Looking for more jobs...

Hey all,

So I had one swedish-class before the student realized that due to his family situation he couldn't continue. So now I'm back to where I was a few weeks ago but some experiences richer. Maybe Berlitz will give me english-classes later but at the time the demand is low but I'm still a part of their team. The past week another few things have happend. Me and Adi have become Sushi-masters over the past few months and are making sushi on our own at least once a week. We get better at it each week and invent new combinations with different kinds of fish, shellfish and vegetables.

On friday night me and Adi went to the Cinemall in Haifa and saw the movie "You again" a predictable yet fun movie. The problem was the parking tho all the parking houses were full and the regular parking lots were full. So we had to be a little creative and find a piece of ground were we could park and cross our fingers that the parking-police were somewhere else which the fortunately were.

On another note I have started to run again after avoiding it for a few weeks due to the warm weather we've had the past month. Now the weather has cold of a bit and is like swedish summer which is nice for me and a little cold for Adi. Later on today I'll tune into the Swedish Radio to listen to Elfsborg vs. AIK the next to last game of the Allsvenska and 3 points are really important. Across the atlantic this past week has been a good Montreal week winning 4 games in a row until last night when the Panthers ended the streak, but Montreal still remain on top of their division and conference.

Til you read again,

Carl

Started to work =)

Hey All,

Sorry for not writing for a while, I don't know why I haven't posted anything until now. Today I started working as a swedish teacher at Berlitz, a well known international language learning school. I'm teaching an israeli guy swedish so he can communicate better with his swedish girlfriend and their son. I didn't really know what to expect sense the level of his swedish was sort of unknown to the Berlitz center, so it was a little hard to plan the lesson but it turned out great, so now I know how to continue.

During the time in later september when I wasn't writing in the blog loads things happend and now I will tell one part of the story. Me and Adi decided that we should try to do a hike sense we've done it before on our own and liked it. So we started to scan the net for good hikes in Israel and found the Sea to Sea-hike. This hike takes you from the Mediterranean-sea to the Kinneret-lake in the east of Israel, a hike of some 75 km. We bought a tent, a compass, a map etc and made our way to the shore of the Mediterranean. As its very warm in this country even in september we packed lots of water and sunscreen. We woke up with the sun every morning and went to bed early. The hike took us 4 days and three nights in our tent. We also brought a gas-stove and cooked many different combinations of simple but still tasty food. The hike was in some parts really hard as the weather was warmer then it used to be and the sun shone as hard as it could. The scenery surrounding the hike was really a mix of valleys, roads, mountains, forrest, rivers, dried out rivers and car-roads. We also saw some different animals, but we managed not to meet the evil boars, which was good as they are kind of violent. On the afternoon of day 4 we saw the Kinneret and around 4 o'clock in the afternoon we dropped our bags and ran into the sea =) It was really nice after 4 long hard days of walking.

On another note the NHL has started over in Canada and the US so now I'm watching Montreal-games a few times a week which makes me happy or sad depending on the outcomes of the games. As of now I'm also listening to Elfsborg vs. Djurgården (2-1) in of the last season-games of the Allsvenska. Right now I'm sort of tiered and I need some sleep. I'll keep on updating you ppl more frequently from now on.

Til you read again,

Carl

The Blog isn't dead....just resting!

Hey All,

I know I haven't been writing for some weeks its not because a lack things happening rather the other way around. In the coming week I'll update you all on most of it, but as of now I'm again packing my bags and tomorrow I fly back to the Holyland and Adi =). I've really nice week in Sweden reconnecting with old friends from back in the day. I've also spent much with my family and grandma's whom I hadn't seen for a long time. This is all for now I have a bag to pack...

Til you read again,

Carl

Happy New Year

Hey all,

So this past week has been full of holidays and good food. On Wednesday night it was the Jewsih New Years Eve so a big part of the family gathered here in the house and had a nice dinner filled with songs and laughter, however there were no fireworks....which I find werid. On New Years Day we went to Danit's family house for a nice bbq-lunch and more discussions and laughter. On friday me, Adi, Moti and Maya drove 1 hour north to visit Yossi, Yael, Maya and Ella who were in a Zimmer for the holidays. The Zimmer had a pool and we spent a lot of the time in the pool playing different games and of course we also ate a lot of good food, it was a really nice day except for the fact burnt my back a little bit.

During the week me and Adi has found a new passion in life as well....Puzzels! So every night for the past week we worked on an old puzzle that we found in the basement and sunday night we finally finished it but realized that sometime before three pieces of the puzzle had been lost. So after finishing the puzzle on sunday I went to get a new on yesterday and found a really good one in Puzzle-Store in one of the malls here so when Adi comes home its Puzzletime!.

