Roommates... and a new roommate?

I've been here for a week now, and I realized that I haven't really told you anything about my roommates, so here is a little info to get to know them:

Roommate #1

Ari doesn't like to take photographs,
so I decided to put up this picture
for the sake of aesthetics, enjoy!

Ari is a tall Jewish boychik who has lived in various places around the US. He has settled in Buffalo, NY and is currently a Junior at University of Buffalo. He is majoring in history and aspires to become a professor. He sometimes describes himself as 'brooding' but is much more cheerful than that word implies. He enjoys reading, long walks on the Tel Aviv beach, and when he is not socializing, a bit of alone time.

This is Stephen, he doesn't usually
look so surprised

Roommate #2
My roommate, Stephen, is a Senior at Franklin and Marshall College in PA. He is originally from Westchester, NY and is majoring in government. Some of his favorite pastimes include playing ultimate frisbee, trying to fix skype on his dad's computer (from 6,000 miles away), and snoring for the first 5 minutes he is asleep.

All silliness aside, they are really nice guys and I'm am lucky to have them as my roommates. It has been great to have each other during the first few days as we explored the neighborhood of Ramat Aviv without feeling alone.

On Friday Stephen and I went to Shuk HaCarmel, an outdoor market with everything from fresh produce to a wide array of Ran-Bin's (knock-off Ray-Ban sunglasses). We afterwards we went to the beach to meet up with Ari and a few other guys from the program. I left with some of the guys a little early and before Ari and Stephen left to come back to the dorm. After I took a shower I was getting dressed in my room and I hear the front door open. "Hey guys, how was the rest of the time at the beach?"

...no response...

I finished getting dressed and opened my room's door to find a stranger in the kitchen. "Hello..."

"Hello, my name is Nick!" said the stranger in a European accent. "I am your roommate." You can imagine my confusion. We had already spent three nights in the our apartment and the university didn't mention anyone else who was going to join us. It turns out that Nick is great too. He is full of stories from his many travels and has a thirst for learning about us too!

Roommate #3
Nick is German but has traveled a lot around Europe and around the world. He is a europhile who is not Jewish and has no prior knowledge of Hebrew. He is excited to learn Hebrew and many new things about Israeli and Jewish culture. His dream is to be able to go to the local supermarket and come back to find that all the groceries were the things he thought they were.

***Some parts of the roommate profiles were exaggerated for comedic purposes.  If you did not find them funny, please disregard the last sentence.****

Introduction

Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in! As I am finishing up my preparations to leave for Israel, I wanted to get the ball rolling with my first blog post. This post is an introduction to my blog. For those of you who know me, I love you very much and thank you, in advance, for reading the rest of this post. For those of you who don't know me: I'm surprised that you are reading my blog. Here is a little bit about myself so that you get caught up:

I am a Junior majoring in Psychology at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts (GO JUMBOS!!). I went to Jewish Day School in the suburbs of Philadelphia from kindergarten through 12th grade and spent many a summer at Jewish sleep-away camp. Some of my favorite things to do are cooking, playing sports, Israeli Folk Dancing, and last, but not least, singing with my Jewish a cappella brethren (also known as Shir Appeal). I will be spending the coming semester studying at Tel Aviv University's School for Overseas Students.

I haven't designed a particular format for this blog, so I imagine that the first few posts will a little bit all over the place. This is the first time I have ever kept a blog or journal or anything of the sort and the going will be rough. My goal is to post one or two times a week and allow you to live vicariously through me. With that, I also encourage you to write comments on my posts or send me e-mails or facebook messages. Not only will that help me stay in tune with the interest of the common folk ;) but it will also remind me that I should be putting up new posts.

Thank you all for reading my blog! I'll be getting into Israel on Wednesday and you can expect another post to be up by Friday. I suggest you just stay by your computer until then and click the refresh button on this page every couple of minutes.