Everyday is a journey, and the journey itself is home. -Matsuo Basho

Picture: Panoramic of the Lebanese/Israeli/Syrian borders. I am in Israel! This week has been very crazy and busy, so I split this post into different parts; read what you want. Contents of this article: First Impressions, Dorms and Living, Research Lab, Israeli Food Workshop, "Trip to Golan Heights."

First Impressions

I arrived in Tel Aviv on the afternoon of Saturday, May 26, after a layover in Brussels from Newark, NJ. After exchanging money and going through immigration at Ben Gurion International airport, I took what's called an 'Amal' taxi, a shared taxi to Haifa. The drive took around 90 minutes and cost 110 shekels.

Coming from the plane, and on the taxi, I saw Israel for the first time. It's a very dry land, with orange/red dirt and dots of green everywhere. There are cactuses and palm trees, and usually when you walk outside the air smells clean, of flowers or forest. I'm not sure if that's because the drafts from the Mediterranean cleanse the air, or if it's because Haifa is located on Mount Carmel, and at a high altitude. Not that I have any ecological background, but it seems like a mix of desert, tropical, and deciduous. There are palm trees, but also forests, and then places where there's just rocks and cactuses.

I arrived during Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest, which starts on Friday night and ends on Saturday night (that's why weekends in Israel happen on Friday and Saturday). I do not yet understand know how more religious people practice Shabbat, as many people in Haifa are secular. Logistically, Shabbat means that many stores, buses, trains, and restaurants are closed. I knew this before coming, but it was still a bit of a hindrance.

One of my lab members picked up my room keys before Shabbat and met me at the Technion entrance to walk with me to my dorm. She was really nice and suggested a pizza place that I could order from after Shabbat ended a couple hrs later. However, I was really hungry and my roommates told me there wasn't anything close by, so after a lot of texting, I walked 15 min to a pub called Nola Socks, where I ordered the largest (and tastiest) burger I've ever had. I didn't realize until later that it was the huge size of Technion, not Shabbat, which made getting food a bit difficult.

Another surprising discovery was the presence of thousands of cats all around Haifa. All kinds of cats: black, ginger, gray, etc. It was so unexpected, but I see them everywhere - quiet, contemplative, relatively tame, just living alongside Israelis. I got really excited, but everyone else was really jaded about it. There is this one cat which stole a fish from the guys next door, who hisses and uses its claws if it gets inside the dorms. So I just have to be careful. See my Cats of Haifa page for pictures!

Dorms and Living

Things are great! I went to the Technion International School office my first day to pay rent for my stay using the CMU grants, submit my insurance, and receive information about being a Technion student. There were a lot of fees, and I missed a couple of them, but the Intl School directors were incredibly friendly and walked me through it.

My flat is pretty nice. I am so jealous of Technion students, it feels like I'm living in a hotel by the beach. Each flat is made of stone, and they're stacked in layers because we're on the mountain. It's so spacious, and the colored tiles outside and balcony make me feel like I'm living in ancient Rome or something. The beds are low and thin, and we only have one table in the kitchen and one chair in the bedroom for two people. There are also 6 people to a flat. But I'm used to living with roommates and everything I need is here so it's really nice. There's a large window next to my bed that lets in a lot of light, and I can *almost* see the Mediterranean/ Haifa Bay. There are also these hooting birds (pigeons?) which wake me up every morning.

I also found a hiking trail literally right next to it, where there's a pathway that Nobel Laureates have planted trees on when they visited Technion. I found Ada Yonath's tree, she was recognized as an Honorary Doctor of Science and Technology at the CMU commencement this year! She is amazing. My research mentor said he needs to take some samples to a TEM guy on Monday at the Weizmann Institute, where she works. I asked if I could come, and he said yes, so I realllly hope that happens.

The only bad thing about my dorm is that it's at the very top of Technion campus, and the Chemical Engineering building is at the very bottom of Technion campus. So I have to walk 20 min downhill and 20 min uphill each day back and forth :/. As my roommate put it, at least I'll have a really nice a** by the end of it.

Gloria's from Germany. She rooms with Yi Xuan, from China; then SJ, Singapore, and Lidia, Canada, room together, and I'm with Marie, France. At first I wasn't sure how well I'd get to know them, but during the past few days we've done a lot together. It's so interesting to hear about different countries, observe different mannerisms, and hear the different accents. We converse in English, and at one point I was a quasi-translator for Marie and SJ, who had trouble understanding each other's French and Singaporean accents. That doesn't stop anyone though, they're all very cheerful, helpful, and eager to learn about everyone else.

My first day I noticed my roommate Marie reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire before bed, so that's how I knew I could trust her. Just kidding. But I started a HP conversation walking with her to campus the first day, and now we've talked about everything from higher education tuition to the different kinds of French cakes. I'm slowly getting to know the other girls as well; see our excursions at the Israeli Food workshop and our 'Trip to Golan Heights' for more.

Now a little about Technion campus. I wish I went here for school. The campus is beautiful, with stone and nice landscaping everywhere. There's always something happening somewhere; on Tuesday Gloria texted us after the food workshop that there was this gathering at a tall, needle-like statue in the center of campus next to the Ullmann building, whose colloquial name I won't include here. People were playing Arab music and dancing traditional dances; I didn't get to go but I hope I'm there next time it happens. There was a short capoeira lesson on Thursday just before I got out of lab, and there was a pool party near the Agricultural Engineering building, where they had rubber ducks and popsicles and a kind of folk/indie band playing. On Mondays and Wednesdays, there's a fresh market which sells fruits, veggies, and nuts for a cheaper price than the local grocery stores. I think I'll start going there instead of Shufersal Shelly.

And the sports facilities. The swimming pool is free to students, but the gym costs 200 ILS with a student card. If I wasn't female and afraid of tampons, I would go to the pool everyday. They have an Olympic-sized pool, an outdoor pool, a sauna, hot tub, literally everything, all embedded within beige stone. The showers have the full range of temperatures and perfect water pressure. (Until yesterday I didn't know how to run the hot water in my dorm shower, plus the shower head only lets out 3 jets of water, so for me this is important.) There are separate changing rooms and bathrooms and literally everything you could need. Thankfully, the pool is only a ten min walk from my dorm, so I could go in the mornings before research. Unfortunately, the hardest part of swimming in the morning is the hike back up the mountain from the pool to my dorm. But whatever. It's really nice. I might also sign up for dance lessons, part of the fitness classes here, if I have time. Not sure yet if I'll join the gym; I'll see when I get my student card. But yeah, I am super jealous.

Research lab

Once I emerged sweating and panting from the ecological garden after 30 min searching for the Chem. Eng. building, I finally met Omer, my mentor, Prof. Schroeder, my PI, and the other lab members. It's a pretty lit lab; they have a screen between the chemical cabinets and fume hood which has a YouTube playlist going, unless Prof. Schroeder is giving lab tours, in which case it plays slides showcasing Schroeder lab research. There are undergraduates, master's students, PhD students, and postdocs working in the lab. In adjacent labs, there are also student researchers working for some of the spinoff startups which Prof. Schroeder started based on his work. There is always some discussion going on about the research, and people make jokes at each other as they walk by. There are also more women than men, which is very appreciated. Not exactly because of feminism, but because I feel more comfortable reaching out to girls I don't know rather than guys I don't know. It was a bit awkward trying to befriend people in my Japanese lab last year because so many of them were guys, and I wasn't sure what they'd think of me asking about themselves or if I could join them in something.

They're all super friendly, and the PhD student who sits next to me showed me how to order salad online from this really nice salad place, for 20 ILS. It was so good, I just have to remember to order before 11:00. I won't be able to handle salads every day, but it's nice to know there's a healthy option.

Now the research. At first I wasn't very interested in my project, and I had no idea what to do. Prof. Schroeder had sent me papers and said I would work on recreating ATP synthesis in synthetic cells. He gave me a few suggestions, but I've never learned how to design chemical reactions. Is that even a chemical engineering thing? I was really lost. Luckily, my mentor sent me a couple early (mid-1900s) papers and showed me how to use the "Cited By" feature on Google Scholar to find later research and how that path evolved over time. After that, it was a lot easier, and I've been preparing a literature review presentation for Prof. Schroeder next week. I'm actually kind of proud of it...so I hope it at least meets his expectations.

Simultaneously, I've been shadowing different labmates to understand common procedures in this area of research, such as gel electrophoresis, PCR, recombination, liposome extrusion, etc. Those are the ones I've learned so far. I still need to transfer my subpar notes to my new, bright orange lab notebook. My favorite so far has been learning extrusion with Ron, a senior undergraduate. The extruder is this cute little device you assemble to push lipid solution through a membrane to form liposomes. Plus I love working with Ron because she has a great sense of humor and really knows what she's doing.

One thing I've noticed about the lab is their easygoing working hours. When I'm at the lab, everyone around me is working really hard, all the time. But their times seem...normal. Like, 9am-4:30pm. In the US, people come in around 9 and leave at 6. When I was in Japan, most people came by 9:30 but didn't leave until around 7 or 8pm. And even after I left, I would text my mentor over LINE about my project, whereas in Israel I feel that time at home really is time at home. My mentor was telling me about how he spends his weekends visiting family, so texting him for feedback about my report seems inconsiderate.

Today (6/2), my mentor invited me to his family's weekend lunch together. The food was absolutely delicious, and everyone was really friendly. It was really nice to have a home-cooked meal and sit around a table of family members talking excitedly, since around now is the time my own family convenes to celebrate Memorial Day, and I also missed it last year.

I met someone who works at Microsoft. She said she is a software engineer for Cortana. I was really impressed, but she said that Israelis don't know about Cortana because it only operates in English, and thus America. So, she doesn't like how she can't share her work to her family and friends. I thought this was really important. Her job is one that many of my classmates and friends would chop off a limb for - working at Microsoft on artificial intelligence. A lot of us are drawn to AI because we (as individuals) share its visionary goals of using human-computer interaction to transform our lives, and because of the prestige of having "made it" in the high-tech industry. To me, her's situation highlights the real purpose of AI, to impact the people closest to us.

Israeli Food Workshop

Technion International School organizes activities and trips for students to explore Israel and understand Israeli culture. One of these events was an Israeli food workshop, where a chef came in and taught us how to make many different Israeli dishes. First, he explained that Israeli cuisine is a melting pot of different dishes from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Morocco, and many surrounding countries. Since Israel is a newer country, the influx of Jewish people from all over the world led to this mix of cultures. For example, what people call 'falafel' in Israel is composed of pita (Greek), sauerkraut (German), hummus (Arabic/Egyptian), French fries (Belgian), etc., things from all over. But the 'Israeli falafel' is made by combining all of those things inside a pita that has a pocket.

It's kind of like American cuisine. This Taiwanese student asked me, if there were some potluck of international people, where we each had to bring something from our country, what would I bring. The best answer I could give was a hamburger. While each individual component of a hamburger is not American, the combination of all of the ingredients is American. His question made me wonder about the origin of what I eat on a daily basis back at CMU. I really don't know what I eat.

But the workshop was super fun. We learned how to make pita real smooth, how to shape falafels, how to make Moroccan fish, and assemble baklava. The chef also explained that Israelis like salad with vegetables chopped very fine, and showed us how to chop cucumber, tomato, and onion. I completely concur; as one of my friends said, they should be chopped so fine I won't even know they're there. It was interesting to observe the different knife movements for chopping the different vegetables, and the tricks to make them hold together. I'll need to practice.

I met international students and researchers from all over - Italy, France, Germany, China, Spain. It was nice. The chef tried to surprise me by speaking Hindi to me, but then I surprised him back by not understanding. It was a really special experience.