I also have other news for you swedes reading...I'm coming to Sweden on the 29th of sep and staying until the 7th of October so if you feel like hanging out or do something cool please contact me and we'll see what we can do. Now I gotta go plan a CISV-activity for some youth here in Haifa.

Until you read again,

Carl

Looking for work...

Hey all,

Another week has passed and I've been looking for jobs. So far I found a few and emailed them all but havent yet received any good information. I went to an interview last week and it went well but the pay was really low and the travel time was a little to much. While I'm looking for work I'm also learning more hebrew on my own, which is not as much as fun learning together with others but its ok.

This weekend me and Adi went to the CISV Israel leadership training. We meet a lot of CISV friends and some newcomers. The training was for the CISVers from both Haifa and Tel Aviv who are now old enough to create and hold weekly activities with children. So the training consisted of lots of different things ex. what a good leader is or how to talk in front of a big group etc. It seemed to me that the people there learned a lot and had loads of fun doing it.

Last week we also went to the wedding of Orit and Guy this time it was a more regular wedding. It was a night full of food, dancing and people. Everybody seemed to have a lot of fun specially Orit and Guy.

Yesterday I went to Herzelia for a conference called "Who is a friend of Israel?" That was organised by the Heinrich Böll Stiftung. What was talked about was just the fact about who is a friend of Israel, what a "friend" is and what "Israel" they in that case were friends of or wanted to be friends with. There were three different panels with 5-6 ppl in each and theses people were famous and important Israeli politicians, historians, journalist etc, there were also politicians from the German Green Party there sense the Stiftung is german. For someone like me who is a Political Scientist it was really interesting both listening to the panels but also to the crowd that was there and asked questions. The crowd consisted of ca 100 people from all ages and political views and their questions and stories and thoughts really made me realize again how many different views there is about Israel among the Israeli's themselves. After a long day at the conference Adi picked me up at the train station and we went home to have a nice and calm evening. Today I haven't done to much some hebrew, some laundry, some cooking and just now I picked up Adi from the train. Tomorrow I'm going to try to find a stream so that I can watch Sweden vs. San Marino in the EC-qualifications.

Til you read again,

Carl

Visit, Visa, Voting...

Hey All,

I haven't written in a while so this text might get long as I have to describe the past two weeks and a lot of different things did happen. As I wrote in my last update a friend of mine was coming to visit and sure she did. I picked Ida up in the middle of the night from the Haifa train station after she had travelled for almost a day as it was the cheapest flight. When she was here we did many different things like visiting the beach, going to Jerusalem and hiking to the spring here in the Carmel Park in Haifa. We also talked a whole lot about what had happend in our lives over the past month and just regular things that we usually discuss. Ida stayed for a week and did a lot of tanning and sitting out in the warm weather that Sweden seemed to have been without this summer. She left a little reder, warmer and charged up for a cold fall in Sweden.

Last week Adi also had her birthday on the 26th of August. Some days before that Adi had invited some friends for a bbq and I was in charge of the grilling itself and after som assistance from Nir we managed to grill all the 6 kgs of meet that we had and everybody seemed delighted with the food so we were happy. During the evening we ate and talked and had a lot of fun. On the birthday it self me and Adi went to her pizzeria that makes gluten-free pizzas here in Haifa, we grabbed the pizza and took it to a lookout out point in the Carmel Park and had a nice lunch. Later in the evening I took Adi to nice restaurant here in Haifa called Bazarella translated into englis it becomes something like Meatarella basically a nice meat restaurant. We had a really nice meal and an awesome evening.

The day before we also had our 6 months anniversary and as a nice gift the Interior Ministry decided to give me a work-visa for a year YEAY! So now Im looking for a job on a bigger scale. I also printed some pictures of us and got a nice picture frame to put them in so now we have more nice pictures of us on the wall. On the 25th we also went to Adi's cousins "Henna"-prewedding party that is a tradition for Moroccan Jews. It was a party with good food, lots of loud music and interesting clothes and of course the Henna. The tradition is that you put the Henna on your hand and tie a bow around it in celebration of the couple and I still have a big brown blob in the middle of my right hand and its going to stay like that for a while.

On friday me and Adi drove to Tel Aviv to visit Raz and Nir but also to pick up Moti and Maya from the airport on the saturday as the trains were not running. In Tel Aviv as it was Sabbat not a lot of stores or restaurants were open and no buses were running so in the evening when me and Adi wanted a dinner we went on a little excursion from Raz's apartment to an open resturant, the walk there took around 1 hour but we got a really nice meal and good evening out of it and btw....we took the cab back. The next day we went to Nir's place watched a movie and hung out and then went Ben Gurion Airport to pick up Moti and Maya. Yesterday I went to Tel Aviv to vote in the upcoming Swedish elections. I voted at the embassy and all went well, I also gave them my CV hoping they have a job for me, fingers crossed. The night before a guy also called me about a job so I went from Tel Aviv to Herzliya for a job interview and all went well and later in the week they will call me back and we'll see what happens.

