Halfway there

It's hard to believe. We hit the ground running, and suddenly we're about to start the 3rd week. Crazy. Most of the instructors headed to Haifa, Nazareth, and the north this weekend, but I stayed in Jerusalem to catch up on sleep.

Some highlights from the week:

Last Sunday, we watched the World Cup final with the MEET students. Both teams were represented by hearty cheering sections!



We were watching the game on the lawn with a projector and large screen, which was all well and good until suddenly, the sprinklers came on! In the rush to save the projector/computer, we lost the connection and so missed a good chunk of the 1st half. Luckily, the game was pretty boring, so we didn't actually miss anything.

Wednesday afternoon was sports day. This consisted of semi-organized games of soccer, volleyball, basketball, among others. There's also this game that the students are obsessed with, but it involves standing in a circle and setting a volleyball to each other. If you mess up, you sit in the middle, and you have to catch the ball in order to get back in the circle. However, once there are people in the middle, if 3 passes are completed successfully, you can slam the ball as hard as you want at the folks in the middle. Don't know why it's so exciting, and it seems rather painful to me, but the students love it.



Thursday was the Parents' Event! This is a fantastic event that MEET holds each year so the students' parents can come see what they've been up to. The event opened with a presentation by Assaf, a short speech by Zach (our incoming CEO), and a short presentation by me about the curriculum. We then all joined in a delicious potluck dinner with local food provided by all of the parents, and much food and conversation was had by all. Additionally, each of the students got to take their parents to the computer labs to show off their work. Overall, it was a fun event, and a fantastic meeting of different cultures.

And now another weekend has ended and it's time to tackle another week! Here's hoping I'm less sleep-deprived by the end of this one.

(Photos coming soon!)

T - 11 hours

The other day I got lost while driving through Jerusalem. I'd volunteered to drop some people off across town, and between all of us, we managed to get where we intended. However, after I left them and headed off by myself, I soon found myself terribly lost. But interestingly enough, it was the good kind of lost, if there is such a thing. Although it was dark and I was on unfamiliar roads and didn't have anyone to navigate for me, I had a general sense of the direction I needed to go and eventually ended up back on a familiar street. It's nice to know that even though I haven't spent much time here, the city is becoming rather familiar. I'm also a lot more comfortable driving than I was two years ago (a good thing, since I'm one of only 2 people who can currently drive the stick-shift van!)

The past 2 weeks have been filled with training, tours, and preparation work. I've gone on a political tour of Jerusalem, toured the Old City, went to a music festival, shopped at an outdoor market, visited Yad Vashem, walked to East Jerusalem to eat dinner, and witnessed a wedding celebration in the street, complete with fireworks. Each of these things really deserve their own blog post. We also had teaching workshops, sessions on teaching in this region, and each team has been working hard to get things prepared. And tomorrow is the day it all comes together. Rather than celebrating with fireworks, we'll be celebrating the start of the 7th MEET summer program. Wish us luck!

(And for those of you back home, enjoy some fireworks for me!)

T - 3 days

So I've been too busy to update, but I'll catch up at some point. But in the meantime, Clare has put together a blog aggregator so you can check out everyone else's blog as well as mine:

http://clarebayley.com/meet2010/

Only 3 more days until the program, and it's currently our last day to use the computers at the university so everyone is hard at work making sure everything is set up correctly. Lots to do!

Good to be back!

We made it! The long flight from Philadelphia was uneventful. The only stressful bit was whether or not Ben would make the connection in Philly. He did:

Ben: I just made the connection that US Airways said couldn't be made.
Sondy: But isn't that what MEET is all about? Making the connections that they say can't be made?

Awesome.

So after Talya, Mustafa, Abeer, and Areej drove us back from the airport, we took a few minutes to settle into our apartments. We're staying in Hebrew University apartments in the Mt. Scopus campus. 15 instructors, 15 bedrooms in 3 apartments, 3 bathrooms, 3 kitches...and we have AC! Not bad. Some people went to buy food and cook some dinner, while a few of us decided to explore. We got a good vantage of the Old City and the sunset from Mt. Scopus and saw a bit of our neighborhood, but I'm too lazy (and the internet is probably too slow right now) to upload photos. But the city is beautiful and I'd forgotten how much I'd missed it. There's also a falafel stand around the corner that I'm excited to try soon. But now it's off to bed. Preparation and work start bright and early tomorrow morning!


p.s. As far as I know, this marks the first time in MEET's history that the instructors had working internet upon arrival. Way to go, MEET staff!

