The sign of a fraying friendship is when you find yourself tracking how much of each conversation is about them and how much is about you. Never a healthy calculation, and one that I am reasonably sure ou never do when things swing the other way.

Things I Need to Do Before I Can Feel Properly Grown-Up

1. Wash dishes without splashing water all over my front
2. Purchase a flip phone
3. Eat dinner on a real plate for every meal for a week
4. Drink wine without wincing
5. Wear heels on a regular day
6. Know what's going on with my Bituach Le'umi payments every month
7. Rinse my contacts as often as the optometrist says one should

American's View of Israeli's View of America

It's so odd listening to Israelis describe America, particularly when they are professors and they just keep throwing out random observations, composed of some equal mixture of tv, news stories, and academic studies, all equally detached from any real context. It's not that they're always wrong about things, it's just this weird skewed picture, literally like a caricature, in that some features are there and some are exaggerated and some are under-aggerated and the whole thing is just oddly out of proportional. The professor currently lecturing for example, sees America as a sweltering mass of racism where anybody driving a junky car in a nice neighborhood is going to be continually pulled over by the police. A place where sheriffs patrol the streets of fancy San Fransisco suburbs.

And yet, at the same time, you get this sort of impression that somewhere in the back of their minds, they truly do think that the streets are paved with gold and SUVs. It's distinctly odd. And don't get me started on how fascinated they are with Obama. I think because they think American is so very racist, the idea of those racists ever accepting a black president just blows their minds, so that he becomes even more mythological than he was to Americans.

Things to make your head explode, just a little

There are signs all over the law building, calling on students to join in on an organized day-long boycott of the new coffeehouse, for:

1) having prices that are too high and
2) not offering products that the student community wants (like sandwiches).

Can someone- anyone- explain the logic behind this? Or is this just knee-jerk Israeli strategy kicking in?