Aubergine Dream

After living in the San Francisco Bay Area for 20+ years, I could never go anywhere without running into someone that I knew. I'm not just talking San Francisco here, literally the entire region between San Francisco and San Jose, both on the peninsula and the East Bay. Its a pretty extensive plot of land, but somehow I managed to see someone or the other during nearly every jaunt to a restaurant here or a bar there.

After living almost 1 month in Tel Aviv, its already happened here. Granted, central Tel Aviv is not expansive, but this will definitely not occur regularly given that I know very few peeps here. It felt weird and kinda nice. Despite my thirst for the unknown, it felt comforting to see familiar faces, even those of fellow students that I barely know.

I went loafing about last night. It was a rainy weekend in Tel Aviv, with blustery winds not at all conducive to venturing outdoors. I decided to take a little walk and head over to a falafel stand that is known for a particular dish called sabich. The thing is, there are no actual falafel in it. After getting it wrapped up for take away (to go), I ran into a fellow student, an Israeli gal that praised my willingness to try it but then chastised me for not having the true experience by eating it standing up in the cramped establishment. I have to admit that she's right - that really is the way to enjoy fast food here. Standing up, with an all-you-can-stuff-into-your-pita-before-it-explodes selection of pickled vegetables, eggplant, and sauces at your fingertips. Eggplant is so underrated in the States. Not only is it ubiquitous here, they sometimes call it by the much cooler moniker of aubergine. Granted, I've never been to Italy so I can't compare, but the aubergine lasagna and coffee I had for lunch on campus today were damn tasty. Woot on the Israeli versions.

I met up with the Round 1 Israeli Chicago GSB admits last week. We all gathered at the house of one of the admits, located in the suburb of Ramat Yishay. Luckily, some of them were kind enough to give me a lift out there - public transit wasn't really an option. It was great to meet the admits and their families, and its fantastic that they have already started to get to know each other. Later this week, I'm planning to meet a GSB alum working out here.

My project group presented in our Organizational Behaviour class last week about Online Reputation, and it was well-received by the professor and other students. With plenty of real-life examples like eBay, bloggers, and MySpace, who wouldn't be into it? The classes so far have definitely been less rigorous than those at Chicago, but I'm not complaining. I anticipated that the majority of my education from this experience would not come from the classroom.

That being said, I was initially surprised by the forthright nature of the professors and students in my classes. One professor in particular is very abrupt in telling students to wait until he is done with his thoughts before he will answer their questions. And the students themselves will often speak out whenever they wish. I've certainly been privy to heated debate in a classroom, but people here seem to be consistently more vocal and at times bordering on aggressive. However, the level of aggression in discourse is certainly relative and I've been told that the Hebrew language tends toward being direct. Its actually fun, because I tend to get engaged in this atmosphere. But it took a few interactions for me to adjust my frame of reference from "aggressive" to "direct". :)

I also find that the students are less deferential in the classroom. Along with speaking out often, many will be checking email on their laptops, getting text messages on their mobiles, have a side conversation while the professor is lecturing, or simply walk in late or out early. The professors here take this in stride and I suppose that each of these happens every once in a while during my classes in the States, but the consistency and number of occurrences is what surprised me. But by now, I've learned to tune out the distractions and focus on the important things in class, like the animation on the prof's powerpoint slides.

Tel Aviv and University aside, its time for me to get out of dodge and explore the rest of the country. Hopefully, I'll be able to figure out how to get around and then take off soon enough. Smile y'all. Monday is done with, so the week can only get better.

p.s. Okay Miz Megha and Sloop Doggy Dogg. I've posted. Tag, you're it.