Well, I’m finally back to
posting, having just finished my first week of classes back at Harvard. Well, I
say classes, but actually I’ve only had one real class – a seminar that meets
once a week. Other than that, I’m writing my thesis, taking my final ROTC class
(which hasn’t started yet), and taking two seminary courses online. I’m hoping
this final semester of college will be less stressful than previous years. But
before we get into that, let’s talk about break.
I had a
significantly shorter Christmas break this year, due to having the last final
on the last day of last semester. But I still had plenty of time with family. The
main highlight was the trip to Israel with my parents. I hadn’t been back since
study abroad, and I didn’t get as much time as I’d like. I’m out of practice in
Hebrew and Arabic, and how life works there in general, and as soon as I’d
begun to remember, we were leaving again; we were only there a week.
Still,
it was good to be able to practice my Hebrew and Arabic (and German and
Spanish) again, and we had a good time. We’ve all been to Israel multiple
times, so we didn’t go to many of the well-known tourist sites. We stopped by
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, of course, and browsed the bazaar. We also
went back to Capernaum (which is two words in Hebrew and Arabic, by the way; it
means “the village of Nahum”) and Caesarea, which are two of my favorite
places.
Capernaum
is just very peaceful; you can just sit on the shore and listen to the waves.
It’s always raining when we go to Caesarea, but the rain on the rock is
gorgeous; I never knew orange and blue could look so pretty together. And of
course, being Israel, there aren’t a ton of regulations for the ruins, you can
clamber all over them if you wish – which we did (Well, my dad and I, anyway).
The nicest part about its being January and cold and rainy, was that we had the
ruins practically to ourselves; there wasn’t another human being in sight,
which was amazing.
We also
went to some new places, mostly in the Golan heights. There were old forts and castles
and lookout posts, with secret tunnels and winding staircases and mountain
overlooks; we had a lot of fun. The part that wasn’t fun was the driving; I
ended up being navigator, and trying to figure out where we were going, while
dealing with the rain and the crazy traffic, was very stressful. But we found
everything and made it home safely (as soon as we pulled in the driveway, my
dad kind of collapsed with a fever; we’re both very goal-oriented people).
So my
dad was sick, and my mom had already been sick, and my last week at home was
kind of a blur. Perhaps as a consequence of that, in addition to not having a
bunch of lectures to attend, I don’t really feel like I’ve come back to school
or started something new. I’m in college, but it’s like I can’t sense the time
of year: it doesn’t feel like I’m starting or ending or struggling through
anything; I’m just in limbo. We’ll see if that keeps up.
I have
been fairly busy over the past few days. My thesis, of course, needs to be
finished soon, and while I’ve drafted most of the chapters, there’s still a lot
to do. That will most likely be taking up this weekend, since I couldn’t bring
myself to do much on it this week. I also started taking kickboxing at a gym
over near MIT, so I own a pair of boxing gloves for the first time in my life.
It’s very exhausting, and it still makes me very uncomfortable (I hate having
to learn how to do things in public), but I also really like it, and everyone
is very friendly.
I also
have another few side projects going; if I start to make progress, hopefully I’ll
be able to tell you more about them then. For now, that’s about all I have; the
rest of my time has been spent trying to bring myself to do work and watching Netflix.
But not to worry; I’m sure all this free time won’t last very long.
Pictures: I took about 300 over break, so this is just the highlights...
Back in Jerusalem!
Crossing over Jordan...
Aren't they lovely? :)
