IAESTE

Btw, the organization that first allowed me to engage in this adventure of spending one month in a foreign country both working and enjoying deserves at least a citation, so here's the link to the international, Portuguese and Israeli sites of the IAESTE organization:

http://www.iaeste.org/

http://iaeste.ist.utl.pt/

http://www.admin.technion.ac.il/IAESTE/

And yes, I know those guys on that picture on the Dead Sea. I've also been there ;)

Jerusalem

Last week I took Thursday off work and went to the Dead Sea and Ein Gedi with Kyriaki.

The weekend was spent in the amazing wonderful city Jerusalem.
Not only there is the most amazing mixture of different cultures and the old city seems to be a market itself, it looks like every piece of stone there has a thousand year history to tell.
We're not talking about nice medieval things here, we're talking about the so called center of the universe for at least three different religions.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to take pictures with my own camera, but here's the link to Adrian's blog. He takes really good pictures :)
http://niekoniecznie.blogspot.com/

Hopefully, I'll be able to gather some photos later and post them here to show a little of this astonishing city that everyone must visit.

Trip to the North

Still in time for a little description of last weekend's trip: we went hiking.
Ok, done!

After having a hard time with the car rental company, all the three cars left Haifa heading the north of Israel.
For Friday, we went on a hike in the national park around the Montfort Castle. The castle itself is just a ruined ancient castle, but the hike is great.
About half the hike is at the side of a very small river that we can jump over. There's a huge natural wall where the very old layers of sediment can be clearly seen, like steps.
But, apart from the amazing panoramic view from the castle, the star of the trip is the tiny and long cave that leads into the start of the river.
For those who went inside, like I did, this cave makes it worth the effort: clear fresh water with little fish swimming around your legs. I actually tasted the water and it's perfect. Of course there are no pictures of the cave... But you can see the waxing gibbous moon next to the castle and some people smoking a "nargilla" there.

After the hike, some went to a small town where there is a bar/restaurant called Chocolata. They only have chocolate: chocolate with coffee, with ice cream, chocolate lasagna, chocolate soup, chocolate more-than-you-can-imagine.
The rest of the people, like me, went directly to Yehudia, to the camping to have showers and settle for the night. It was a nice night, with the essential vodka and "nargilla".

Few hours after going to sleep, a new hiking trip is waiting. Actually, almost everyone of the 15 people went for sight-seeing and only the remaining 5 went for the hike.
Absolutely amazing hike! Astonishing! Basically we went down the river in the Yehudia National Park. There was a place where we really swam with our backpacks because there was no other possible way!

The hike first attraction is the waterfall. We sat there to eat and rest a little.
After the waterfall, the path is through the river for a long time. At least in the summer, it's a very small river, that we can easily cross jumping. However, here and there are natural pools where people can stop to swim and rest on the sun.

The biggest of the pools has to be crossed... swimming. There's no way around. Everyone must swim or go back. And that's not all, to reach it, you must go down some scary vertical metal stairs. Incredibly nice!
Of course, once again I don't have pictures of the best part because the camera had to be inside the back-pack in a special plastic bag so it doesn't get wet. (Luis, you didn't read this, ok? The camera didn't suffer, not a single drop of whater, perfect.) Yes, we knew we'd have to swim, so we where prepared: some empty bottles of whater, water resistant plastic bags and you have a little water resistant boat.
After the pool, we sat once again to eat and rest and take some sun and bathe and dry clothes.

This was a real hike. You can't just walk straight, many of the times, you have to use your hands to hold on better, climb, jump... All on rocks, no dust to interfere and make it dangerous.

Main attractions done!
Now all we have is some more walking on the rocks side by side with a residual river, some more natural swimming pools and the return.
The return is something like climbing a few hundreds of meters to the top again at the 1pm sun. Hard climb, half an hour. Great great view. This was the last attraction of the place: the view. All of us, even burning in the sun, promised to get back. For me, I promised to get back if I come to Israel again. May happen.

and the big star is: The Rocket Lab!

Who hasn't done at least one little joke about building a rocket in Israel?...

I've met some of the people who actually work on it at the Technion. And I've seen them at work!I can tell you that even I would become a pyromaniac if I worked there. It's absolutely amazing and thrilling.

Here's a small record of a static experiment with a solid propellant (a kind of wax). This propellant is very strong but the problem is that a part of it melts instead of burning. They are now trying to figure out ways of reducing the amount of melting propellant and they have to try it over and over again.

A burning rocket produces a deafening noise and a flame of approximately 3000K (equivalent to 2730°C). Remember that at the surface of the Sun the temperature is around 5780K, equivalent to 5510°C.
The burning takes only about 10 seconds, but watching it gives you an adrenaline burst. Please watch the movie, it's worth it.

Movie by Sebastian, all rights reserved ;)
(If you can't see the movie, please leave me a comment and I'll send it to you.)

First impressions

Summarizing:

So, one waits 10 hours in Barcelona airport before entering the flight to Tel Aviv - Ben Gurion. This is what i do in an airport... Take stupid pictures of myself sleeping.

Ben Gurion is a nice airport.
Getting a train to Haifa is the easiest thing on Earth. Everyone is very nice and speaks perfect English. After having been among Spanish people for an entire day, I really feel comfortable here. And they are also beautiful.

All Israeli people do military service: at least 2 years for girls and 3 years for boys. Also, they wear their uniforms all the time. I've been told it gives them free bus rides and other advantages. So, all around in the trains you see very young people in uniform, but relaxed as if they wear it since they were born.

Some of them also carry their guns.
(But they really don't look aggressive. Really.)

In the train I hadn't realized yet how hot this country is. It's HOT, the humidity is terrible. Here we are anxious for colder days. You know: 2 or 3 showers a day...

Train -> Bus Station -> Technion

The campus is amazing. It's huge, trees all over, it's beautiful. One can really live here: there are supermarkets, restaurants, bus, etc inside the campus.

As for the religions, there are the Orthodox, the Muslins, the Jewish and the ones that don't really take very seriously.

Attending to the fact that most of people are Jewish, I still feel like one of the girls who really hide their skin and I'm comfortable with it.

The MAKAK - our meeting place - is part of the Canada Dorms, where the students in IAESTE internships live.

The girl on the left is Kyriaki (Sunday in Greek) and we are like soulmates here: we arrived on the same day, work in the same lab and live in the same apartment. Briefly: we're together all the time.

Oh, people here only drink beer and vodka. If you want, you can put beer in your vodka, but never put juice in it, juice ruins every drink.

Haifa is an interesting place where many different people "live happily ever after", in the words of Prof. Yeshayahou Levy (should be read: Eechaiao Levy). The landscape is very irregular, which makes every bus ride very very long.

Here are two stores in the center of the city. First is a falafel and shawarma place. You pay for the meet and then fill and refill your pita with as much vegetables and sauces you want.

This is a candy store.
Oh sweet candy, it's great.

There's no chocolate neither the usual cakes and it's oh so sweet.

Yesterday the Ramadan started, so now the muslims only eat at night.

We went to the Muslim neighborhood at sunset and everyone was sitting in the balconies waiting for the sun to go, so they can start eating.

This is us sitting on the entrance of the neighborhood playing silly.

They are really nice guys.