un-consciencious blogger

Okay, as you might have guessed by my long absence, it's been quite a hectic time lately. I gave my lecture in Berry's class. It was mostly on nutrition, a subject that I know almost nothing about. The class meets once a week for 3 hours, a fact which Berry only told me a week before I was supposed to give the lecture. It takes a lot of talking to lecture for 3 hours. I managed to fill up most of the time, though, by cobbling together pieces from several other people's lectures on the topic. I think it came off okay, but I certainly won't be winning any teaching awards from it. Of course, I was working on it right up until late the night before, so never had a chance to preview my full powerpoint presentation before the class. And, as Murphy would predict, I had several slides out of order, which made for a bit of general confusion. I managed to talk enough about research that I was involved with to spark some discussion among the students. Oh, and I should mention that the audience was a class of 3 students, 1 other student who is interested in nutrition, and 3 people from Berry's lab (plus Berry), who probably know more about nutrition than I do.

Immediately after that, I started working on the Departmental seminar that I gave the following week. That was on my PhD work, so it was a lot easier. The hard part is that the project has expanded so much that I can't talk about all of it at once any more, so I had to cut out bits and pieces. Despite the fact that the secretary forgot to announce the talk to the department, there was a pretty good turnout of folks from Beer Sheva and here. It probably wasn't my smoothest presentation of this material, but it seemed to go over well. At least I had a lot of people come up to me afterward and ask questions about it, or just say that they liked it. suddenly I'm not just an anonymous face here anymore. Somehow, these two talks seem to have given people the idea that I'm some sort of expert in something (some even think it's nutritional ecology!). Strange.

Along the way, I was still working on finishing my blood-taking experiments with both bats and lizards. About a week ago I finished my last samples - woohoo! So, now I'm just wrapping up the processing of the samples, for shipping to the US for analysis. I won't actually have data from them until the folks in Madison analyze them (sometime in January), so I'm still not sure how successful the experiments have been. At least I don't have to keep stabbing bat wings, or poking lizards in the eyes. I was getting pretty unpopular among the animals around here. But that's all finished. I finished filtering the last samples over the weekend and am just waiting for them to dry in the drying oven. Later this week, I should be able to ship them off.

The adventures of living in Sede Boqer continue. All of the students are complaining about the thermal conditions in the new, specially designed apartments. As the outside temperature has been dropping, the complaints have been increasing. Several of us (the real nerds) have been taking daily temperature data to demonstrate the uncomfort levels in the apartments. My apartment consistently drops to 13C (55F) overnight, and never gets above 18C (64F) during the day. I'm about a degree colder than most because I'm on the windward end of the complex. The student council has been complaining to the administrators and the architect. The response has been to question whether we're properly opening and shutting the shutters over the windows. See, the apartment is supposed to have passive solar heating - open the shutters and the intense desert sun warms the living space to a comfortable level; then close them at night to keep the heat in. Unfortunately, there isn't enough sun in the winter to warm things up to reasonable levels. And even if there were, there are so many holes in the construction that the heat just leaks out anyway. In some ways, it is surprising that the apartments aren't colder than they are. When asked about drafts, I had to respond that every window has a draft - some even have such big cracks in the seals that I can see daylight through them - and that there are 1cm gaps under the doors. Not sure what they are thinking when they lecture us about not using the apartments correctly. There is also the issue of the huge volume of air in the apartments, most of which isn't anywhere near people using it. There is a huge space over the desk/stairway, that is just open air that needs to be heated. Ugh. At least the wind has died down a bit lately.

Okay, last time, I talked about my adventures with my Australian visa. Those are still ongoing. The latest is that I apparently have a visa, but they haven't managed to get my passport back to me. I got a call from the embassy last week. The woman said that when I pre-paid for registered mail to return my passport, the post office stamped a date on the stamps, which means that the post office won't accept it anymore. So they have sent my passport back to me by special courier, for only an additional 45 shekels, payable on delivery. Okay, fine, but that's not all. Yesterday, I got a call from the courier, who barely spoke english. He said that it would arrive today, but wasn't sure exactly where to find me, which is understandable since I have only an institutional address and no street address. I told him to have the driver call me when he gets here and I'd give directions. I'm still waiting. If it doesn't arrive tomorrow, I'll be nervous, since I don't even know what courier it is, and the Australian embassy isn't very good about answering the phone. I also want to have my passport before going city hopping, which I need to do.

