Welcome to our Neighborhood

I love our neighborhood, it is an amazing mixture of old and new. Our building itself is not new, but not too old; it is in a gated community within the Weizmann campus. Right across from us there are three luxury high-rise apartment buildings, with one more under construction.

Then, just down the street there is this "historic" area with a beautiful and quaint plaza where the "young at heart" sit at night and socialize (some of them even come out in their wheelchairs). There are also a few really old run down buildings that stick out like an old hand-made quilt among fine silk. Both are beautiful in their own way, but look kind of funny right up against each other.



Just around the corner from this historic area there are a few luxury condos with secured entrance and gated parking.



About five more blocks up, you'll find Herzl Street. This main street in Rehovot has almost every kind of business you could ever need. There are restaurants, boutiques, book stores, there is also a "paper" store (local mom-and-pops version of Home Depot), a grocery store and a pharmacy.




Anabelle and I walk up to Herzl on a daily basis and get a good work out. There are even a few street vendors who specialize in tantrum provocation, I mean children's toys. That's Anabelle's favorite part. I must admit, one of my favorite places is a brick-oven pizza place where we have pizza night every Thursday right before doing our grocery shopping for the week.

"Bring your daughter to work" Day

Anabelle has been struggling letting Nathan go to work in the mornings lately. In order to help her understand where daddy goes and what he does, we walked him to work the other day and visited his "office." Anabelle took her duties as "daddy walker" very seriously and held his hand the whole way there.Once inside the Weizmann Institute computer science building, Nathan gave us the grand tour. Displayed in his building's lobby there's the first electronic computer in the Weizmann Institute and first in Israel back in the early 50's. When we explained to Anabelle what it was she commented, "that's daddy's computer. You can't put that on your lap, too big." I guess she's seen us with the laptop often enough.
When we finally made it to Nathan's office, Anabelle made herself comfortable and decided she would stick around for a bit to help daddy do his work.Needless to say, he didn't get much done while we were there!
On our way home we stopped in a couple of places. The Weizmann campus is pretty big and the walk home can be a bit much for Anabelle, so we take a lot of breaks as we go along.
One of Anabelle's favorite places is called the Jubilee Plaza. She says it looks like a castle.


This is some kind of memorial, but Anabelle says they look like robots. She likes pretending to be a robot (yes, can you believe she knows what "pretend" means. This girl is growing too fast).

The sun here is scorching hot (it's mid September and we are still in the high 80s on a daily basis) and so we take as many "shady" short cuts as we can, this is one of them. There is a small pond with bamboo shoots all around it. It's peaceful and pretty.

This is another favorite place. Anabelle thought it would be a good spot to stop and read for a bit.

She also loves to pick flowers as we go. Even though Rehovot is very arid, the Weizmann goes to great efforts to make its grounds green and flowery.

Walking around here, you almost can't tell you are just north of a great desert.

Praying Mantis

As we walked out to the park tonight, I noticed a small Praying Mantis on the steps to our building. I showed Anabelle how it looked like it was praying. After taking a few pictures, we continued our jaunt to the park. A few minutes later she looked at me and said something to the effect of "It was praying for Jesus to help it! It said, 'thank you for this day, thank you for my food, thank you for my friends, amen'".

Dangers of Google Image Searching for pictures to show a child

So the other day Anabelle was going off about how when she becomes a big girl (i.e., no longer needs her pull ups), she would get the Barbie puzzle book we saw at the bookstore the other day (when she saw it there I told her we couldn't get it because it was a big-girl book... whoops...). To let her know of the finer parts of being a big kid, I decided to show her how cool Legos are. I googled lego, and you wouldn't believe what came up! I was shocked...


but I really liked what I saw...


so here I've posted what I call "Lego sets that geeky adults like me want to buy"


1. My favorite one is a Lego difference engine. It calculates 2nd or 3rd order polynomials to 3 or 4 digits! Wouldn't it be soooo cool to walk into a math or physics exam with this instead of a lame TI calculator? Here's more info.


2.Relativity by M.C. Escher Here's more info.

3. Waterfall by M.C. Escher (notice how the water seems to flow uphill) Here's more info.

4. Ascending and Descending by M.C. Escher (for those who haven't seen this before... notice how the stairs seem to always be going up or down depending on whether the people are walking up or down the stairs...)Here's more info.

Click here for cool construction equipment sets
Click here for more cool lego sets that if I could, I would buy (including some more Escher creations)

Anyway, Anabelle has told me that she wants some of these... when I told her I wanted them too, to my excitement, she said "You can help me build them too!" I wish you could buy these... I'd immediately get a set!

Happy Birthday to you!!

Maria's B-day was this past week, and so we celebrated it the best we could (given that we had no car and are new to the area). We had a great, cheap lunch at one of the Weizmann Institute's cafeterias, and then for dinner we went to a great little restaurant down the street. Maria got a $17-$18 steak, which she claimed was one of the best she'd ever tasted. I got a chicken/humus dish with curry sprinkled on it... it was soooo good! We're definately going back there. When we got home after that, I tried to surprise Maria with a cake I'd bought the night before, but Maria already knew about it (what part of "don't tell mommy... it's a secret" didn't Anabelle understand? When I bought it the day before with Anabelle, she immmediately ran in yelling "Mommy!! Mommy!! We bought you a birthday cake!!!!")

Nostalgia...

