Past Few Weeks Update

I know that it's been almost a month since my last post, in part this is because I've not had a lot of time, but mostly because anything I write will be just a mere shadow of my previous post (my posts average 50 unique viewers, my last post got more than 300). Over Chanukah, JCT hosted a hackathon where various organizations (Medtronic, Intel, the Israeli police force for instance) would submit challenges to JCT and over the course of 48 hours, students would attempt to solve those challenges. For various legal reasons involving me being the only student under 18 and gallons of beer being served throughout the 48 hours, I was not allowed to compete. I had already created a team of people to work on one of the challenges, so they were down one man. 36 hours into the event, they told my team that I could help as a "mentor", so from 9:30 PM Wednesday night until 9:30 AM Thursday morning, I single-handedly built the website for our project. We didn't win (had I been able to work for the other 36 hours, we would have, though) but we did make it to the final round so the team I "mentored" for was able to present my website to a panel of judges. That shabbos (shabbos Chanukah), I had planned to go to Zichron Yaakov, a two-hour trip. I went to bed Thursday night after not sleeping for 40+ hours, making sure to set my alarm. 2 AM Friday morning, the fire alarm went off and strangely so did the electricity. A terrifyingly large number of students slept through the fire alarm, I wasn't one of the fortunate ones though. After standing outside for 30 minutes I went back to sleep. Because the electricity had shut off my alarm didn't go off. I woke up 1/2 an hour before Shabbos started, with no chance of getting all the way to Zichron Yaakov. Fortunately, I had previous invitations to the Engelman's who gladly had me at a second's notice. They were so hospitable and I had a fantastic time. The week after, I was with the Coxs in Modiin who were having bar mitzvahs for their triplets. Aside from the fantastic cooking, Mr. Cox (from Baltimore) managed to get into the country for it, really making that shabbos one of the best ones I've had here. The Ulpan and all of the time spent working on Hebrew is paying off. While far from fluent, I'm now capable of understanding and having basic conversations in Hebrew. I spend many hours each day working on Hebrew so it's nice to see that it's having some effect. Now that all of my music applications are complete, I'm waiting to hear from the US colleges before deciding where I'll be for the next few years. JCT is thinking of offering a fourth year devoted to engineering. Currently, JCT is a 3 year program for a degree in CS. I'm not thrilled about a CS degree, but if they end up adding this engineering program it would be a large incentive to stay. All the best! Eliyahu