On the News

Hey all!

If you haven't seen the news yet, you will soon or will hear about it, I'm sure, so I'll just let y'all know in one fell swoop. There was a terrorist attack this evening with several people killed and many more wounded, at a yeshiva (basically Jewish seminary) here in Jerusalem. For starters, I am fine and we all at my school are fine. This particular yeshiva is clear on the other side of town, at least an hour walk or so from JUC. If you're interested in checking the Israeli media, I generally go to www.haaretz.com or www.jpost.com.

Aside from that, I have nothing too exciting to report. I'm pretty busy with classes, lots of work to do, tons of reading and such, but it's coming... slowly slowly. My friend Alison is coming to visit Jerusalem!!! She was one of my roommates last semester; she's from Northwestern as well and is coming to visit over their spring break. I'm really excited to see her. Of course, that means I may not be getting as much done while she's here... we'll see.

On a completely different note, I have been running with a friend of mine, Stacie, about three mornings a week. Tomorrow we're hoping to run to Ramat Rachel, which is a community outside of Jerusalem. Essentially it's a suburb--we'll never be out of the city, really. It's probably a 5-mile run total. Towards the end of the semester we're going to run to Bethlehem, which is a 7-mile run there and back. Should be fun. It feels good to be out running again, and it's been so beautiful out. Today was sunny and 75; it's supposed to be like 80 or something ridiculous tomorrow. My birthday is coming up. For some reason, I always thought that I had a spring birthday; but living in Minnesota, March is not so much the spring. Here I finally get my spring birthday! I will be up in the Galilee, actually on a field study. Should be fun times.

Speaking of fun times, I think I'm going to be doing some hiking over our spring break with some friends from JUC. So far it's me and this married couple that I like a lot, and maybe one other guy, and we'll see who else joins up. That will also be fun--it will be beautiful hiking, I'm sure. We'll probably be up in the Golan. I have friends who are trying to go to Syria over break; they got second passports and everything. I think that sounds sweet, but I also think not sending my family into cardiac arrest sounds sweet, so there you go. A few days of hiking sounds good to me.

That's about all I have to report... I'm pretty tired, so I'm going to head to bed. Good night all!