Another Day, Another Adventure

Yesterday, I woke up at around 7:30 to the sound of the traffic in the street outside. I pretended to be asleep for a while, but eventually gave in and got up. I was checking my email when Alice walks in and says, "I want to go for a walk. Want to come?" So I went. The air was still rather cool, and it was a beautiful morning for a walk.

We wandered down the road and decided that now was as good a time as any to get a taste of the old city. We walked through Herod's Gate, the closest to our apartment, which put us in the Muslim quarter.
Walking through the Old City is quite an experience! It's a bit like walking through history, 1000 years (at least) in the past. The streets are all very narrow, and cars aren't permitted on most of them, since they're both narrow and possess stairs. However, there are narrow tractors that drive through the alleys (and up the stairs) to collect trash, so one periodically has to avoid these (which seem rather out of place in the setting). Pardoning my camera's ability to cope with a large brightness range, an attempt to give you an idea of the streets:
At some point, we realized that it had been silly to walk in without a guidebook or a map, since we didn't really know what we were looking at. We ended up near the Lion's Gate, by St. Anne's Church and the Pool of Bethesda, where you can also see ruins from the Crusaders:

Before leaving, we also paid a visit to the church itself, which is supposedly built on the site of the Virgin Mary's mother's birthplace. We walked downstairs and found a memorial and a small meditation area. As we were leaving, we heard someone singing a beautiful song in the church itself. I read later that this room is renowned for its acoustics.
By then, it was about 9:30, and we had to be back at the apartment by 10. We attempted to go back the way we came, but instead got lost amidst the winding alleys. Fortunately, we knew the general direction we were headed and emerged from the Damascus Gate with enough time to spare.

Our day continued with a tour of Hebrew University, where we will be teaching. Because the University was on strike earlier this year, their classes will continue until August, and we will also be using some classroom space in ORT, the technical high school on the campus. Somehow, I didn't take many pictures of our tour, but I did manage to get photos of the stained glass windows from the ORT atrium. (Check out the science theme!)
I'll post more about Hebrew University after we've spent more time there. Anyhow, after getting oriented and eating lunch in the cafeteria, my team (the Year 2 instructors) continued our work back at the apartment, at least until the internet died again. 2 of us wanted to trek to the MEET office, while the other two protested walking in the hot Jerusalem sun. So, we compromised. We drove, and we brought our cushions (and this actually saved us no time, amusingly enough). But people were happy, and productivity happened.
Dinner proved to be yet another adventure, as we followed Max into the Old City in search of a tasty falafel place, which turned out to be closed. We wandered through the streets of markets, and eventually ended up back out in West Jerusalem, where we found delicious schwarma. We ate in the plaza near Jerusalem's City Hall before returning to the office to continue our meeting (2pm-11pm, with ~1 hour for dinner and ~1 hour to get to the office).

The most exciting news of today is that the internets have returned! Also, I saw something today that made me immensely happy: Wall-E!