New Roomates
Shabbat at the Abraham's was wonderful! I went on a hike with my cousin, Eitan. On the hike, you could see the Mediterranean Sea. It was hard to tell exactly how much of the Mediterranean you could see, but we were high enough and far enough away that you could almost glimpse the tiniest outline of the earth's curvature. I had a zoom cello lesson with Zack today, which was excellent as always. I'm in contact with a cello teacher in Tel Aviv, but she is out of the country on a tour. My dorm is now at full capacity, I have 4 roommates. One of them knows Baltimore very well, as he worked for the JCC for a month. None of my current roommates will be my permanent roommates, however. As I predicted, the dorms were not ready on Sunday. I was told that we can move into the new dorms on Wednesday or Thursday where I will have new roommates; I remain skeptical. One of my classes has started to become interesting; not difficult, but interesting. We're learning about error-correcting codes and how you can designate just a few bits to be able to fix errors in a string of binary numbers. This is how DVDs and CDs can play perfectly (so long as the damage isn't too bad) even if there is a small scratch on it that destroyed some of the information stored on it. I'm looking into things to do with my spare time. I'm signed up to take a Hebrew ulpan sort of class. It turned out that (despite what I heard) most people in Jerusalem that I've come across do not speak English. It's been fairly difficult to communicate. I'm also looking into double majoring; getting a degree in CS and business. From what I've gathered, JCT is not enthusiastic about this idea. They don't want to mix the two programs. I still have a few contacts I can reach out to that might be able to help me gain permission to double major. Double majoring is entirely dependent on the outcomes of my college applications. If they go well, that is, if I get a scholarship, I will likely come back to the states. If not, and I decide to stay in Israel, then I am certainly going to double major. I'll know by late January. All the best! Eliyahu