My Journey

In September, 2009, this Canadian boy started a masters program the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, learning about ecology and health, middle-eastern politics and the environment, and how a dire problem may facilitate a region's coming together for the better. This Blog is a record of my head-first dive into this immense world.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

It Gets Cold There?


All those in the audience who are currently living in temperate climates, please excuse the following comment:  It is getting cold here!  Seriously though, I know that 20-25 during the day and 8-10 at night is a wimpy November, but it just kind of settled down upon us here.  One day it was blistering hot and I could sleep, *ahem*, in my birthday suit, and then there were three days of crazy clouds and even crazier winds, and then….desert winter!  Extreme climate I guess.
So it has now become clear to all of us that the Institute is not, as one of our profs put it, a “schluff off to Israel for six months kind of program.”  There’s some serious work going on here.  The work is a lot of reading, quizzes, and papers, but many projects too, and the projects are largely hands on.  For Environmental Anthropology, our job is to do a mini ethnographic study, picking a little micro-culture of the Kibbutz – my group will be the Volunteers who serve food in the kitchen.  For Environmental Education we develop five lesson plans, and then the prof actually hooks us up with an appropriate class in the area to carry out one of the lessons.  One slight issue I’m having with the program so far is that the year at the Arava is essentially the same year as someone going through their undergrad – same classes, lots of introduction to ______ - but as a masters student we take it at the “masters” level.  This essentially means harder assignments and exams.  We also TA a class (environmental ethics for me, very enjoyable actually), and so when it comes down to getting to work on our masters projects, time is a bit of an issue!  It’s tough when you want to be experiencing everything to its fullest (e.g. there’s a mountain expedition going for a few hours, work in the garden, a little self-run workshop), and you know that you should really stay in the room and work…C’est la Vie d’etudient master.  Pardon my French, I barely knew it to begin with :-).
     That’s not to say we don’t get to have any fun.  We went hiking on one of the crazy cloud and wind days about a week ago, and I thought it’d be nice to have some pictures of the area up:

Here is the start of our hike, climbing through an ever narrowing Wadi up into the hills




A very cool rock formation - the geology here is pretty much naked



Sun and Shadow are a recurring theme in the desert



Just when you thought nothing could grow out of this stuff.  Actually, this is in a Wadi bottom, "where the life
is"



Ummmm......Little help?



That is, literally, winter blowing in



Sun and shadow again - one one side, summer, on the other, winter.

And now, a moment that may shock you all.  Parents with small children please use discretion (not really):

Before



After



Why?

Dunno.

Back with more soon!


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