Another Day

I have been picking up ridiculous amounts of Hebrew since I have been here. I know at least 15 words now! My cousin's daughter (I guess that makes her my second cousin) Agami just turned 3. She understands when I speak to her in English, but will only answer me in Hebrew...damn kids.



Awwww! Matt does have a sensitive side.

When I told all my friends (3 of them), that I was coming to Israel, the first thing everyone said was "Don't die!", or something to that extent. The assumption that Americans make, that Israel is an unsafe place is completely unfounded. I have never for one second felt the least bit unsafe.....until today. Today was a big day in my life; I encountered my first scorpion. The scorpion and I fought it out for a while, but in the end, size appeared to matter as it succumbed to the Levin smash (Actually it was dead when we found it, but shhhhh). A minute later I found some sort of giant centipede thing as well. I am now terrified of this place and wish to come back to America.

Just as lots of Americans have misconceptions about Israel, Israelis seem to have misconceptions about America, or one American in particular. A lot of people here seems to think that Barack Obama is a Muslim. There seems to be a fair amount of Republican propaganda circling the country. It's no surprise that the one America news channel I found was Fox News. This is probably due to the fact that Israel hasn't had the best relationship with Arab nations (See 6 day war, Yom Kippur War, Lebanon War 1 and 2, etc.) and in their eyes, Republicans are taking a "harder" stance against the Arab world. I have talked to a number of people here who want to pre-emptively strike Iran.

Enough politickin. One last photo that summed up Jerusalem for me.....crazy Jews (Can you tell which one I think is the crazy Jew).