Second day and post!

First of all, this is the view out of my window in the daytime. The night view is even more spectacular, but I can't get a good picture for some reason. I will soon. So that's Haifa, I guess on the other side of the mountain, where I haven't been yet. You can see it's kind of smoggy, but the air up here is pretty clear.

Today was really intense. I got up pretty early for an international school breakfast (hummus and pita duh) and then a bunch of people decided they wanted to go on a hike that would eventually lead us to the beach. I really wanted to go to the beach and I haven't worked out in a few days so I was pretty excited about the prospect of a good hike, but it turned out to be pretty strenuous and I wasn't wearing the right clothes. It was about 3 hours of walking downhill, literally down the mountain, and then about an hour of walking along a highway (turns out the trail down the mountain didn't lead quite as smoothly to the beach as I was anticipating). But we eventually got to the beach, called Dado, at about 4. By then, we were all pretty exhausted so it was good to just chill on the beach for a while. And the water was freezing! Of course, because although it's 70 degrees outside, it's still winter. We watched the sun set on the Mediterranean, which was pretty incredible.

After that, I met Dara and her parents in Horev and they took me to dinner, which was really nice. We went to a pasta/pizza kind of place and I had sweet potato pasta which was good (still trying to navigate being vegan in a foreign land). They answered some of my questions about Israel and gave me some tips (such as NEVER JAYWALK! The drivers here are insane). And then Dara's parents drove me back to the university. It's kind of early to be in for the night on a Saturday, but I'm incredibly exhausted and out of it. And tomorrow we have a long day of orientation and stuff, and then classes start on Monday.

Culture-shock, still nothing too noticeable, other than getting used to everything being shut down for Shabbat, dozens and dozens of stray cats skulking around ankles, and I noticed that there are very few trash receptacles here in general, which is kind of a shame because there was some trash on the beach.