In about 4 hours me and my luggage will get in a van and head to a plane which will, over the course of 12 hours, take me back to the States. This summer has been one hell of a ride, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Things I will greatly miss:

• my students
• the food
• the exchange rate
• the nightlife
• the weather (most of the time)

Things I will NOT miss:

• having to turn on the hot water 20 minutes before I take a shower
• not having a microwave or an oven
• sleeping in a twin bed
• the weather (the rest of the time)

I’ve got a pretty large backlog of pictures from MEET events and the weekend trips of the instructors which I’ll be working through once I get home.  For now, I’ll end this post with one big shout-out to my amazing team. You guys made this summer better than I could have possibly imagined. (can’t credit the photographer, I’m not sure who he was)

Today was the last day of MEET. It’s been 4 full weeks since I first met my students, although it feels as if just a few days have gone by. On the other hand, it feels like I’ve known my students for much longer – I’m going to be so emotional at their graduation. The one downside of teaching Y3 is you can’t come back and teach them again. I’ll update more later; right now I’m dead tired. This program has been one hell of a ride. I kept all of the schedule cards for each day of MEET, and put them on the wall above my bed. (the hole in the middle was a Jewish fast day)

I remember nervously introducing myself to a crowd full of strangers on the first day, in the worst-designed lecture hall I’d ever seen. A lot of Y3 was near the front, and they made themselves known, though at the time I didn’t know anything about them. Now I can see them in my memory, clear as day. Michael, Roni, Melkar, Adam, Dor, Aalaa, Yahia… I had no idea what I was in for, but now that I’m on the other side I know that I had no reason to be nervous. This has been one of the most incredible experiences of my life, but while I’ll be sad to see it go I’ll be taking a lot of what I’ve learned here back with me.

Bluuuuuuuuurgh. Life here has been busy and stressful lately in ever so many ways, but this morning I got the results back from my week 3 student surveys.

Q: “What positive things (that he/she does now) should he/she continue doing in the future because they worked well?”

Student’s A: “being great!”

Thanks guys. :) You just MMD.

I’m leaving for Jerusalem tonight to participate in MIT’s MEET program. I’ll be gone until mid-August and if you want to get in touch with me I’ll be checking my email frequently but I won’t be answering my phone. I’ll also be blogging during my time there, including tons of awesome (hopefully) pictures so be sure to check back!

To celebrate, here’s an awesome picture from my spring break trip.

I was taking pictures for our house composite, and while they said I couldn’t use this one, it was my personal fave. ;) I’ll be putting up more of these once selections are made and editing has been done.

Also, I’m STILL fighting this damn magenta cast I keep getting in jpegs. I’ve been working my way through a book on color correcting in Photoshop, and my tiff of this looks AWESOME, but I can’t make it convert right! Grr. Any photogs out there got tips?

Tomorrow morning I am leaving my computer and camera at home, putting my phone in airplane mode, and GOING ON VACATION.

I will be completely unreachable from about 4pm on the 22nd to the afternoon of the 26th, so if you really need to tell me something do it before/after then. You have been warned.

Just finished a video project for my visual arts class. My first attempt at taking moving pictures – it turned out way better than I thought it would.

NOTE: It will be totally pointless for you to watch this without turning up your speakers. :)

I got a package today from a very special sender. :)

Wanna know what was inside? Do ya? Do ya? Huh? Huh? Huh?

(more…)

First off: a nifty picture taken from the rooftop of a friend’s apartment building. This is actually an HDR image, though certainly not the best example of actual HDR. I really liked the effect it gave the clouds – they were moving away from me while I was bracketing the exposure, so you can see the edges are staggered in the composite image. I like it in contrast to the sharpness of the skyline. Head over to my flickr account to view it in higher-res.

Secondly: I’ve finally cemented my summer plans! Last month I got turned down for a PM internship at Google, which was rather surprising and a little devastating at the time. I’d really been counting on that internship, so when they rejected me I had no idea what I was going to do. Luckily, a conveniently timed conversation with a friend reminded me of a program MIT is involved in called MEET: Middle East Education through Technology. I sent in my application at the last possible minute, interviewed a few days later, got my offer this morning, and emailed in my acceptance just a few minutes ago.  MEET is a month(ish)-long program that brings together talented Israeli and Palestinian high schoolers to teach them programming. It’s going to be incredibly rewarding, and I’m actually pretty happy that Google turned me down. I never would have considered this program if that hadn’t happened, and I think I prefer a day of lectures, teamwork, presentations and discussions to 8 hours in front of a computer monitor. But, long story short:

I’m going to Israel this summer! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!! :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D