On another note the first EL-game vs Napoli went well only a 1-0 loss in Italy but in the return game in Sweden again Napoli won and the final aggregate of the two games were 3-0 and Elfsborg is out of the Euro-league and now the focus has to move to Allsvenskan and aim high for a another shoot for in a Euro League next year. Last week I also had my last lesson and test in the Ulpan at the University so now I'm back to learning hebrew on my own. The Ulpan thought me a whole lot and I'm going to build on it.

Til you read again,

Carl

Ulpan and Hikes =)

Hey All,

Another weekend has passed here in Israel and its been an exceptionally hot one, when I say that i've been sweating buckets im not lying. The week in the Ulpan has been great and another midterm has been passed with a good result 88/100, so right now im pretty pleased with myself. This week the University is closed so almost all the building are locked up. This means that we have had to move our class to a different building and a different classroom. Later this week I'm supposed to hold a presentation about whatever I like and so far I dont know what...suggestions anyone?

Last weekend was full of fun stuff. On friday I went with the Ulpan to Sippori, Yodfat and Akko. Sippori was the only city in the Galilee that surrendered to the romans during the Jewish Uprising in 66-72 AD. This saved the city from complete destruction as was the case for the cities that did not surrender. The cities inhabitants and commanders was seen as traitors but they lived to keep the traditions and life of the early Jewish state. The buildings that survived are also very special as they are full of Roman mosaics that show different things. I'll upload the pictures later. After Sippori we went to Yodfat a city not to far away and to much unlike Sippori before the Uprising, however Yodfat made the deadly choice to fight the Romans and as a result the city and its inhabitants were leveled to the ground or killed. As the story goes there was only one survivor, the former commander of the Jewish "army" in the north, Josefus Flavius. Josefus surrendered to the Romans when he was the only one left alive. He was brought to Rome to be processed and most likely executed but he persuaded them some how and he survived and became a historian who would live to the the story of the Jewish Uprising and irs thanks to him and some other writers that we know what we know about the siege of Masda, Yodfat and Jeursalem. In Yodfat nothing is left but the cistern that they kept their drinking water in. After Yodfat we went to Akko Beach for some swimming and tanning however as I and Adi had made other plans for the weekend she picked me up and me, her Raz and Noam took the car more north.

Yodfat or what remains...

One of the "smaller" Mosaics found in Sippori

My favorit Mosaic (above)of Sippori can be found in the Roman Villa, it depicts the Roman God Bacchus and Herkules having a drinking game, but it also has the Mona Lisa of Middle East, created almost 1500 years before Da Vincis.

Mosaic in the Synagogue in Sippori

View from Yodfat

On friday afternoon we drove from Akko to the Kinneret lake to camp for the night, which was really nice. We made our own food and had nice calm evening. Our goal for the saturday was to hike the Nahal El Al. Its a stream that runs through a river valley in the Golan Heights. Along the stream there are a two major springs/waterfalls. They are called the Black Fall and the White Fall. They both get their names from the color of the rocks the water flows over and down. The Black Fall is made up of volcanic rock and the White Fall of Limestone. Both of them have smaller pools at the bottom that you can swim in, we swam in both to cool down form the extreme heat. Except for the heat the hike was really beautiful and fun, I took some pics that you can see further down. We got home last night completely exhausted and fell into a bed after a nice long shower.

The Black Fall

The Road ahead of us

One of the beautiful views...

The White Fall

Another nice view...

Also I just remembered that we went to Caesera, the huge port the King Herodes built, on tuesday. It was a really nice trip and the guide told us about everything that happend there over almost 2000 years. First King Herodes built it, the construction took 11 years but afterwards he had mighty port and the city grew to include a hippodrome, a palace, a market and a big bathhouse etc. When the Herodes died the city deteriorated and some hundreds year later the Byzantines took over and restored and rebuilt the city and became yet again a mighty stronghold had trade area. After the Byzantnies came the Crusaders that fortified a smaller area and used it as a stronghold for their campaigns however they were run over by the Sultan Baybars how leveled the city which is why not a whole lot survived from the Crusader time however under the dust and rubble archeologists have been able to find much from the time of Herodes. Ill give some pictures to illustrate it.

The ground of the Hippodrome

The main road of Caesarea

View of the Roman City from the outer port

A Muslim prayer tower one of many evidences of Caesarea being used by many different cultures.

The hugh moth and a Castle wall that the Crusaders built.

On another note one of my dear good friends from Sweden is coming for a visit this week YEAY! It will be fun to catch up and talk some swedish and see what sort or mischief we can get ourselves into. Also last night IF Elfsborg ran over Kalmar FF with the score of 4-1, its looking good for the EL-game vs Napoli on thursday.

Til you read again have fun,

Carl