I have an excuse for not blogging for the last two months… really!

The excuse is that I was 1) co-leading a workshop in Argentina, and 2) visiting family in the states…

I was presented with the opportunity to lead a workshop for teachers in Argentina, along with my host here, Nir. The short version of the story is that the curriculum that was developed by Nir’s research group in Hebrew was translated to Spanish recently. UNESCO became involved, and sponsors these workshops in South America to introduce the Blue Planet curriculum to a broader audience of teachers outside of Israel. This was the 3rd workshop of its kind (one was in Chile, and another was in a different region of Argentina). This one was held in the Chaco region (near the border with Paraguay). After a great deal of preparation (including translating the entire 250 something pages to English so I could work with it, and to make it even more accessible to more teachers!), we were off to Argentina. After nearly 24 hours of travel, we finally arrived in Chaco. I’ll spare you the unexciting details of travel drama, including strikes, customs, and assorted delays…

The idea behind the workshop was not only to introduce this great curriculum to teachers who could potentially use it with their own students in their country, but also to share a bit about our method of teaching (student-centered, inquiry-based activities, field trips playing a central role, coherent storylines, developing scientific thinking skills, etc.). We went several days before the start of the workshop in order to plan the field trip that we would be taking the teachers on. This involved a great deal of travel around the region to see what was around, and how we could weave some story that included relevant issues for the people of Chaco (I should note that the curriculum centers around the topic of water, water resources, contamination, etc.). After about 2 full days of meeting with experts, scientists, and just looking around the area (thank you, Linda, for driving us all over the place!!!), we had a fantastic 5 hour field trip planned. It included 7-8 stations (field trip stops) and a great story about how water plays an important role in this area of Argentina in regard to flooding, drought, sanitation, and the human impact on these aspects.

Resistencia, Chaco

The Dique

Fishergirls

Testing water in my hotel room

Nir and I then worked for many hours to write this down into a student/teacher friendly worksheet format.

And THEN the workshop began 🙂 . Monday morning, about 50 teachers arrive on the scene (~35 from all over Argentina, and ~15 from Uruguay).Long story short, the workshop was FANTASTIC! It was really an amazing experience for me to meet such wonderful teachers from all over the place, who all have a passion to improve their teaching, learn new methods and practices, and discover how to bring their own students outdoors in an educationally useful way. As Nir likes to point out, this was a “workshop not a talkshop.” So we had the teachers working on their own in small groups (just as we’d like students to do for optimal learning environments), with activities and materials to support their learning. The teachers acted as the students, but we included discussions to reflect on what it was like to learn in this different way. This is a pretty novel practice for teachers in South America, and I think they were really excited about it!

Identifying rocks and minerals

After the first 1.5 days, teachers were prepared for the field trip, which we took Tuesday afternoon. See photos below for some of the action. We were all pretty exhausted by the end, but in a good way.

Sorting sediment using sieves to characterize the river

Drilling cores to examine the underground rock system

Nir leading a very brief summary discussion in the field (but note, the field is not a place for lecturing)

The rest of the workshop involved more of the same, and by the feedback session and closing on Friday, I think we were all feeling so warm and fuzzy I never wanted it to end. I made some great friends (yay Facebook!) and some wonderful professional contacts (UNESCO!) and overall such a fantastic experience all around.

Testing collected samples back in the lab

The Uruguay teachers

(Note, when I returned home, I received an email from UNESCO-Uruguay. They want us to come back next year to lead a workshop in Uruguay!!! I call that success! Hopefully all the details will get worked out and it will become a reality!)

There’s so much more to say about this trip, but we’ll leave it at that, and I’ll get some more photos posted on our Flickr site, so stay tuned for that…

While it was sad to leave Chaco, I had major plans for the next stop. The US for the first time in over a year! This coincided nicely with Thanksgiving, so I got to spend 2 amazing weeks with my sister’s family, and our parents in New York City. So after a 12 hour bus ride (it was actually very luxurious, complete with champagne, free meals, internet, and my own TV), and a 13 hour plane ride, I arrived in NYC, exhausted, but so happy!

This is the little face of my niece, Ruby, who I got to wake up to every morning of those two weeks.

Ruby!