First, I need to go to Tel Aviv to pay for the changes in my plane tickets. The last time I wrote, I was still working on getting a flight from here to Darwin. I think I have solved this problem, though it certainly isn't the idea solution. Now, I'm supposed to leave at 3:30am on January 7, fly to Madrid, where I have about a 7 hour layover, then to London (couple hours), then Singapore (5 hours), and finally arrive in Darwin at 4:50pm on January 9. Yes, that's 54 hours after I leave Tel Aviv, and doesn't include the 2 hour trip to Tel Aviv or the 3 hours I'll spend in security at El Al before boarding. But back to my trip to Tel Aviv... After making these changes, I was informed that I would need to go to the nearest Iberia Air office to pay for the changes because I have a paper ticket (Iberia is the nominal carrier for the flight to Madrid, though it is actually operated by El Al). Can't pay over the phone, or even at the airport, but I have to go to the office, which is in Tel Aviv - halfway across the country. Of course, I'm not too excited about going to Tel Aviv without a passport, and that brings us back to the beginning again. whew.

Okay, enough complaining (almost), some good adventure news. On Saturday I went on a hike with a group that goes every month to some interesting place. Apparently the regional council (I don't actually know what this is) arranges a monthly hike with a guide from the field school. This trip was to the south about 2 hours - almost all the way to Eilat on the Red Sea coast. It was a really spectacular area, quite different from here. That area gets about 20mm of rain per year (about 3/4 inch). We started in a strange little settlement in the mountains above the Arava valley (the rift valley that forms the border with Jordan). The settlement had 19 families, and looked like it would fall apart in a good wind, though it had been there for 20 years. Strange place. Then we headed off into the desert. It was bloody cold. That day there were all sorts of record low temperatures set around the country. I'm continually amazed at how cold it can be, even though the temperature is above freezing. Not sure if it's my clothes, my acclimation, or some strange atmospheric thing, but I've been freezing here all winter, and especially at the beginning of the hike.

So we started off and hiked for about 10 minutes to the edge of the cliffs overlooking the Arava. There, we stopped for breakfast - I forgot to mention that the bus left at a very uncivilized 6:30am. So, we paused, and from nowhere, little camp stoves appeared out of the desert. This is something ubiquitous in Israel. Any time Israelis go on a hike, they take their tea/coffee kits with them. Even if it is the only thing they bring and it's 45C out, they bring coffee kits. These things are amazing - it usually has a carrying case, and contains a little burner that sits on a fuel canister, a small pan for water, 3-5 small glass cups, tea, coffee, water, and lots of sugar. Amazing little kits, and people here are so quick with them that I didn't even have time to set my backpack down before there were 5 of them burning away trying to boil water (the group had about 20 people in it). Amazing. So we ate, and drank, and froze, for about 30 min, before heading out again. Once we started walking, the temperature was bearable, especially when the wind died down and the sun came out. We walked down a spectacular wadi, with very little vegetation until about 11am, when we stopped for tea at the top of a waterfall (with no water of course). Really interesting area that I'd love to show you, but all 4 sets of camera batteries that I took were flat, so no photos. We hiked for another hour, had more tea, and finally ended up on the main highway through the Arava. There, we stopped at an ancient Byzantine ruin that apparently had just been excavated 2 years ago. the saying here is that if you start digging anywhere in Israel, you will find an ancient ruin.

Well, the Christmas season is here, sort of. The Latino contingent here is planning a big Christmas dinner for the 24th. should be interesting. That's pretty much it. I think there might be a student party one night also. And Jane kindly sent me a DVD of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, so we'll probably have a showing of that sometime this week - Thanks Jane, you rock!

I think that about catches me up to date. Or at least I can't remember anything else to talk about right now. I'll try to write more often.