The Last Nine Days...

Highlights from the last nine days:

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Two Fridays ago, a few friends and I decided to spend Shabbat on the roof of the Einstein dorms: I brought my guitar; Elissa, Sean, and Adrienne brought food; and Jonathan supplied the mattresses from his dorm room so that we could sit comfortably on the roof.

As Jonathan wrote in his blog, "The night turned out to be just a lot of laughing, a lot of sex talk, and good ol' fashioned, wholesome - sober - fun. I hadn't had a night like this in a while, and I'm really glad we did it (if only to have met Adrienne, who may be the craziest person I've met in a looong time).

Sooner or later, someone (probably me) suggested spending the night and we ended up sleeping under the stars until the sun woke us up the next morning."

Also in his blog, a great observation about the night: "I really think what happened last night speaks to Israeli society (and even more so to Jewish cultural identity). Friday nights are Friday nights here. There is nothing else to do between the hours of 7-10 on Friday nights. EVERYONE is at home with family or visiting friends...Even in the impersonal society of Tel Aviv that mimics the American way of life, Israelis have reserved 3 hours a week for family, friends, chatter, and fun."

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Last Wednesday, a friend of mine from my days at ISB invited me to her graduation from IDF officer training: being a great chance to further explore an important aspect of Israeli culture, I gladly accepted the invitation. The ceremony was great and, considering the IDF ceremonies are modeled after those performed in the US Forces, it was pretty much what I was expecting - marching,
national anthem, marching, speeches in Hebrew from commanding officers, more marching...
Having said that, there were a couple of moments that caught me off-guard, including a light show where the graduating troops used glow-sticks attached to their M-16s in order to create dazzling patterns, and then this 'interesting' moment where I believe three of the graduating officers auditioned for Israeli Pop Idol:

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Also, two nights ago I spent the night at my friend's place in Rishon, only to wake up the next morning to rainfall. Yes, you read that correctly: rain is the third highlight of this post.
This may not strike my readers in Brussels, Aberdeen and New York as a big deal, but after seeing nothing but sunshine for two months, trust me: it's a big deal.
Rain is an odd but beautiful thing to experience here. For a while I was beginning to believe it didn't exist in this part of the world - further intensifying my nostalgia for my undergraduate days, inundated by Scotland's cold nights and heavy downpours...

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The fourth and final highlight of this post is that the rain lasted thirty minutes and the rest of the day was spent on the beach in 25 C* heat. I love this place.