Cute overload! I love this little girl like there’s no tomorrow. We really got to bond during my time as the live-in-sister, and it was just the best. We enjoyed visiting many parks, botanical gardens, and children’s museums together, and it was awesome to hang out with my sister and her husband for such an extended period of time. Ruby is quite a reader, and she knows a few important words like “ball” and “star.” She’s brilliant!!! No exaggeration. Here’s the little family:

Jess, Chris, and Ruby

The parental unit came in for Thanksgiving …

The parental unit, cute little family, and me

… and we had a lovely holiday with my brother-in-law’s family in New Jersey. Lots of good food and good company!

Okay fine, I will add more photos of the cute babe-aloo…

And then sadly, it was time to leave. We had a lovely last afternoon with a walk through the park, a beautiful sunset, and some pizza 🙂 This is my awesome sister, Jess (aka Frank, etc.).

Frank and Frank

Then I flew BACK to Argentina (don’t ask), and then to Israel. After a good 36 hours of traveling, including a cab ride, a 13 hour flight, another 13 hour flight, and a train, I was back in Rehovot, and greeted by Thomas!

What have we been up to since I got home? Don’t fret, it’s coming in the next blog post… but as a preview to whet your appetite, it include meat cake, sufganiyot, homemade ice cream, and a surprise Chanukah trip to Jerusalem. I guess it will be a food post… more later!

 

We’ve had a busy month!

Since returning from our Europe trip, we’ve had a pretty busy few weeks. Here are some of the highlights:

Flickr photos live here

1. Four-wheelin’ with Doron, Yael, and Nadav

Yael and Doron invited us to go 4-wheeling in the Jerusalem foothills in September. This was our first time, and it was a blast, and involved really beautiful scenery. Also, we looked awesome. Behold:

Aliens on an ATV

Here I am, being too cool for school, with Yael at an overlook:

Jerusalem Foothills with Yael

Yael and Doron really know how to spend a day outside, with frequent breaks for fancy picnics, coffee, tea, and wine. It was a great and dusty day!

2. And then, a month (almost!) of holidays…

Late September brought us to the very long Jewish holiday season. We mostly worked through the holidays, with a few days off here and there. Rosh Hashana was spent with Yael’s family. We made apple cake and honey cake, both of which turned out pretty well! I even heard from one of the kids that my honey cake was tastier than the store-brought honey cake. YES!

Tom’s advisor, Moshe, hosted a lab potluck for current and former lab members. It was a sizeable group, and involved an amazing quantity of delicious food, again. (There is no shortage of eating at all of these events, rest assured…)

Next, came Yom Kippur, followed by Sukkot. Our new friends, Jean and Dan (newly arrived postdocs at Weizmann) invited us and some other folks over for a delicious potluck. They have a great apartment on the 9th floor of a building towards the middle of Rehovot. The night involved good food, conversation, a hilarious cat named Skunk, and amazing views of the Israeli night sky and horizon. They have a bird-watching telescope, which we used to look at Jupiter and its moons, and into people’s windows.

3. A Sukkot Trip down south

Towards the end of the weeklong Sukkot celebration, we decided to rent a car and venture down south to Eilat, which is the southernmost tip of Israel, and located right on the Red Sea! This makes it somewhat of a resort-y town, full of vacationers. We drove about 4 hours through the Negev, Mahktesh Ramon (a large “crater” that has been featured on our blog in the past), some desert, an oasis where we picnicked before continuing on with the drive, and lots more desert landscape to reach Eilat. We arrived after dark, setup our tent in a very hard to find the SPNI Field School campsite, and then drove back into town, parked, and did a bit of walking around Eilat at night.

Tom at an Oasis in the desert

An ibex in its natural habitat, on the edge of Makhtesh Ramon

Our campsite (note the guy playing video games in the background. oh, camping!)

The next morning, we woke up early, ate breakfast at our campsite, and set off to find… a DIVE CENTER! We went snorkeling, and it was absolutely amazing. The Red Sea is famous for good scuba diving and snorkeling due to the coral reefs. Apparently the reefs in Sinai are the ultimate place to dive, but since we’ve never seen tropical reefs, we were completely impressed. The colors! The neon fish! The clear water! It was really a lovely day. We chose to snorkel at a national park called Coral Beach, and it exceeded our expectations. Sorry, no photos of us looking ridiculous in our snorkeling garb.

