Lets see. Hmm, a lil about me and what I'm up to now. I'm 22 and from San Rafael, CA, near SF on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge. (funny how EVERYONE knows about the SF side, but most ppl don't stop to discover what;s on the OTHER side). I am obsessed with the Lakers, I like to cook, write (mostly poetry, but I can write almost anything at least decently and some things expertly), and I love to crack jokes as often as possible. Of course there's much more about me but more will come in the posts to follow.
Right now, I'm a first year Com. major at Israel's only private university: it's called the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) and it's situated in the city of Herzliya, just north of Tel Aviv. I will probably be mentioning this place a lot is this what comprises most of my life atm. There are so many things I could tell you all about this place (the country and culture and what not's) that you will almost never find out from mainstream media. Since I have a strong, but not always active interest in politics, I guess I'll share some of my own clever and astute [I think] observations about the idiosyncrasies of this unique little-big country.
I think one of my best and most interesting observations is that you could definitely classify Israel as a 2nd world country. I don't even know if there is such a thing recognized in academia/the academic world, or anywhere else, but if there is then Israel would be it! Basically, you have here many of the attributes of a developed, Western-style country, and yet there is a lot that's third-world and less civilized about the infrastructure and culture. Things most definitely do not work here like they do in California! I say this because you have an odd juxtaposition of things like ubiquitous cell phone and computer use and ownership, and yet legally, the government owns all the land (anyone can have all the legal rights of ownership of land, build whatever they want within those rights, but it's under a 99-year lease from the govt. No joke!) For comparison, the country is only 61 years old, so if you just built a house in Tel Aviv or bought acreage for a farm in the Arava (southern Israeli desert) this year, you're good to go till at least when your grandkids are around, most likely. There is a level of socialized medicine here, but there is also no cash-back option from in-store cash registers. Also, there are TONS of unfinished buildings littered throughout the country (and a few bombed out ones from the last couple wars). Not like, the majority, but enough to notice. Things like that I would say are what make this place not quite fully post-industrial and not quite stone-age either, but a hazy shade of gray betwixt the two. Well, gotta get up for class in the morning, so peace out ya'll.
S.G.S. Williams
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