Israel Days 7-11

Day 7.

So I am an idiot and deleted most of my pics from this day. We went to Masada, the Dead Sea, and Ben Gurion University to visit with our student counterparts. These are the students that are working with us, with the client, to produce a solution. You may view Paul's pictures of this day here.

Day 7 (night).

We arrived back from Ber Sheva and went to Mike's Place with classmates. My buddy Ami was playing there. He's the one in the middle.
Day 8

The next day was spent in Haifa at Technion. We met with students and professors to get an idea of student life and business in Israel.

After a long day, we went to eat the Shawarma on the left. This next statement might be blasphemy, but I am not sure what is better, Shawarma or Philly cheesesteaks.
After seeing my cousins, I went to go look at the Bahia Gardens. I still have never been inside or seen them up close during the day.Day 9 - Jerusalem

Here are all the goods.
Here is a Bosnian, who lived in Germany, and is now a US citizen, wearing a fleece made in China, and zipper in Mexico, in front of the Western Wall in Israel. The World is Flat.This is some church in the Christian quarter. To the best of my knowledge, I have never been to this area. Here are my peeps in the old city.
Back in Tel Aviv, dinner made up of Kubbe and orzo. It was quite magnificent.
Day 10 - I hung out with my cousins for the day.

So my Israeli cousin has a rosemary plant/vine/thing in her kitchen. She was always high up on my list, but self grown rosemary... puleease. The kitchen smelled like heaven and I am now debating putting a rosemary plant next to my bed. Here are the girls at the family BBQ. I know they are smiling and sweet here, but put them in front of a football (soccer) match, and forget about it.I went to a Hapoal Tel Aviv game and I think a goal was just scored here. Hapoal won the game 3-2.
I am really proud to be cousins with this family. The parents are sports fans and raised their kids to be hard-core about matches... so much so that I was a little frightful of them during the game.

After a fun game with the family, I went out to Dinner with the last 2 of my classmates still in Israel.

Below: 1 happy Dane (Tuborg & Carlsberg are Danish beer)Day 11: Flight back to Newark.

Israel Days 1-6

Before we start, here's my buddy Jon. We went to high school together and he was so kind as to let me stay at his place.
Friday morning Jonathan (not shown), Ryan and Mark arrived.We went to the beach, where the weather was wonderful and we had ourselves a delicious Mediterranean meal with tasty beer to wash it down. All the white stuff on the right plate is cheese (mmm).
Well hello there good looking.Guy Smiley...The Italian...The Gang (Enjoying the fun in the sun)...Whoa there studs... nothing wrong with a little leisure walk on the beach.I felt like this picture was an ad for an unknown beer. (I guess it seems like a corona ad)
Saturday - we decided to take a walk towards Jaffo (Old Tel Aviv). We had our 1st Shawarma and...

Do not adjust your screen, that can IS the normal 12 oz.Finally, the 1st good picture in this post. Tel Aviv taken from Jaffo.
Here is the future of the world. These students are currently International MBA students at the Fox School of Temple University. (Mark - Danish, Ryan - Nigerian, Jonathan - French/Belgian, Ben - American, Danijela - Bosnian/American)
Here we are about to enjoy some dinner before meeting the clients the following day.
Sunday & Monday

The room where the magic happened. 3 clients, 3 teams, hours of information, and tons more work that followed. What made this worse was that we had an amazing view of the beach from this conference room. This took all our GEN X & Y ADD to keep the focus on the client and away from the 80(f) degree weather.Tuesday

We went to an Incubator in Nazareth called NGT (read about it here). Check out my sweet Raj suit.In the city of Nazareth, we had some amazing Shawarma with all the fixins.
Then for some Baklava.

Israel Day 0.5

I arrived safely in Israel Yesterday (3/6) after a 10 hour flight with Continental.

1st - I am fine. I heard about hte shooting at the Jerusalem Yeshiva, and I was no where near there. I am in Tel Aviv at my buddy's place.

Moving on, in light of Southwest flying "unsafe" planes, I thought I would tell an uplifting story about Continental (it's short). So Steve to mail an important item yesterday and logically he thought he could mail it at the airport. To further his theory, there was postage dispenser in the airport. However, for safety reasons, their were no mail receptacles at airport. Like the Gentlemen that Steve is, he asked a flight attendant (in the airport, not on the plane) to tell him what he should do. Well she was so nice and offered to mail it for him! Now that is some nice customer service.

Here is how the afternoon went.

Met up with Goldstein's roommates/buddies and had a beverage...

then met up with my classmates for dinner on the beach of Tel Aviv.Bought Steve some toilet trees.Removed Danijela's stuff from her crappy hostel.
and moved it to this nicer one. (from left to right: Danijela, Steve, Ben, Tree)
Now I must go to some work... and find a working shower.

Israel Again!

Yes, you read correctly. I will be going to Israel again. I leave this Wednesday the 5th and return Sunday the 16th. For a reminder of my last trek, click me. This time will be a bit different. This time is more business than pleasure. I will be there with my Fox Consulting Team, working with our clients to nail down a plan of action for the next 4 months. Ironically, the client is based out of Sde Boker (where I had a week of dumbed down Israeli army training in 1997). Luckily, they should be planning to meet us in Tel Aviv.

While 5 of my days are designated work days while in Israel, another 5 are designated for pure Israel fun.
I plan to see the Haifa Hanging Gardens/Bahain shrine for real this time, Masada and the Dead Sea. Plus, I'm pretty sure the 5-6 Paris pastry pounds I lost since back in America will be gained back after eating shawarma, falafel, zatar and hummus.

As an fyi, last week I had the opportunity to hear the Mayor of Philadelphia, Micheal Nutter speak. Let's just say that I have heard plenty of public officials speak before, and none of them have ever sounded as believable and convincing as Nutter. I hope this does not come to haunt me in the future, but I truly feel that Nutter will make a difference. Here are some pictures from that event...my favorite (artsy, i know)