Friday, February 6, 2009

Israel in a nutshell ...

I had a crazy January ... this post might be a little long/incoherent, but here is my trip to NYC and Israel in brief :)

Monday 1/5 - Fly to NYC, drink beer with college friends, eat cheap falafel (yum!)



















Tuesday 1/6 - CMMAP team meeting, dinner at Grand Sichuan Chinese, drink beer with CMMAP gradstudents, find this amazing piece of"art" on the wall of Peculier Pub that only truly dorky atmospheric scientists can really love :) 

Wednesday 1/7 - CMMAP team meeting, teaching Climate Change course impromptu meeting, visit the NY Public Library, dinner at Otto with gradstudents, followed by
 what might be considered a poor life decision :)


















Thursday 1/8 - CMMAP team meeting, visit Natural History Museum, Visit the Studio Museum in Harlem (i've been wanting to go there for years), eat at Katz Deli (yum!)

Friday 1/9 - run around NYC like a crazy person looking for a converter for a 3-prong Grounding Adapter (because my electrical converter only works with a two prong plug, and my laptop only has a three prong plug), Kate decides very last minute to leave the meetin
g early (this occurs during a somewhat awkward lunch with Kate) , I spend the next 3-4hrs on the phone trying to figure out what I am going to do (To travel around Israel alone or not???) ugh, get on a plane and fly to Frankfurt ... meet cool Peruvian guy who is studying in Germany.

















Saturday 1/10 - Land super early in Frankfurt, freak out about my credit card that stopped working (ugh), go through extra special security for Israel, fly to Israel (where I sleep on the plane ... wonderful!) Land in Israel,  meet up with some students from the meeting and take the shuttle to Jeruslaem, too tired to understand what the Shabbat elevator means (oops), eat cheap Schuarma (or kebab), PASS OUT. 





Sunday 1/11 - Tour Old City of Jerusalem with Kate ... see some amazing stuff (check out my pictures here), dinner with people from the meeting (amazing and vegetarian and can i just say amazing), have a horrible nights sleep and feel super super crappy ... note - don't take naps when you are jet lagged ... you will screw yourself over :(







Monday 1/12 - Wake up at 2 am with horrible headache ... ugh, worry a whole lot about traveling after the meeting, but decide to suck it up and be brave and stay in Israel (the best decision ever), feel like a zombie through the entire first day of the meeting (and kinda wishing i was dead), meet some totally awesome students/people, reception after the meeting, take sleeping pills and CRASH

Tuesday 1/13 - cloud day at the meeting (aka, rachel actually knows whats going on :)), pretty boring poster session, work on summary of d. hartmann's talk for the next day (finally not jet lagged)


















Wednesday 1/14 - Half day at the meeting, take horrible weird tour of Ein Kerem with the worst tour guide ever, beers at the hotel bar (which appears to also be a dating spot for religious jews in Jerusalem, cute!)
    






Thursday 1/15 - Full day at the meeting, send 
post cards to friends/family after lunch (where I am totally ripped off by the post office ... weird), visit the old city at night with the Germans :), amazing dinner with people from the meeting, actually get to talk to K. Emanuel 
























Friday 1/16 - Full day at the meeting, tour Jerusalem with Diana and get to see some pretty cool things, visit the Western Wall at the start of Schabbat (which is amazing and powerful, but also kinda weird), dinner at a pretty good restaurant, beers at a local bar, walk home:)


Saturday 1/17 - Visit the Dead Sea and Masada with the Germans and Zan ... rather crappy tour guide, but pretty awesome places to see :)



































Sunday 1/18 - Head to the old city with Tasmanians, visit the Temple Mount, then tour the City of David in the afternoon. 














Monday 1/19 - Head home starting at 2am ... sit at the airport and watch security go though all of my luggage (dirty underwear and all) by hand for two hours ... finally get on the plane.  When I land in denver, find out that my building has been sold and that my new landlord does not think that I paid my rent (UGH), thankfully Anna picked me up from the airport ... and I worked everything out with my landlord



So pretty much that was my January in a nutshell ... this post is probably more for me, than for you, but I thought that I would share :)


No comments: