Tuesday Seminar, once again

Well, it's another Tuesday, and that means it's time for another issue of Betsy's trecks around Israel. Unfortunately, there will be no pictures for today. My camera seems to have slept in. Ok, fine, I forgot it in my room when I grabbed my backpack and all this morning.

Today, we went to the towns of Netivot and Sderot. Both were development towns that were started around the same time. They're extremely close to one another as well. The difference between the two? Sderot keeps getting pelted with Kassam rockets, and Netivot does not have that problem. An illustration, of a type: in Netivot, we went to see the town's old Sephardic synagogue. In Sderot, we saw a trauma center and stacks of spent Kassams outside of the police station.

Actually, Sderot's situation is very sad. It looks like a nice little town, with lots of high-tech industry, stores, decent-looking homes and even a college. But it's in crisis because the rockets, while not accurate in the least, cause a lot of economic and psychological damage to the town. Essentially, in the ten years that Sderot has endured these attacks, it has transformed into something very different indeed from Netivot.

In other news, I went to the mall today and did NOT get strip-searched. I feel that this is some sort of victory for me. Actually, everyone I interacted with today was helpful (with the exception of the surly check-out ladies at the supermarket). Perhaps this is some sort of bizarro-Israel. I'm flabbergasted. My purchases included, in part: a humidifier for my room, plastic flip-flops and folders for my music and ulpan materials.

I have some of my music lessons set up at this point. In fact, I start piano lessons tomorrow afternoon. I'm not sure if I'm excited or nervous, but at least we've managed to find teachers who all speak English to some degree or another. I'm fairly hopeful about this.

Stay tuned for the next installment of ADVENTURES IN ARAD!