Monday, June 05, 2006

Loose threads

Last night I had dinner with my cousin, Boaz, and we were talking about the lack of city planning here in Jerusalem. Street-wise, there seems to be no organization at all. Obviously they're not going to start straightening streets and widening some of the main thoroughfares to more than one and half lanes (seriously), but I was thinking.... What if, within different areas or neighborhoods, the street names were organized by one of the following systems:
1. family groups, with streets in birth order (Reuven was the eldest of the children of Israel...)
2. time in history, with the oldest sections of the city corresponding to names from the earliest era
3. thematically: early zionists, mountains in the Galil, trees, politicians, you've got the idea
4. biblical books (including the writings and prophets)
OR - since most cities in Israel all use the same names (Herzl, Herzog, Tzernikovsky, King David, Histadrut...) they should be laid out all in the same order so that if you know your way around one city, you can find your way around them all.
Why didn't any ask me earlier?

Passport stories: As the next buses begin to arrive tomorrow, I am hoping that we repeat none of the following true stories:
a. The night before the student (I'll call him Joe) was to return to the US, he came down panicked that he'd lost his passport. We don't take it lightly, but it's really not such a big deal. Worst case scenario, the student gets an emergency passport and takes a later flight. When the staff went up to Joe's room, one of the roommates was there. When asked if he'd seen the passport, he (the roommate) said yes and pulled it out of his backpack. Joe had lost it several days earlier and the roommate just wanted to see him sweat. I guess this is less of a passport story and more of a mean roommate story....
b. A student emailed me the other day and asked if they could use the copy of their passport to travel to Israel since they'd lost their passport sometime after making the copy. That was an easy answer....
c. Students have forgotten to get their passports out of the bank safe deposit box in time for their Sunday night flight.
d. One student lost his passport between the time he checked in for the flight, and the time he got to TSA security to get to the gate. He (obviously) missed the flight, had to get a rush passport, and got a flight the next day. His passport was found in his friend's backpack two days later (don't ask...)
e. Students have forgotten their passports in their dorm rooms, which after school has ended for the semester, are locked tight until school starts again.

Three buses arrive tomorrow morning - let the games begin...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I (your mother) LOVE your ideas about naming streets there a LOT. However, I don't believe there was NO city planning (well, I guess it was "VILLAGE Planning") I just think it was planned when the most popular modes of transportation were donkey and camel...before Segues and Mercedes Benz'. Watch out especially for the motor scooters - they're like FLEAS!

Anonymous said...

I'm going to cast my vote for Joe's roommate as "the meanest". And, because I didn't want to leave a comment on an old entry (btw, I read this every day for a good laugh), I just wanted to thank you for the picture of the Russian bathing beauty. Am I the only one who was thinking of the McDonald's commercial from the mid-80's? If you have to ask which one I'm talking about, I'm going to feel bad.