We decided to head home that night, as we were pretty tired from swimming for so many hours… but we had the rental car for one more day, so…

4. A Sukkot trip up north

…after resting up at home for the night, we got back in the car, and headed in the opposite direction, with Tsfat, a mountain-top town about 2.5 hours away, as our destination. Tsfat (also known as Safed) is a small town in the northern Galilee (literally at the opposite end of Israel), and I believe, one of the highest elevations of any towns in Israel. It’s a popular town for the Kabbalist folk. We were there on Shabbat, so it was very sleepy, quiet, and pleasant. We visited several art galleries in the artists’ colony, and mainly just spent the day walking through the narrow, curvy, alley-like streets of Tsfat. There are a few famous synagogues there, that were of course closed, but we enjoyed peering through the windows. We also visited the Tsfat cemetery, which sits on the outskirts of the town on a hill. Interestingly, the graves of famous/popular people (!) are painted with blue or white paint so they are easy to spot and visit. This was strange for a variety of reasons, but alas, we roamed through the cemetery for a bit, and then headed to the ruins of a crusader citadel.

Winding street of Tsfat

Window-peering

Where's Waldo/Tom at the citadel ruins?

Sunset on the drive home

So to summarize, in 2 days, we drove pretty much the entire length of Israel. It is a small country, indeed…

5. Fulbright Orientation, back down South

The new cohort of Fulbrighters have just arrived in Israel, and the orientation was a few days ago, which happened to coincide with our 3-year anniversary! WOOT! We hopped on a bus and headed south again, retracing some of our earlier path through the Makhtesh Ramon. We visited a goat farm where we got to watch the goats being milked, and then taste some of the cheeses made by the family that runs the farm. We stayed in a fancy schmancy hotel on the edge of the Makhtesh, and were treated to an extremely varied and delicious dinner and breakfast the following morning. People always rave about Israeli hotel breakfasts… this was a good example! The next morning, we drove through the makhtesh, learned about its geology from our guide, Erma, took some beautiful photos, and did a little walking. We stopped at an outdoor sculpture park, where we had mixed feelings. Some of the sculptures were interesting, while others were a bit dilapidated, and not so attractive. The guide discussed how she personally felt that the natural landscape shouldn’t be altered by large sculptures, which I can understand, even though I’m a supporter of art, in general.

Next, we visited Avdat – a UNESCO world heritage site, and desert city along the Incense Route. We wandered through the site for a while, and then it was time for lunch in a Bedouin tent. We feasted, family style, on entire chickens, mezze, rice, potatoes, lafa (Bedouin bread), and baklava, with tea and coffee. The trip ended with a visit to Lakiya, a Bedouin village where the women have fought against the overwhelming dominance of the males and started developing skills such as embroidery and weaving, while learning about health issues, and general difficulties they face in their culture. It’s somewhat of a women’s empowerment story, and our group sat in the family tent and listened to the founder of this movement, which was one of the highlights of the trip for me.

The new Fulbrighters seem like a great bunch and it was fun to meet them, and reminisce about our earliest days in Israel. But I still miss all the folks who have returned home (keep in touch, friends!).

Favorite sculpture in the Negev

Avdat

Bedouin hafla feast! (demolished)

No trip to the desert is complete without camels!

Meanwhile, we continue to powerlift three times per week, and seem to have become the favorites of the coaches (Asaf and Ilya), who LOVE talking about lifting with us. We’ve also returned to running. Here we are with our matching running pants (yes, it’s just now beginning to get chilly in Israel… chilly in Israel = 75 degrees).

Runners!

That’s what we’ve been up to over the last month or so. Keep in touch, everyone – we love hearing from you!

Summer is hot; Emily and Jan get married; Molly talks in France

Well, it’s October… we made it through our first Israeli summer! It wasn’t so bad, and I don’t think we even spent that much time indoors. It’s high holiday season here now, which means we’re off and on regarding work, and it’s a good time to catch up on some blogging.

Summer for us was a collection of small trips and festivities around Israel and, more exciting, a trip to Germany for my sister’s wedding, and a trip to France that was a combination vacation / conference for Molly.

Photos live here:

Misc. Summer 2011 photos

Munich for Emily and Jan’s wedding

Paris and Lyon

And on to a summary of our summer…  I doubt the chronology is correct, but these things all happened at some point!

Our friends Osher and Gilad were married early in the summer in a very nice ceremony in the Judean Foothills.  The ceremony was held in the hillside garden of an organic farm, and the reception was held on the premises.  It was a gorgeous setting and they had great weather for the day.  This happened to be our first Israeli wedding.  We loved how informal (yet very nice!) the entire affair was…  It was a great celebration!