"Trip to Golan Heights"

At the beginning of this week, one of my flatmates SJ asked the rest of us if we wanted to join her History of the Jewish People field trip on Friday to Golan Heights, a disputed region between Israel and Syria. I was wary about going at first, but then I asked Gaurav, a CMU student who came to Israel last year, and he said the Golan Heights are really beautiful. The PhD student who sits next to me also said I should go, and all of my roommates were coming, so I figured it would be safe. The turning point was when I was talking to Gloria one afternoon, and she was checking the Travel Alert notifications on her phone.

"How long did you say you're staying?" she asked. Until August 17th. "Ok. Because things are heating up around here...even the other international students have told me that they are glad to be leaving by July, since tensions are rising between Israel and surrounding countries." Right now, things are relatively calm. But Israel also seems to be on the brink of another war. A few years from now, Golan Heights may not exist. And what better opportunity will I have to travel here safely than a Technion-guided tour with twenty other students and an Israeli professor?

We didn't exactly go to Golan Heights. We did go to Safed, one of the holy cities of Judaism, and to the Israeli/ Lebanese border. It was incredibly beautiful and terrifying at the same time.

We first visited Safed Citadel (below), the highest point in Safed overlooking Mt. Meron and the Golan (Golan Heights), and a monument to soldiers during the Israeli War of Independence. Here, the professor told us the stories of Reuven Peikowitz and his son Yigal Allon, a famous Israeli politician and IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) general. There's no way I could do justice to their heroic stories, but just so I can remember this in later years, Reuven was the Jew who believed strongly in making a living for yourself from the land. This didn't work out too well for him as a farmer in Israel, so he left his wife and son with his father-in-law and went to the States to make enough money to take care of them. He was so insulted by having to work in the States to make money that he never told anyone in his family where or how he got the money upon his return; he just took his family back and settled in the Northern farmlands. His house was often attacked by Bedouins and other people, as they "didn't expect Jews to fight back." When his son turned 13, Peikowitz gave him a rifle and told him to stand guard at the end of the fields as a passage into manhood. That night, Yigal was attacked by Bedouins and was overpowered, so he climbed up an oak tree ('elon' in Hebrew, hence Yigal Allon). Fortunately, his father arrived just in time for back up, but Allon credits that experience to his finesse as a war general. Another time, when the Bedouins were trying to steal crops/ equipment and beat up his 13 and 15 year old sons, he marched straight up to the tribe leader and shouted a string of curses in Russian, Arabic, and Yiddish. Yigal grew up into a fierce general, capturing Safed after his troops lost the city by just laying seige to the police station, the citadel, and the entrance - "They think we're weak so we have to be strong."

During my first week in Israel, I've felt a certain amazement at the diversity of people here. Israelis all look so different from each other, and their heritages reveal a true melting pot of global cultures. We like to use this term strictly for America, but I don't feel it as much there. We are so segregated in America. Indian, Jewish, Chinese, Mexican, Black communities - they're so separate from each other. My upbringing has caused me to distrust the concept of a community because those that I've encountered suffer from severe mob mentality. I can't stand it. But seeing how integrated Jewish society is, all due to their mutual beliefs in Judaism (to varying degrees), makes it feel like a utopia.

A utopia I can never be a part of, not being Jewish, and looking blatantly Indian. There are limits. Many Indian people here come up to me and ask if I am from India; many Israelis ask about my heritage, confused that I look Indian but come from the U.S. What do Israelis expect Americans to look like, if they don't look like me? If people accept diversity in Israel, why are they surprised to see a brown person from America? I understand that what I see at the surface is far from the truth. Maybe as I continue my stay I will come to understand the situation better. Even after the professor explained the many different religious forces which resulted in the Lebanon/Israeli/Syrian border disputes we have today, I think I came out with more questions than when I went in. My roommate Gloria asked me what my religion is the other day. I just said, "I haven't figured it out yet." She laughed and said that was a good answer.