Orientation Week and Settling In

Well, it's official.  I've been in Tel Aviv for a week and I'm in love with it.  The sun, the sand, the sea, the hummus... this place is beautiful.  I don't think words can do it justice, so I'll try this instead:

No, this isn't a picture off of Google images.  I took this photo.  Me.  With my phone.  Not even with my good camera (we were doing a three hour walking tour in the heat and I figured I would go back later when I could take breaks to take photos).  It looks like this every.  Single.  Day.

Seriously.  I'm in love.

NYU kept us pretty busy the first week, partially to get us oriented and partially to make sure we got over jet lag (it worked), but we still managed to find time to head to the beach to chill.  I think everyone has gotten sunburned by now -- yes, even me, but only because it's really hard to put sunscreen on your back by yourself!  Not that I'm complaining -- the beach is absolutely beautiful, and the water is the warmest I've ever felt.

The first day I arrived (tired, jet-lagged, and feeling gross), I dumped my stuff in my room and headed straight to the beach with some other students from the program.  Shoutout to my parents for letting me take a beach towel!  After making our way back from the beach, we had a dinner at Bnei Dan, the place we're living, before falling into bed and going to sleep.

We did two walking tours of Tel Aviv this week, led by one of the professors.  The first one was a tour of Jaffa, sometimes a separate city and sometimes part of south Tel Aviv.  We walked through the old part of the city and saw the port that was used when it was separate from Tel Aviv.  I'm definitely planning on spending more time down there -- three hours just isn't enough to see everything there is to see -- so expect some more pictures when I head down there with the big camera, but for now here's a taste of Jaffa:

We also went on a walking tour of central Tel Aviv, where I didn't take any pictures, but where we were shown all of the hummus places we could possibly want.  At this point I would like to thank my mom for letting me take her hydration pack -- I'm fairly certain that I would've died of dehydration on these walking tours without it, so it's been put to good use.  The city is just small enough that it's possible to walk all of it, but also just large enough that it would take a while, so I'm looking forward to getting a bike this Friday to really see how Tel Avivians get around!

On Thursday NYU took us to the Yitzhak Rabin Center, where we learned about Yitzhak Rabin's life and the history of Israel as a whole.  It was super interesting -- Rabin was Prime Minister of Israel from 1974-77 and then from 1992 until his assassination in 1995.  He referred to himself as a soldier for peace.  Seeing the museum and the layout of Israel's history while also following Rabin's life was a very cool experience, and I highly recommend it to anyone in Tel Aviv.

Probably the biggest event we had this week was a day trip to the upper Galilee on Sunday.  We visited Rosh HaNikra, at the Israeli-Lebanese border, and saw grottoes formed by the ocean over thousands of years -- two very different and interesting things to see.

Looking out over Israel

One of the grottoes at Rosh HaNikra

Look, I even have a picture of myself enjoying the sunshine!

At the border (on the Israel side)

Looking over to Lebanon

After that, we headed over to Jisr az-Zarqa, one of the poorest Arab towns in Israel.  There were a lot of old Byzantine and Roman ruins, some of which are just there to be found, since they don't have the infrastructure to excavate yet.  It was also interesting to see the dichotomy between the town and Tel Aviv -- they felt almost like they exist in two different countries, maybe two different worlds.  We also visited a mosque in Jisr az-Zarqa, which was beautiful with the late afternoon light streaming in.

An old quarry that was used by the Byzantines

Casual chickens (this is for you, Eliza)

In the mosque

The ceiling of the mosque

Outside the city

An old fishing village

Roman ruins that are waiting to be excavated

After our tour around Jisr az-Zarqa, we had dinner with an Arab family.  They cooked us huge amounts of food -- chicken, pita and hummus, eggplant, Israeli salad, and some other food that I don't even know what it was other than delicious.  On that note...

Interesting foods eaten this week: beef (maybe) stuffed in a bread-pastry-thing soaked in lemon sauce with rice; olives for breakfast; flakey pastry thing stuffed with chicken; eggplant cooked every way you can imagine, including drowned in tahini (my personal favorite); chicken pita with hummus, tahini, lettuce, tomato, and some kind of spicy sauce; chicken and beef spiced every which way; see below for a dessert I ate this week that I actually have no idea how to describe, but it was delicious.

Average weather: 85 and sunny

Sorry if this felt sporadic and jumped around a lot -- it's how I felt this past week!  I'm hoping to get on a weekly blogging schedule, so check back next Wednesday for an update on what's been happening!

Katrina