Osher and Gilad at their wedding!

Garden seating at Osher and Gilad's wedding

Many of our Fulbright friends were here only for one year, which meant that we said our goodbyes earlier this summer.  We had a couple fun trips before everyone left though.  Our friend Cathleen was able to give us a tour of the archeological dig where she was working, near Ashkelon:

Cathleen gives us a tour of her archeological dig

Dig site

Tel Aviv also hosts their “White Night” celebration during the summer, an all-night party of concerts and street performances throughout the city.

White Night celebration, Rothschild Blvd., Tel Aviv

White Night celebration

The Weizmann student council also sponsored a trip to the Negev Desert to visit Tel Aviv University’s astronomical observatory… The observatory was just past Mitzpe Ramon on the edge of the Makhtesh Ramon, one of the major landscape features of the Negev.  Here we had a guided tour of the observatory from one of the grad students doing research with the telescope, and then, outside using smaller telescopes, a few hours of stargazing led by astronomers from WIS.  A highlight was watching the “moonrise” over the Negev before heading back to Rehovot.

TAU Observatory

Main telescope, TAU observatory

Molly on the edge of the Makhtesh Ramon

And our last picture from the summer: the “tent city” of the social justice protests in Tel Aviv.  Wikipedia has a good review of the summer protests here.  I wish we had better photos of this, but it was hard to capture just how large and extensive this tent city was… it stretched for most of the length of Rothschild Blvd., one of the main streets of Tel Aviv.  I was also impressed by the sheer number of people who took part in some of the the rallies, by some counts close to 500,000 people.  That’s a HUGE number of people in a country of 8 million…

Tent City, Tel Aviv

And then we went to Germany!

Hello from Germany!

My sister Emily and my (now) brother in law Jan were married in August in Munich, where they live.  We stayed in Munich for about five days, visiting family and touristing.

The ceremony itself was in Frauenreuth, a small town about 45 minutes’ drive from Munich.

Emily and Jan

Emily and Jan on their wedding day

The ceremony was held on an organic farm… it was a great setting, very picturesque with the Alps visible in the background.

Walking with Mom, morning after the wedding

Other highlights of our time in Germany included a day trip to Salzburg, Austria:

Molly in Salzburg

And the breakfast of champions: pretzels and weisswurst!

Munich's famous weisswurst, white veal sausages

Molly also spoke at a Science Education conference in Lyon, France, but we were able to spend four days in Paris as a vacation before heading to Lyon.

Our favorite building by far was Notre Dame Cathedral… We visited a few times in the evenings when they were holding services; one of the most beautiful buildings we’ve been in, anywhere.

Notre Dame

And we tracked down all of the things we were “supposed” to do in Paris:

And did a lot of food-related tourism as well, including shopping in some of Paris’ famous kitchen supply stores:

Stockpots for sale in the basement of E. Dehillerin

Also, because restaurants are so expensive, we “self-catered” a lot of our meals by shopping in local street markets.. both fun and tasty!  Our friend Chanda tipped us off that some one of the best deals to be had are the rotisserie chickens for sale in most markets.  Somehow in four days we managed to consume three rotisserie chickens!

Market time in Paris

The one restaurant meal we did try to track down, though, was “Steak Frites”, classic steak in sauce with a side of fries…  After bad luck and one bad meal in Paris, we finally (via the internet) tracked down a great Steak Frites in Lyon;  worth the wait!

World's best streak frites?

We spent about five days in Lyon, but never managed to get out to see the city as much as we would have liked.  Molly was of course in her conference each day, and I ended up working in our hotel for much of the time… I did manage to make my way out to the Old City of Lyon one afternoon though:

Old City, Lyon

And here we are back in Israel… We just recently celebrated the one-year anniversary of our arrival here (Oct. 1, 2010), and next week we have a two-day orientation to meet the new Fulbright students, most of whom have already arrived.  And, looking ahead, we only have about eight more months here in Israel.. we’d better get busy seeing everything in Israel!

Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel

Monday was Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel (in Hebrew, Yom HaShoah. I attended the ceremony held at the Weizmann Institute, while Tom attended the Hebrew University ceremony. Although both were conducted in Hebrew, we were told that everyone (really) attends. We decided to go to experience the atmosphere, and it was quite moving.

