ani lomed evrit = “i learn hebrew!”
i’ve been here in beer sheva for a month already! i like it here. beer sheva is an ethnically diverse university town of about 200,000 in the middle of the desert. i’m so stoked to finally be starting medical school, and in the middle east no less! my 35 classmates at the medical school for international health are wonderful. they all have such passion and varied life experience: a good percentage of them already have advanced degrees. i am really honored to be a part of this remarkable group of future physicians. and importantly, we all get along really well! for the last month we’ve been immersed in an intensive, four-hours-a-day hebrew course called an ulpan. though i’m a lot closer to the bottom of the class than the middle when it comes to language learning skills, i feel like i’ve learned a lot and am finding that hebrew can be fun. my classmate natalie has been kind enough to tutor me, which has helped a lot. thanks natalie!
for the rest of the day we’ve been taking an emergency medicine class, where we learn the pre-hospital course of treatment for emergency situations such as trauma, choking, cardiac arrest, israeli snake bites and the like. we also practiced the art of i.v. line insertion on each other! there was a lot of blood. we just had the final exam for the course which involved a lot of practical scenarios – fun fun! tomorrow begins the “real” medical school courses – the first semester lineup includes biochemistry, molecular and cellular biology, microbiology, biostatistics, immunology, histology, genetics, “global health and medicine” and more hebrew. i’ll be studying a lot.
during this orientation month we’ve had a lot of fun. various shabbat dinners/potlucks and great times on the weekends. one day the whole class went to jerusalem! we filed through such epic sites as the garden of gethsemane, the tomb of david, the western wall, the via dolorosa, and the church of the holy sepulchre. though i spent two weeks in jerusalem a few years ago, i can never get enough! really lucky to be living near such a historically (and otherwise) significant locale.
the class also took an evening trip further south from here into the desert to sde boker, where david ben-gurion (the namesake of our university and first prime minister of israel) had his kibbutz and is buried. we hiked in the full moonlight through a wadi (a dried up waterway carved into the rocks), ending with a campfire! also took the train to tel aviv with some friends from my class… a couple times already! amazing beach; frolicking in the waves; a mall with an h&m: could life get any better?! maybe if it were cheaper. but what are ya gonna do.
there have been huge protests in israel over the last month, precipitated by an increasing cost of living. there is a live-in tent city in the median of rothschild blvd (one of tel aviv’s most affluent streets) that goes for miles. beer sheva also saw the largest protest in its history, right outside soroka hospital where we have our classes.
i’m doing my best to keep my mouth shut when it comes to politics here. sometimes its really tough. but its probably a good thing. after all, i’m here to become a physician, not a political talk show host.
currently fighting the urge to turn this post into a politically charged rant. there’s always a lot of juicy cause for that in this part of the world.
i’ve procured some nice things recently! like a bike, which makes life so much easier! and an iphone! some super cool classmates and i got a family plan together! now i wonder how i ever survived without a smartphone before! and a quality hair cut! this metrosexual guy who washed my hair both before and after! we also found the cheapest source of food in town: the buffet-style hospital cafeteria! so glad that place exists! and a buzzing shuk (outdoor market) with best-priced fresh produce. and i found and moved into the apartment i’ll be living in for the year! my classmate flatmate’s name is seungjin. sometimes he cooks amazing korean cuisine! we live in a choice location on the 16th floor. with a great view of the hospital. anyone and everyone is welcome to come visit!
there is a nice little church here! except its not called that: its a keila, or congregation, or literally a herd of sheep. there are some really nice people. everything is translated into russian, english and spanish, audible through little headsets that most of the people there need to wear. it looks like i’ll be helping with setting up the audio equipment. afterward we’ve made a habit of patronizing the gleeda (ice cream) place! its about the only place open on shabbat.
there have been some missiles from gaza landing in be’er sheva over the last few weeks. it started with an attack on a tourist bus in southern israel near eilat. in fact, the casualties of that attack were evacuated by helicopter to our very own hospital, and we watched them being rushed into the emergency room from our classroom. the retaliations and counter retaliations spiraled into what became the most intense back and forth between israel and gaza in the last few years. when rockets are coming into town a loud warning siren goes off, giving us 60 seconds to find a bomb shelter, descend to a lower floor, or at minimum hide on the eastern side of just about anything. one day there were almost 100 missiles. israel has very recently unveiled an innovative laser guided interception system called the iron dome that is supposed to shoot em down before they get here, but despite that at least one person was killed in beer sheva and a lot of the rockets still land close enough to hear. our hebrew class moved to a bomb shelter, and my room is actually a shelter too, so sometimes the sirens give me an excuse to stay in bed a little longer. i’ve actually never once felt scared in any way here. though i hate violence with every fiber of my being, i get something of a rush out of finding myself in the midst of it. it helps remind you that life is meaningful. and though it often brings out the worst in people, it can also bring out their best.
i’ve found time for some nice long runs in the surrounding desert. my favorite is running to a war monument on the top of a hill on the outskirts of town, where there is an amazing view. there are a lot of war monuments in this town. hopefully i’ll find time to run in the midst of biochemistry and all that jazz. let me rephrase that. the more i run, the better i’ll do in biochemistry. you gotta do what you gotta do.
today i had lunch in an astro-turf yard with a third year from my school who made amazing coffee and serenaded us with his oud and psalms in arabic. it was nice!
i think that pretty much catches you up! not such a bad first month of medical school, eh!?