This post will be my own sappy musings, and won't be funny, so feel free to skip reading it. So this past week I was invited to attend a retreat for the Weizmann Department of Molecular Biology (even though I'm technically in the Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics). For the retreat we ended up staying at the Ramot Resort on the Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret). It was just a little north of the site (En Gev) where I stayed for two weeks back when I did the Jerusalem study abroad program through BYU 10 years ago. (click here for a detailed view of where these resorts are)After our lectures the first evening there, I stepped outside and watched the sun set over the Sea and Tiberias (a city on the other side), as I had done many times while I was at En Gev. A feeling a nostalgia swept over me as I thought about the summer of 1998. I wanted to go back and relive those great memories... until I thought about how I was back then. I remember the spirit I felt as I visited the sites and gained a deeper understanding about the the scriptures, the life of Christ, his atonement and example, and what it meant to live the Gospel. I remembered what a life-changing experience that was. However, I also remembered how tough it was back then on the Jerusalem program trip. I was the sentimental type that wanted a girlfriend and to feel loved. However, being a pre-mission freshman, I was constantly treated as "a cute little brother" by everyone there (for obvious reasons), and to be completely honest, it left me feeling empty inside and lonely at times. Then I realized that I haven't felt those feelings since I began my mission in Spain (1999-2001), and since I met Maria (2002). I thought about how grateful I am to have Maria and Anabelle in my life. The emptiness I felt back then has long been filled with their love and the love of my Savior as my testimony of his role as my Savior and friend has grown over the years. It made me really appreciate the blessings in my life, and especially the lessons the Lord has taught me since then.
A photo I took from En Gev in July 1998

230 V and a 120V wireless router...

I wrote a little story shortly after getting here, but opted to not post it. I feel that the moral of the story is important, though... so if you leave the US with a laptop with a broken LAN port (ie., so you can't get internet access unless you have an established wireless network, and you cannot set up a new wireless router). No matter how excited you are about checking your email, do NOT plug it directly into the wall unless it can handle 220V-240V. If you do, you'll have wireless internet for ~4 minutes. After that you'll have a fried transformer (black box on the plug), as we found out on Sept 4.

A life that inspires others

I was on a friend's blog and came across the story of Stepahine Nielson and her husband who were badly injured in a private plane accident. Stephanie kept a wonderful blog about family and motherhood (NieNie Dialogues). Because of the impact she had on hundreds of people who read her blog, she and her family have received an enormous amount of support from literally all over the world during this difficult time. Heading the support efforts is her sister, Courtney (C Me read C Jane, link above)who has continued Nie's Blog while Nie fights for her life. Click here for a link to a video about this amazing family done by the Today Show.


After reading about this family I felt two things very strongly: 1) Life is short, enjoy what really matters; 2) there are many out there who wish to make a difference in the world, join them! Wow, I was really touched by this story, not only by the out-pouring of love and support for them, but especially by the love that permeates the pages of Nie's Blog. I really need to learn to stop whining. I do too much of it, and it is a shame to do so when I have so much to be grateful for and so much to give back. I love my family and the joy that they bring into my life. Tonight I will give a prayer of thanks rather than my usual list of requests, in hopes of showing even just a smidgen of the appreciation Ifeel (and find hard to express in mere words) for the blessings in my life.

Posted by Maria (who is too lazy to switch to her own account, so she uses Nate's)

Seeing the Sites in Israel

This past weekend we rented a car and saw some classic Israeli sites:
IKEA
McDonalds
While these may sound like places that pathetic lost Americans might go, they really did have an Israeli feel... all of the burgers at McDonalds had the US names, but transliterated into Hebrew script. And if you look at the IKEA sign, it too is transliterated (look on the side of the building). Also where in the US can you spend $30 to get just 2 small burgers and a happy meal. And lastly, when was the last time you had a kosher Big Mac? Unfortunately, we didn't have time to stop at Toy's 'R' Us, ACE hardware, or Office Depot before returning the car.

NATE!!! OUR APARTMENT KEYS DON'T WORK!!!

After a 10 hour flight with a few hundred 18-20 year olds (doing a year study in Israel) partying in the aisles for at least half of the time, we arrived at the Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv! We immediately caught a taxi to Rehovot, and picked up our apartment keys from the gate of the Weizmann Institute of Science. On our keys, they'd put the address of the apartment that they promised to provide us for a month while we looked around Rehovot for a more permanent residence, and so our driver dropped us and our 6 bags, 3 carry-ons and two strollers off at our doorstep. While I paid the driver, Maria went in to check out our place. The driver then took off while I started to haul the bags in. Suddenly Maria came running out and said "Our keys don't work!" So we were standing out on the sidewalk in a country where we barely speak the language with a huge amount of luggage and keys that didn't work.... well, I decided to try for myself. Sure enough, I found that the keys didn't work, but they did work in our neighbor's door... so I knocked a few times and with no answer, just walked in. The apartment was mostly bare, but one of the bedrooms was locked. I took the opportunity to call the number on a paper that was provided with the keys. I told them that we got the wrong keys, and that they opened our neighbor's apartment. The lady on the phone said "Oh no! You're not supposed to be there! We had an opening in another apartment in another complex and we wanted to put you there!" Well, so I began to haul all of our bags to the other complex (which fortunately wasn't too far). We made quite the spectacle, lugging around all those bags! Once we got to the right place, we were happily surprised to find out that the apartment we were assigned was not only open for a month, but was available for the whole 10 months we are going to be here. Yeah!!!! Maria and I both felt a load lift off our shoulders as we accepted the apartment. We felt that this opening was a small miracle and great blessing, especially since the lady from the Visiting Scientist department made it very clear that there were no openings and we would have to find something off campus. We are so grateful for the many people who have helped us along this great adventure. Sure, we have been ignored, yelled at, and scowled at along the way by not so pleasant people. But the lasting impression we have been left with throughout this experience is that there are still many people out there who will reach out, lift up, and brighten others' day simply because they can. We are grateful for our family, friends, and perfect strangers, who have gone out of their way to help us.