The organizers asked people to arrive at the location of the ceremony 10 minutes early. So people arrived around 9:50am, and at about 9:59am, the thousands of people who had gathered stood up, became silent, and about a minute later, we heard the wailing of sirens all around Rehovot. The sirens in all Israeli cities are sounded, and the entire country comes to a standstill. While I did not witness this firsthand, since I was at a ceremony on campus, apparently all traffic stops, even on the highway, as everyone silently pays tribute to the victims of the Holocaust.

After the two minutes of sirens, we sat down, and the next 30 minutes involved a moving series of songs by a choral group, as well as several speakers who read passages related to the Holocaust. The ceremony ended with a singing of the national anthem (Hatikvah) which I knew and was therefore able to participate.

After the ceremony, people somberly returned to their offices. When I got to my building, I discovered a small memorial table setup in the hallway with a lit remembrance candle and a sign.

If you’d like more information about Yom HaShoah in Israel, please visit the Knesset website.

NOW our Istanbul videos are posted

Oops, our videos from Istanbul weren’t public when linked to them on our last post!

Check out some short clips from our Istanbul trip here:
Istanbul Movies

Flickr photos still live at:
Flickr Photos

One week in Istanbul

[Alright folks, this is a little embarassing, but here, at last, is our blog about our March trip to Istanbul for a week… We know, it’s about time… but I guess we’ve been busy, or something… Enjoy!]

Photos and some short videos from the trip:
Flickr photos
Vimeo videos

When we moved to Israel, we had plans to travel throughout the region. The unrest all over the world put a (temporary, at least) halt to those plans…

However, a few months ago, we decided it was time to go to Istanbul, Turkey. We purchased plane tickets and booked a hotel in the old city for 7 days, and then began doing a lot of reading about things to do during our time there.

We’d like to share some of our experiences.

Day 1 –

We flew Turkish Airlines direct from Tel Aviv to Istanbul. The flight was only 2 hours, but because it was international (or maybe because Turkish Airlines is great?) we had a very nice meal (seen below). Caprese salad, a hot roll, hummus and veggies, crackers and butter, water, tea, hazelnuts, and a mousse. Not too bad! We feasted…

We had done a lot of logistical planning for the trip, so when we arrived in Turkey, we purchased some tokens, and rode a tramline all the way from the airport into the Old City where our hotel was located.

When we found the hotel, we discovered a little farmers market just across the street. We dropped off our things in our very lovely Hotel room (Hotel Erguvan, in case anyone wants to visit – a great hotel!), and then set out to purchase a few food items to have around for the week: some bananas, clementines, a giant loaf of bread, and some mozzarella cheese that a friendly Turk helped us order given our lack of Turkish language skills.

After a short rest in the hotel, we walked a few minutes to the waterfront (Sea of Marmara)

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/neeson/5497323080/&#8221; title=”IMG_6669 by thomasmneeson, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5018/5497323080_730af1213c.jpg&#8221; width=”500″ height=”375″ alt=”IMG_6669″ /></a>

and then set out for dinner at a very popular place (Tarihi), known for its kofte (meatballs). We ordered some kofte, a cabbage/carrot salad with a light dressing, a great deal of fresh bread, and some ayran (“eye-ron”) which is a yogurt-y drink popular in Turkey.

We walked around a bit that night (total walking mileage about 10 miles), and came upon many of the famous Istanbul sights lit up at night (our hotel was pretty much right next door to all of these locations… the Hippodrome, the Blue Mosque, Aya Sofia became everyday scenes for us).

Day 2 –

We were anxious to get to the Grand Bazaar – a huge (and old – built in the 1400s) covered market with over 4,000 shops. Here’s the entrance.

We roamed around in the bazaar for a while, and became a bit overwhelmed by the almost constant barrage of Turks trying to sell us things from their shops. We decided there must be an English language terms book out there for Grand Bazaar shop owners, with the following phrases:

• Excuse me.
• Where are you from?
• England? France? Spain?
• Please come in.
• There’s more inside…

It was even more ridiculous walking through a street around dinner time, when every kebap shop in town wanted you to eat there. Additional phrases for restaurant owners include:

• Fresh fish. (“frrsssshhh fsssshhhhh”)
• Look at our menu!
• Maybe tomorrow?
• Maybe just a drink?