Starting a new adventure!

Well, here we are! Now that I've been giving this blog address out again, I should probably make the site look up-to-date. When I got back from MEET 2 years ago, I knew it was something I wanted to do again, and this summer seemed like a great opportunity. I also figured that keeping a blog again would be a good idea, so I'm continuing the same one. You're welcome to go read about my adventures from last time, see how it compares. This summer, however, I will be fulfilling the role of Head of Instructors, meaning that rather than teaching a particular year of students, I'll be doing more coordinating and helping make sure things run smoothly, which will be a different sort of challenge.

As for me, quite a bit has happened since my last MEET adventure, culminating in my graduation from MIT 2 weeks ago. After spending the last week or so in Boston spending time with friends and enjoying things that I won't be seeing for a while (things like cheeseburgers and thunderstorms), I'll be flying out at 5:30pm this afternoon. We're flying on US Airways from Boston -> Philadelphia, then Philadelphia -> Tel Aviv and arriving on Tuesday at 3:15pm local time (8:15am EST). We'll get the evening to adjust/sleep/rest and then it's straight to work at 9:30am on Wednesday! Should be a fantastic, busy, crazy, awesome summer.

Will update again soon, provided I have working internet when I land, but for now, thanks for joining me on this adventure!

Ending

Last Thursday marked the end of the 2008 MEET Summer Program. It's exceedingly difficult to realize that the sumer is already finished. The Year 2 students finished the summer with 4 stellar project presentations. Quite frankly, I was WOW-ed by how much they had accomplished and how well they presented. (This bit about us being WOW-ed was actually part of their goal, and they met that challenge excellently.)

On Friday, the instructors joined the students on a trip to Tel Aviv, where we hung out on the beach for a few hours. The instructors then returned and began the slow, arduous process of doing feedback surveys, completing interviews, and compiling all of the curriculum material, as process which lasted through Saturday into today.

Today marked the real end - the graduation ceremony for the Year 3 students. It was impressive the see the students' maturity as they introduced each other, reminisced on their time in MEET, and accepted their certificates. Thus followed a period of hugging and photo-taking as students and instructors said their goodbyes.

Expect some backdated entries later with more detail, but at the moment it's 1AM. We're leaving shortly to drive a few hours to get to Masada and watch the sunrise. We'll then spend a few days in Eilat, which will be a much-needed relaxing vacation. I fly back to Boston on Thursday.

This has, by far, been the best summer of my life.

Almost there.

So, this is where I apologize profusely about falling behind in the blogging. It seems I've missed recording about 1.5 weeks of MEET, including MEETConf, the Apprentice Event, and 2 awesome Year 2 milestone presentations. Not only that, but I've skipped an exciting trip to the north this past weekend and a spectacular trip to the desert during the previous weekend. What can I say, I've been busy. I plan to work briefly on creating some backdated entries with my own photos, and in the meantime, I'd encourage you to check out Sally's blog, if you haven't already been keeping up with it. Sally, my fellow instructor, is much more proficient on the blogging, and much better at keeping up to date. Definitely read the entry about the lecture we attended yesterday. I couldn't have described it better myself.

As for my students, they're nearing the end of what's been an awesome summer. The Year 2 curriculum culminates in a final presention, which this year is modeled as a pitch to a venture capitalist. This presentation will occur on Thursday, which means tomorrow is the final day to finish everything. This morning, however, my team managed to produce a functioning program, which is able to send both text and drawing messages across the network. The students were positively bubbling with excitement, and it's amazing to see the quality of work they're accomplishing along with their enthusiasm for working together to finish this project. Tomorrow, they'll work to polish their final deliverables (poster, presentation, video demo) and finish up bits of code. It should be an awesome day.

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Also.

Happy Birthday Dad!