent 3 relaxing nights (Wednesday, Thursday, Friday) in Rodenbach, the village near Ramstein Air Base where I lived with my family from 1983 to 1986. Peter and Edith, the couple with whose son Marco, I went to kindergarten with, were wonderful hosts as usual. I also saw Heiner and Ilse, another couple who are good friends of my family's. It rained most of the time, but I was able to get a fair amount of Hebrew done and rest for a change.

On Saturday, April 18th, I took the train from Kaiserslautern to Augsburg to visit Sabine and her boyfriend "Sigi" (Sigfried). Sabine and I met during my junior year study abroad in Erlangen in 2000-01. On Sunday, they took me to the cloister of Oberschoenenfeld where some 21 nuns still reside, along with a restuarant, a religious-themed gift shop, and a beutiful 1700s era church. Also on the site is an 18th century recreation of a straw-roofed house. We also visited Sabine's parents nearby on their beautiful old farmhouse in the country.

On Sunday evening, April 19th, I left Augsburg for Erlangen, where I stayed the next 2 nights at Christina Hein's, one of the tutors from our junior year program and now the Director of the Erlangen Kalamazoo College exchange program. On Monday, I had lunch and chatted with "Mutti" Stark, Mom's host mother from her Kalamazoo College days at her retirement community, and had Kaffee und Kuchen with Christina, her friend Julia, and Britta (the other junior year tutor) and her 1 yr. old daughter Nerea in the afternoon. I also found time to visit Kaufland and pick up the requested varieties of chocolate and some Multivitaminsaft (juice) for the train the next day.

Tuesday morning, April 21st, I left on the train for Chemnitz to visit Nadine, her boyfriend Herbert, and Nadine's parents, Karin and Frank, who had invited me. Nadine and I worked together in the German Studies Center at BGU here in Israel, and her parents visited with her in February after the Gaza War ended. Tuesday afternoon, they took me to Miniwelt (Miniworld) in the countryside some 25 km. from Chemnitz. In the evening, we had an amazing variety of grilled meats for dinner and sat by a large fire in their backyard afterwords. Their backyard also had several fruit trees, as well as a sizable garden plot ready and waiting for planting.

Wednesday, April 22nd, after a large, late breakfast, we packed up and Karin drove Nadine and me to Berlin for the Zweig conference, where she also had a work related meeting Thursday afternoon. From 6 pm Wednesday evening until Friday at 4 pm, was one long series of lectures on Stefan Zweig. Thursday evening I took the subway almost an hour to the FU Berlin, where I checked out what resources the library there had on Zweig until the library closed at 22:00.

Friday afternoon, April 24th, I walked to the DDR Muesum (Deutsche Demokratische Republik... the former East Germany) across from the Berliner Dom on the Spree (pronounced Shpray...the "h" is intentional) before heading back to the hostel to get my stuff and walk the "15 minutes" (more like 30) to the Berlin Hauptbahnhof (Central Station) for the ride to Goettingen and Julia and Joerg Meyer's. I met Julia in Bonn in 2002-03 and Joerg and Julia came to our wedding. At the time (2006), Joerg was a finishing his PhD in physics while working at Fermi labs near Chicago. He is now a post-doc at Uni Goettingen.

Saturday, April 25th, after a large, late breakfast, we went downtown and they gave me a brief tour of Goettingen's Innenstadt, including the St. Jacobi Kirche, the Gaenseliesel Fountain, which tradition has that newly minted PhDs must come to bestow a bouqet of flowers to the statue upon successful defense of their dissertation. The weather was beautiful, sunny and in the 70s, as it had been since four days of rain ended Saturday, April 18th. We enjoyed fancy ice cream desserts in an outdoor cafe, before heading back to Julia and Joerg's for another "Grillabend" of delectable steaks and and homemade potato salad.

Sunday, April 26th, I said goodbye to Julia and Joerg at the train station and took the 11:17 ICE (InterCityExpress...Germany's fastest and coolest trains) to Frankfurt/Main Hbf, where I switched to the 13:10 ICE to Koeln/Deutz and the 14:30 RE (Regional Express) to Bonn Hbf, where I arrived on time at 14:56 and met Jan and Wilfried, both current PhD students whom I had met in 2002-03 in Bonn. Jan successfully completed a half-marathon in Bonn's annual marathon earlier in the day, and we settled in to a nearby outdoor cafe to watch the last of the marathoners finish the race. Then, it was 5 minutes back to the Hbf (Hauptbahnhof) for the 17:01 RE to Koeln/Deutz follow by the 17:40 ICE to Frankfurt Flughafen (Airport), where I checked in for my 20:45 Swiss Airlines flight to Zurich and connecting flight to Tel Aviv. (There's a non-stop Lufthansa flight, but my frequent flier ticket made me change planes on the way back rather than fly non-stop both ways, as I did on April 15th from Tel Aviv to Frankfurt.

After perusing the duty-free shops in Frankfurt, both flights went off without a hitch and we arrived on time at 3:30 am Monday morning in Tel Aviv. Swiss Airlines even handed out little swiss chocolates to every passenger on the Frankfurt-Zurich flight. Once I was back in Be'er Sheva, around 8 am, I wrote and prepared 4 pages to give a short presentation that afternoon in our Contemporary Topics in Literature Seminar on Abraham Cahan's The Rise of David Levinsky. Whew, what a trip!

Josh's dissertation

In response to a request for more information on this subject, I am tentatively writing a dissertation which will compare and contrast the Austrian-Jewish author Stefan Zweig's long and short fiction. Much has been written about his novellas, with comparatively little about his novels, which were largely published after his death in February 1942, some of them remaining unfinished. Zweig was the most widely read and translated German-language author during the 1920s, and continued to remain widely popular in exile in England, the U.S., and finally Brazil. Zweig, who suffered from life-long depression, commited suicide along with his second wife in Brazil in 1942, unable to wait and see if Hitler would be defeated, and unwilling to start anew after having lived through World War I, when Austria was also a defeated power.

Pictures from the parents' visit

1st picture: The Dome of the Rock
2nd picture: On the shores of the Sea of Galilee
3rd picture: On approach to Tel Aviv/Ben Gurion International
4th picture: Animals at Ein Gedi Nature Reserve