Maybe, indeed… When we needed a break from this (fairly quickly), we discovered Istanbul University. We waltzed onto campus, and found a free bathroom (this takes real talent in Istanbul, where you get charged a lira to use almost any bathroom). We also found some lovely views and neat buildings…

(check out Tom’s new scarf! woot!)

We walked about 10 miles on Day 2, and ended the day in the early afternoon with a corn on the cob on the street, and a drink of sahlep.

After a quick refresh at the hotel, we went to a fish restaurant for dinner. This was a bit off the beaten path, and we eventually found it in a sort of alley-street. We sat down, and looked at the menu for a bit. The chef (and waiter) came over, winked at us, and then just started bring us food (that we hadn’t ordered). Sooo… we ate it. It was tasty, and provided our first taste of Raki, a licorice flavored alcohol that you mix with water. It was meh. We (mostly Tom) ate shrimp, a salad, really tasty eggplant, blue fish, and again, a great deal of bread.

Day 3 –

Each morning, we had (included) breakfast in the hotel which involved about 12 types of cakes, bolognas, breads, simits, cheeses, juice, tea, coffee, yogurt, and boiled eggs.

We chose Topkapi Palace as our destination today. This is a giant palace  where the Ottoman sultans lived from the 1400s to the 1800s. The palace grounds include many grassy areas, and a ton of buildings, each housing important relics, amazing architecture, painted walls and ceilings,  stained glass windows, and impressive tiles, etc. Here are some photos from our visit to Topkapi (more at our Flickr site):

here’s a giant door…

After leaving the palace, we visited the Basilica Cistern – which provided water to the area since it was built in the 6th century! It’s the largest cistern in the region, and we walked through it, and tried to take some good photos in the dark. Highlights included examining the differences in the columns, giant fish in the foot of water at the bottom, and these two huge medusa heads at the base of two columns…

fish! (fresh!)

Day 4 –

We visited two of the major mosques in Istanbul: The Blue Mosque, and Hagia Sophia. They were both unbelievably impressive. I think if we had to choose (what? why?!) we would pick the Blue Mosque as our favorite. The Blue mosque seems to be best known for it’s internal beauty. Although the outside is awfully impressive:

It’s called the blue mosque because of the blue tiles inside, not because at night, it’s lit up in a blue-ish tint (red alert: misconceptions!!!) . Also there were few people visiting when we were there, so we could really sit and soak in the atmosphere indoors. Plus, there were some amazing stained glass windows.

Ladies have to cover their heads…

…whereas the Hagia Sophia was a major architectural and engineering wonder (and was significantly more crowded and full of noise, making it difficult to enjoy the wonder). The inside isn’t so bad…

Also, Molly made this small friend in the courtyard of the Blue Mosque while waiting to hear the call to prayer – on site (video coming soon). This little girl literally stared at her, without moving or looking away for several minutes. It was amazing. Adults were taking photos of her it was so ridiculous!

Tom got to eat some fresh fish grilled before his eyes at the fish market. He tells Molly it was tasty. She didn’t try any…

After lunch, we walked along a very crowded and bustling pedestrian walk in Beyoglu, called Istiklal which apparently gets 3 million visitors on weekend days. That sounds about right…the long avenue was filled with stores, restaurants, and cafes. Check out all these people…

Day 5 –

Today, we visited an art museum called the Istanbul Modern. We were pretty un-wowed by the main exhibit given how major a city Istanbul is, and that this is their main art museum. Things started looking up when we got to the installations and more interesting “experimental exhibits.” We spent a few hours there, and then found a Lokantasi for lunch on Istiklal after much searching for the best place to eat…Feast your eyes on this feast, and the excitement of finally getting to eat:

Day 6 –

Today, we rode a ferry up the Bosphorous Strait so we could check out some other landscapes and see the old city from a different perspective. Here we are being slightly chilly on the boat, but having a good time:

We also revisited the Egyptian Bazaar where we finally tasted Turkish Delight (Tom didn’t think it was so bad afterall)

…
and the Sulemanyii mosque – our favorite of all the mosques we saw. This one is a bit smaller, and much less touristy. We were there during the call to prayer, and didn’t get kicked out, so we got to see all the action. We also have no photos since it seemed disrespectful. We sat in that mosque for a good 45 minutes or longer.

