Well, I guess the major thing that happened this week was the inauguration of president Barack Obama. Everywhere one went everyone talked about it: in the news, in the halls, in talk shows. Some claimed that the presidential oath was not conducted correctly. We saw the inauguration live, staying at home on Tuesday until the afternoon. The speech was supposed to be the most important piece of the ceremony, and it did sound very good and appealing, although I am not sure that it appealed that much to the American ears. Obama called them to leave their old ways and be responsible. He went as far as blaming them for the current economic crisis, because they didn't work hard enough. I couldn't agree more, but I suspect that the American people doesn't like to be reprimanded in such a bold way. In general they don't like to be criticized. Criticism is a big issue here, and should be handled with extreme care. On the other hand, the speech repeated parts said by president Bush in various other occasions, as we saw in Jon Stewart's show. Finally, the best thing about the inauguration was the enthusiastic crowd. To summarize here is a beautiful picture that shows the crowd, using Microsoft's amazing technology: Photosynth. Personally, I think that Obama should be a magician to keep all his promises.
The rest of the week went by quiet briefly. We had a lot of work, as always. D received an offer for internship from a company she was keen on working for in the coming summer. She is likely to accept it, but there are still uncertainties regarding the scope of her position. If they are satisfactorily cleared she'll probably work for them in the summer, which might pose a problem with the current work she has. However, the current position will lead to a coding position in the summer, and this is something that D is not looking for. I guess you can call it "good troubles".
Generally, the next year is still vague for us. I still don't know if I will teach next year or become a full time student. From the economical point of view, we certainly need the money, but on the other hand my studies are not progressing well enough. I think that the department heads are still not sure what to do with next year.
A group of pro-Israeli students and organizations launched a display at the university that supports Israel's last offensive in Gaza. The display is an answer to the previous pro-Palestinian held at the same location. I think that none of the displays went too well, and most people succeeded in ignoring the two. Those that did come were probably people that have already taken sides in this issue, and so nobody has really changed his or her opinion on the matter. Nonetheless, it was a good oportunity for us to meet a few Jewish students and maybe link us to the Jewish/Israeli community here. So far the only offer we have is from a religious group organized by a Rabbi here, and I guess we'll prefer to keep away from that group. Hopefully, there will be other beginnings. I think that we need some kind of social life.
On Friday we went to a cabaret show called: "Bringing Sexy Back". We won tickets to this show when we won a world trivia with a few of D's friends from school two months ago, and it was time to do it. Anyway, I have to say that the term sexy should be removed from the title. I think that the women actors in the cabaret were cled in more clothes than most Israeli women wear on a regular day at the office. It's so typical to the conservatism in Ohio/Kentucky to define this show as sexy (and even rated "R" for sexy and adult related jokes). I don't want to waste too many words on it: it was mostly boring and not funny. Some gags were fine, and the singers were OK, but that's it.
On the other hand, we have too many TV shows to follow right now: The 5th season of Lost premiered, Arik is still in Israeli Survivor, Fringe has returned with a few more episodes, and Heroes Season 4 should be back in February. After complaining that there's not enough TV, now we don't have time for all the TV and work.
And finally, the weather surprised us with two days of above freezing temperatures. It even got to +15 Celsius on Friday. Don't worry, it went below freezing on Saturday and snowed today. I like the snow, and -5 or even -10 are not that bad, after all. I just hope that it will not get to -20 again. And I want a foot of snow! By the way, we realized that we measure snow accumulation in American units, simply because we hadn't had the oportunity of measuring snow accumulation back home. :-)
Have a great week.
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