Israel Trip Blog

My blog for my Israel and Italy trip is http://ryeintheramla.blogspot.com/
It is frequented by my parents and relatives because it's much easier just to do one blog so if you don't want to trace back to you, don't use your blog space signature.

Summer Lovin'

How awesome does this sound?

Sleeping in until 12,
Going out with friends every night,
Eating amazing home-cooked meals,
Having your mom let you eat & buy whatever you want,
Shopping at outlet stores in the States,
Buying a crapload of new stuff,
Packing for a 5-week trip,
Going out for coffee,
Drinking coffee over 3 times a day,
Going to Niagara-on-the-Lake,
And not having to work.

This has been my life for the past week. Pure bliss.
And there's still 4 more days of this. And Dee's coming back too!

10 Days

Wow. It's finally starting to hit me. Only 10 days left until I leave for Italy and Israel.
This is going to be amazing.
We got our tickets today for the flights. I also bought a bunch of things today for the trip.
We're going to see Jaffa, Caesarea, Jerusalem, Ramla, Tel Aviv, the River Jordan, the Dead Sea, and so much more. And that's just Israel.
My hotel is right on the Mediterranean Sea, in the tourist district of Tel Aviv.
Our days start at around 7am. We get up and go eat breakfast, a full breakfast, not some wussy continental one. Then our bus picks us up at 8am and we head from Tel Aviv to Ramla. Then we have different things happening everyday. Some days we go hear lectures or visit sites throughout Israel. Other times we spend our time in the studio provided for us, researching and proposing designs for different sites. We arrive back at our hotel around 6pm everyday. Then we head off to the beach, restaurants, pubs, bars, clubs, or just hanging out.
At the end of the 3 week work session, we have to present our work in front of a panel of judges made up of architects, planners, the mayor of Ramla, and the Dean of our program. We also have a gala evening at the Embassy to celebrate our achievements.
Then after the 3 week work/study bit, we travel all of Israel, seeing whatever we want. We sleep in different hostels throughout that week, and apparently the hostels in Israel are amazing, in comparison to Europe.
After an entire freakin month in Israel, we head back to Italy where we had a stop-over on the way to Israel. This time I'm staying there for a week.
I'm traveling with my roommate, Aaron, and another friend, Dustin, who is also in our program.
We have our hostels booked, 3 days in Florence, 3 days in Rome, and 1 day in Milan.
And so many awesome things to see.
And then June 21 will roll around and it's back to Toronto. I'll probably be ready for going back home by then.

Coping With Minimalism

Moving day.
The day I lost my space. My amazing open room with a giant walk-in closet, a bathroom, tiled floor, sweet view of the downtown is gone. Lost it to Andrew.
Now I'm in this little hole, the bedroom right next to my previous one.
It was a disaster moving in there.
I attempted to put my dresser in the closet, hoping it would fit. The dresser fit inside the closet great. But the drawers would not open. So close to opening too, just about 1/2 an inch, but the closet doors blocked their opening.
So, how to fix this problem - rip out the baseboards.
Out come the chisels and hammer. I tore out one of the baseboards of the closet and checked to see if the drawers would open.
Nope.
So, time to tear out the baseboard on the other side of the closet. The room is now a disaster.
And the solution works. I'm now able to open the drawers. What an exciting story.
So now I have to live in a tiny room. Oh well, maybe I'll learn how to cope eventually.

JoeyandDavid.com

Here's a hilarious website I found. It's a bunch of shorts and episodes of Joey and David.
http://www.joeyanddavid.com/
I watched all of the shorts and episodes last night. There's not that many but definitely worth it. They put out a new one every month.
Laundry Room Girl is my favourite short and the episode "Babembe" is friggin hilarious. Watch. The first video here is Laundry Room Girl.
This second video is Roommates. Basically how life is with roommates. Actually, no, it isn't. Cause that would be just wierd.

Give Me Liberty

Yesterday I spent the day with my Israel travel group doing a case study on Liberty Village, a district in east downtown Toronto. This district is based around the core of the industry sector of Toronto which is now defunct. It used to be the hub where all the manufacturing and industries were located but many of these places are no longer in use. So many offices and studios are in these old buildings now. It's a large district and has been recently updated with new offices and residences in 1999. It's still in the renovation and revitalization stages.
Which brings us to the part where my group comes in.
We had to choose an area in the Liberty Village District and see how we could revitalize it or add a feature which would link to the heritage of the site.
My group chose to work with the streets and alleys near the Carpet Building and make it more pedestrian-friendly.
We did this by proposing to relieve the streets from car parking and add more walkways and stairs that creates a flow throughout the streetscape. Each set of stairs would work with the pattern of the bays in the industrial buildings. The stairs would have a new material introduced, using weathered railway ties which would link to the railway line that runs throughout the street.
At the end of this street is a cafe and a place for outdoor seating. A revitalized pathway would open up this area to the public.
Anyways, we arrived at the site at 10am and finished our day at 8pm. It was a good day.