After a chilly day, we warmed up with some hot tea and pide – a sort of Turkish pizza affar, which looks and tastes delicious:

Let’s look up close and personal on that pide:

That’s bread, egg, some sort of salty meat, and veggies. TASTY! We sat on a somewhat precarious second story loft with a cool view overlooking the front window of the pide shop:

Molly also had an interesting bathroom experience that involved about a 10 minute busboy-escorted walk through the hidden areas of stores (think a whole store full of sequins/ribbons. weird), a special key, and a hole in the floor (no really. there was just a hole, in the floor). We’ll leave it at that. When Molly (finally) returned, Tom decided he didn’t need to go that badly…

Day 7 –

This was our last day. We decided it was time to visit the Asian side of Istanbul. Imagine, intercontinental travel for only $1.50! We did it. A ferry got us over to Asia in a jiffy. We waltzed around Asian Istanbul for the morning with a single destination in mind: Ciya, a famous lokantasi restaurant that gets rave reviews and may be the best restaurant in Istanbul (!). After roaming around in the neighborhood, trying without success to find this restaurant, and having no English speakers around, we finally went up to the money changing stall. We tried our best to convey that we were looking for a certain intersection of streets. The woman seemed confused. We made a motion like eating, and she smiled widely and said cheerfully, “CIYA????” YES! (It’s almost like she gives foreigners directions to this very restaurant every day! It must really be famous!). So we found it, settled into lunch, and had quite a delicious meal. This was the style where you point at what you want, and then they bring it out to you. We had a big mix of items, along with many small tastes of salads of different types.

We were a little concerned about the prices (everything was a mystery and there was no menu. Given the quality, we were worried about the upcoming bill). Imagine our surprise when the bill came, and our total was only about $18. WOW! So everyone, go to Ciya, and if you can’t find it, ask the woman at the change counter. She’s quite friendly 🙂

Also, it snowed quite hard that day. This was the first snow we’d seen since for about a year…

Day 8 –

And then it was time to return to Israel after a week in “the ‘Bul” as we were calling it. We rode the trams and trains back to the airport (we were impressed with ourselves) in the snow, and then our flight was delayed for about 3 hours. But we made it home safe and sound, and with all sorts of new experiences in our repertoire!

And for more photos, please check out our Flickr page about Istanbul and for other albums, click here.

More on chickpeas

A while back, we posted four things to do with chickpeas…

And then we promptly found two more things to do with them, both from recipes found online.

Chickpea Potato Curry (not spicy!)

Recipe can be found here. It’s unbelievably easy. Basically, throw all ingredients into a pot, and cook for a bit. There wasn’t even any sauteing or anything complicated. We served it without rice (since there were already potatoes in there), and it was delicious! Also, we didn’t have the fire-roasted or stewed tomatoes with chiles, so we just used a few tomatoes, and some hot red pepper.

Chickpea Croquettes

Recipe can be found here. I’ll be honest, our end result didn’t look like the ones in those pictures, but the recipe was still tasty, so no complaints. They weren’t hard to make either. Tom made a really tasty yogurt raita sauce with cumin and salt in it, which we served on top. In my opinion, this sauce MADE this dish.

Let us know if you try either of these… I think they’re keepers!

There are photos, too!

Hi friends and family!

On the right hand column of our blog, there is a little section called “FLICKR PHOTOS”. If you click on “More photos” you’ll be taken to our flickr page where we have posted many more photos than can be jammed into one blog post.

Alternatively, please click here which will also take you to the page where we are posting photos, and is organized by event…

Enjoy!

-Molly and Tom

 

Volunteering in Israel

Since arriving here, I’ve been struggling a bit to find some way to volunteer (mainly because of my minimal Hebrew skills). But I’m finally settling into a volunteer job at a (HUGE – 2000 students!)  local high school, just a short walk from our apartment.

In a sentence, I’m giving high school seniors a chance to practice speaking English in preparation for their graduation exam.

Let me explain: Israeli high school students receive a graduation certificate when they leave, known as a “bagrut” (“bah-groot”). Basically, it’s a certificate that says that they achieved a certain minimum level in a certain number of courses they’ve taken throughout high school.

One of the courses that students must take is English, and the bagrut exam for this class has an oral/speaking component in addition to a written exam. The oral exam consists of the student and an examiner sitting and having about a 10 minute English conversation about everyday topics, as well as a project students completed in English class. However, students have a tendency to be REALLY nervous for this, because they’ve never had a one-on-one conversation with a native English speaker, plus it’s a lot of pressure, and somewhat of an unknown.

