Bloody Lovely Hell

So here I am in my dorm room, listening to Sorry Charlie, finally writing something for this blog. Being here has been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster for me. I arrived on Sunday the 1st and met the friend I made through Myspace, Daniel Weissmann, at the airport. One of the first things I noticed about Israel was the number of young people in army uniform carrying guns. After seeing a man with a gun at Manchester airport when I went to Lyon, I thought I would be more shaken by the sight. I hardly notice the guns now. That can't be a good thing...

On the way to Moshav Udim, where Daniel and his family live, I met Lori and Nir. I hope to see them on Friday when Daniel and I go to a party in Tel Aviv. I haven't seen much of Tel Aviv yet, and my expectations are still fairly high. I stayed at Daniel's house until Sunday morning, and I had a really good time. See Fig 1: a picture of Daniel with his sisters, Dana and Coral.


On Sunday I went into the lab was shown how to maintain cultured mammalian cells and I read a paper on Lats2, which is what my supervisor works on. Then I went into town to buy an Israeli SIM but they wouldn't sell me one so I walked home and bought toothpaste on the way, but I had a lot of trouble in town because I couldn't understand things. It was also reeeeally hot and after walking quite a long way I just wanted to go back to my dorm room, even though I think it's gross. I got lost on the way though, and unwillingly saw everything there was to see in the whole institute. Which is very pretty. See Fig 2.


After the trauma in town, the ridiculous walk around the Weizman, and now faced with my horrible room, I burst into tears. I rang Daniel and ran for the last train so I could stay with him until Tuesday. I started to wonder if coming here was stupid of me, and that maybe I just couldn't handle it. I obviously can't say how things will go from here on in, but I'm feeling much more optimistic. We won't start on my project for a little while yet, but at least I got to make use of my brain today. I'm starting to get to know some of the people in the lab. Most of the time they speak in Hebrew, which made me feel quite alienated at first, but it will be helpful when I know a bit more of the language myself. They seem to think it's a bit strange that I'm bothering to learn. I think a lot of people who visit here don't bother because you can live in the institute without knowing a single word of Hebrew. But I don't want to live in a cage. I want to experience Israel, including the language and culture.

I'm sure there's something else I wanted to mention, but my mind is on Hebrew now that I've mentioned it. Later I will go back to the lab to post this ((I am now posting this and it's past midnight!)) and hopefully get some nice pictures of the institute at night ((I tried and failed - maybe another day)). Last night there were massive bats flying around. Yay for massive bats!