So, after my first outing to the supermarket (I’ve been buying supplies from the “minimarket” on campus), I returned to our dorm lobby to finish downloading the next Mary Russell book on tape so I can add it to my iPod. Yay audible.com. :-) And while I waited for it to download I had my first two Skype conversations from Haifa. :-) Admittedly one was only for approximately 40 seconds as my friend informed me she was at work, but misses me and will chat with me later. Ah, responsibility. The other was substantially longer, consisting of banter in Slovakian, discussion of time space continuums and time wells, er, space wells?, and an agreement that he’ll stop smoking. Quite satisfactory Skyping. I still await you all to join in. ;-)
Then it was down to my room to swap clothes, and throw on my earrings that my dad gave me last summer in Venice (thanks!) and join a dozen or so others for a girls’ night out: sushi! Yes, I stopped eating fish about 8 months ago. Yes, we got cucumber and tomato rolls, eggplant rolls, and some kind of scrambled egg roll thingies…and yes, I also ate some fish. And tried cherry beer. Gotta say, not so much a fan.
On my way back to my apartment, ran into a friend that had joined a party celebrating someone finishing his exams. I still am not understanding, but apparently Israelis have school about the same timeline as in the USA, but have exams all summer long on the material covered during the spring term? Anyway, she invited me in and somehow while sitting at the party we decided to go to the beach. So we caught the midnight bus and viola! My first visit to a Haifa beach. :-) It is splendid. My family and I last summer were quite surprised at the lack of sand at the beach in France, and none too pleased by the pebbles that made up the “beach”. Here I was pleasantly surprised by the smoothness of the…is it sand? If sand in the USA is like sugar, this is like powdered sugar. Amazing on the feet. It reminds me of some product I once played with and regularly see on infomercials. It’s called, like “magic sand” or something.
Some beach walking, cushion sitting, and tea drinking, and we head to the closest open bus stop (apparently the closest one closed earlier). At the bus stop we had to wait a while, so I thought I might as well take a picture, and discovered I had the case, but no camera. After some brief discussion we decided it must have been on the chair where we’d had the tea, gave up on the bus, agreed on a taxi :-/, and head back. No great adventure, it was right where it had landed. Thankfully one of my friends had eaten an ice cream and the wrapper had fallen off as well, because they had already collected the table and chairs, so without such a clear landmark it could have been difficult to locate in the dim light. A taxi back and here I am, sitting on my bed, looking in my bathroom to make sure the cockroach that met me has settled in for the night before I venture in there. I watched him tonight for a while—he really is not bright. Anyway, eventually he found a good spot to be out of sight, and now I know where it is, so I may ask the dorm people to come fill in the crack, perhaps revoking the invitation I seem to have mistakenly issued.
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