This is where I become useful! It’s impossible for a single teacher to give each student practice, so, I give the student an opportunity to see what it’s like to have this kind of conversation, and I ask questions similar to what the examiner will ask them during the real thing. They come in and sit down, and I ask them a series of questions and we have a nice, laid-back conversation:

• “Tell me about yourself. How old are you? Where are you from?”
• “Do you have brothers and sisters?”
• “What do your parents do for a living?”
• “What are your hobbies?”
• “What will you do after you graduate from high school?”
• “Do you think you’ll go to University after your army service? What might you study?”
• “Tell me about the project you completed in English class.”
• etc…

The 10 minutes go by very quickly, and apparently (according to the students) I’m very easy to talk to, and nearly all of the students I’ve spoken with expressed their surprise at how quickly the time went, and how easy it was to chat with me. SUCCESS! I also heard, “I hope my examiner will be as friendly as you!” What a self-esteem boost! 🙂 The kids at this school are really lovely.

The students have been very impressive. Their English skills are FAR beyond the foreign language skills I acquired in high school. In my defense, students start learning English in elementary school in Israel, compared to 6th grade in New York state. But still, they have substantial vocabulary, and minimal grammar issues.

They’re extremely fun to talk to, and as a bonus (for me) I get to learn (at least a little) about life as a high schooler in Israel. They tell me about their fears and excitement about their approaching military service, and what kind of unit they’re hoping to serve in. I hear about their boyfriends and girlfriends, their extracurricular activities, and their favorite (and least favorite)  subjects in school, and what kind of music they like.

All in all, a great way to spend my Sunday mornings (Sunday is a normal weekday here, complete with school and work).

5 months without Indian food = too long

We love Indian food, and have loved it since discovering its deliciousness about 5 years ago during our time in Ann Arbor when we lived 3 doors down from a tasty restaurant (Raja Rani, for those in A2).

Even though we now live significantly closer to India, there’s a paucity of Indian restaurants, so we’ve gone without since we moved here. We do make pretty tasty Indian dishes at home, so it hasn’t been AWFUL, but still, sometimes you just need a samosa…

Last week, we discovered that a small town called רמלה (“Rahm-lay”), which is very close to where we live, has a somewhat substantial Indian population. We then read on several sights that Maharaja was a טעים מאוד במסעדה (a very tasty restaurant).

So, for Tuesday dinner this week (for those who don’t know, we go out for dinner every Tuesday, and have been doing so for about 11 years now, without fail!), we decided to venture to Maharaja, and check it out. This required us to use our amazing navigational skills to get there. One train ride, and one sherut (a sort of mini-bus-taxi) ride later, we found ourselves in Ramle, standing outside the restaurant.

We went in, and sat down (we’ve found that in many restaurants in Israel, you seat yourself). The waitress brought us some menus in Hebrew, and I asked for ones “b’angleet”. She said “loh” (no). This was surprising because all the reviews I’d read online said that they had menus in Hebrew and English. But this was not the case.

The next 10-15 minutes entailed us using all of our Hebrew skills and knowledge of Indian cuisine to decipher the menu. We were pretty impressed with ourselves, and figured out probably 80% of the menu. Not bad! It helped that many of the dish names were transliterated from their Indian names. Paneer, bharta, dal, samosa, chana, dosa, palak, masala, etc. have all become familiar terms to us over the last 5 years. Except they were in Hebrew, so it took some time.

We ended up with an appetizer sampler/combo with pakoras, samosas, and something else with potato and fried, some familiar dipping sauces (mint chutney, tamarind, and a spicy orange sauce that was new. We also ordered a thali, which came with raita, pickles (oy, spicy!), a few dals, rice, chana masala, a pea mataar, rotis, and a gulab jamun (a super-sweet donut-esque affair in a syrup). The ones in the US are always fried, but this one seemed to have been boiled.

We (of course) ended the meal with chai tea, which was delicious and possibly the highlight of the meal. It was very thick, Israeli-coffee-style, and rich, complete with grounds at the bottom of the cup.

We made our way to the Ramle central bus station, and caught a bus back to Rehovot. (Note that this was our THIRD form of transportation, meaning we used three forms of transportation, all in the name of Indian food… We mean business!).

We’re planning to go back, but we’ll order more main dishes next time, now that we have a sense of what them menu is all about.