Shabbat Dinner

Last week I went to Shabbat dinner at Eithan's house.




His mom is a REALLY good cook...and as I sat, eating everything in sight and relishing the food, I realized this was the first home cooked "mom" meal I had had since I've been in Israel. It was really nice.

Eithan and I were assigned to set the table.

Joey, being ridiculously cute as always.

This last Friday, I went to Shabbat dinner at Gennady's. This was a religious dinner (most of the people who went are Orthodox) so it was totally different from what the dinners were like at Eithans' and Elisheva's. We prayed a lot, the men and women went separately to wash their hands, all the men wore kippas, and most of the women wore long skirts (I did too), and after dinner we did Torah readings and songs/prayers. It was a really interesting experience and I had a great time.

I also had my first gefilte fish! It was not bad (particularly once I had slathered it with horseradish), but as it sat starring at me before we started to eat I couldn't help but think it was cat food -- sitting there....all gelatinous, firmly oval shaped, and fish smelling.....

Finals season!

Look Mom and Dad, I'm studying!

(Karen, David, Mike, Moran (not at this session, and I have started a, we hope to be, pizza party study session tradition at my apartment - this was meeting #2)

Joey

the cutest dog in the world, Joey:
Eithan had a birthday BBQ (a while back) and he sat drooling (see the huge droplets), watching me eat..haha. I'm totally in love with this dog.

A fruit stand off Basel St. . I took a picture because it looked amazing. There are smaller/similar versions of this all over the place. I went to one behind my house yesterday to see if they had jalapenos - but they did not. And the guys there insisted that this other kind of pepper was equally spicy....so I tried it (ate the whole raw pepper in front of them), and insisted that I was Asian and that the peppers were not spicy enough (they turned out to be decently spicy once I ate the seeds....took a while to hit though...and then my nose started to run..but they did not see this). I think they were amused by my asianness because not only did i get a discount on some Arabic spice mix, but they gave me a few peppers for free.

Rugby,rugby, and Sholmo Artzi

Pictures from my first rugby game in Israel (this was WEEKS ago)

http://picasaweb.google.com/candacecheng/RugbyMatch1611200702

Rugby camp (weeks ago)

http://picasaweb.google.com/candacecheng/RugbyCamp112007

And my first Israeli concert - Shlomo Artzi

jebus, loading video with my ridiculously slow Israeli internet is not working. ....i have some great video from the concert, but alas...i cannot share it. perhaps, i'll load it from the US...with my lightning fast internet connection...

My 1st Israeli Protest

As if you thought there were a lot of protests at Berkeley...Israelis love protests/strikes/lock-outs etc.

[I realised that I haven't updated this thing in a really really long time...and that a lot has happened. So as I sit here in cell biology, i'm going to update this bad boy. The updates won't be that great because i'm half listening about EGF receptors, but hey, at least i'm updating.]

Currently, the professors at Tel Aviv University (and high school teachers) are on strike because of low pay by the government. This strike has been going on for 9 weeks. NINE WEEKS! So the Israeli students haven't been in class (at least most of their classes) and are slowing getting their summer vacation taken away....right now they have 1 week. The Israeli medical students MIGHT have their whole year cancelled due to the strike. So in response, the students have started to protest the protest.

I supported their cause today at one of their demonstrations (Dad, you were worried about Berkeley protests...who knew about Israel? ha!)...and chanted things like "Where's histology? We don't know! Where's anatomy? We don't know! Where's the teachers? We don't know! Where's the government? We don't know!" and "No education, No medicine!" (all in Hebrew).

The noise from the demonstrations has been a problem with class - it's disruptive. I have a long story about this....but i'll keep it from the blog for now. Anyways, a lot of people are upset about this....but coming from Cal, where I was locked into Wheeler because of an Palestinian/Israel protest (ironic) during a final - with police arrests, drums, screaming, etc....the noise of clapping and chanting during class is not so bad.

For all the Israeli students missing out on their educations, I hope this gets resolved soon.