Education Seminar #2 - Start Up Nation

Doing ITF means I get the pleasure of attending a number of educational seminar days throughout the year.  Today's was entitled 'Start Up Nation' and was in my fav city of Israel - Tel Aviv.

If you haven't read Start Up Nation by Dan Senor and Saul Singer you should probably stop reading this blog and get yourself to a book store immediately, buy it and read it.  

I read the book a few months ago while I was in Asia and it was a seriously good read.   Very basically put, it discusses why Israel has been as successful as it has in the high-tech / start-up industry with all its threats and weaknesses.  It's a real page turner and I can't recommend it enough. 

We started off today with a talk from a business development and marketing professional at BDO.  This guy was on a whole other level of passionate (yelling and hitting the white board kind of passionate) so good thing his talk was really interesting. 

He spoke about Israel being this massive social experiment that's had to deal with waves of mass immigration and a precarious geo-political situation.  Remarkably though, Israel has had continued GDP per capita growth since the 1950's.  Talk about killin it!

One of the things that stuck out to me was his discussion on the biggest weaknesses in Israel's economy.  These being: 

• low participation in the economy (most prominently from Arab women and Hasidic men);
• inequality and centralisation which leads to monopolies and low competition; 
• a degrading competitive advantage (China and India are producing quantity while Israel produces quality); and 
• poor public service (of which I have already experienced in my time here).

Notice how conflict didn't feature on his list.  That stood out to me.  But, I guess Israel has never had concrete peace with all of its neighbours so it's become fairly good at just getting on with it.  Props to you Israel.

He also spent time discussing what about Israeli society makes it so good at start-ups.  Compulsory army service in Israel is one of the big ones.  This leads to Israeli society being informal, direct, energetic, filled with copious amounts of chutzpah (an inability to accept no) all while being warm.  He gave the example of an Israeli queue (of which I have seen many) which is basically a triangle of people with the pinnacle of the triangle being the start of the line. Grossly inefficient and mildly angering but informal, direct, energetic and filled with loads and loads of chutzpah!  If you're not on your A-game here you will basically never get want you want ever.

Ultimately though, it's all about the creative energy, of which Israel has plenty.  And I guess this is something I hope to take home with me - more chutzpah (not that I need it) and more creative energy towards whatever it is I decide to do with my life.

We spent the rest of the afternoon on a walking tour through Tel Aviv focusing on how it has changed from sand dunes to one of the best start up capitals in the world.  

All in all, a superb educational seminar showcasing how bomb Israel is, specifically Tel Aviv and how I sort of wish I was an entrepreneur living in Tel Aviv walking around dishing out chutzpah like it was going out of fashion ... a girl can dream I guess.

Meet the ITF groups of Rishon and PTK

MM x

Saturday aka Food Night

For me and one of my housemates Saturday night has quickly become Food Night.  We need to celebrate all the binge TV watching / internet surfing we've done on Shabbat and there is really no better way to do that than with food.

So in true Saturday night style, we donned our track-pants and ventured out to the industrial area in Rishon.

On our walk however we came across a fairly upsetting sight - a number of books had been abandoned on the side walk.  The majority of them were in English ranging from The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare to books on how to teach English to foreign students.  Heart-breaking doesn't even begin to explain how it made me feel - how about donating those books to someone who would have used them?  



However, in times of sadness, there is no other choice but to go on.

So, after pulling ourselves together, we finally got to our destination: Benedict!  The only way to describe this Israeli chain is that 'there really is a God'.  Breakfast - 24 hours day.  Has there even been a better idea for a restaurant?! Uhm, no.

After perusing the menu for what seemed like an eternity, as this choice was clearly the biggest decision I've made this month, the housemate and I decided on lychee brunch cocktails to start, Mexican breakfast tacos with chorizo (hurrah, pork!) for me and french toast for her.  My meal also came with what was described as a 'never ending bread basket' aka soft, warm carbs for days.

Our food was incredible!  My tacos were spicy, and the pork and avocado were a match made in heaven.  The housemate's french toast was cooked to perfection with a delectable blueberry sauce.  The carbs for days came with jam, chocolate spread and whipped butter.  Really, I don't think we could have been any happier.

And, in true Mona style - here's a few photos of what I ate so you feel like you were there with me!

Here's looking forward to next instalment of Saturday Food Night!

MM x

Thanksgiving in Israel

Happy Thanksgiving (for yesterday)!

Australians don't celebrate Thanksgiving but doing a program with 21 Americans and 1 Canadian meant that Thanksgiving this year was a massive deal.

Last night I attended my second Thanksgiving dinner in one of the ITF apartments. This meal had legitimately been in the making for the last month.  People had spent every night this week cooking until 2am to make sure we had all of the 'sides' (a term used to describe everything but the turkey), turkey (we substituted that for chicken) and dessert.  Aaaaaaaaaand, boy was it worth it!

I donated some meatballs to the dinner but we had all the classics and they were amazing.  Special shoutout to the girls from Ben Eliezer for putting on the spread!  I will let the photos below speak for themselves as to how delicious the meal was!  Now I intend on spending all of Shabbat in bed working off the billions of calories I ate last night and watching episodes of Scandal because it's my new binge show.

Shabbat Shalom!

MM x

Winter in Israel

It's finally getting cold in Israel.  This is a massive change because up until last week, we were rocking out at 26 degrees Celsius in the middle of the day.  Due to those blazing hot days though I wasn't really expecting Winter and I wasn't really expecting it to be this bad.

Winter here means rain though which is a massive change from home.  Being from Brisbane, it usually rains fairly wildly in summer and then winter is mildly cold but nothing too bad.  Melbourne of course is a different story but Winter slowly rolls over so you can sort of prepare yourself for it. 

Here it is torrential flooding followed by freeze with a dash of wind.  People tell me it only lasts for a few weeks but I am freezing.  Mostly because everything I packed is super light and the houses / buildings are not built for it.  And I really mean that.  Inside feels about 20 degrees colder than outside.  Thank God for space heaters and my puffer jacket.

Anyways, that's my complain over.  My Mum is coming to visit in two weeks and I couldn't be more excited! (She's also bringing me jackets, jumpers and my fav beanie so that will help).

 

Thanks to DT for taking this photo - me and one
of the housemates battling the floods on Sunday.

MM x

I've decided to re-start this blog

So, after many hours of thinking and pondering and assessing, I've decided to (re)start (my) a blog.

Firstly, I don't live in Melbourne anymore but hey, I can't be bothered to get a new URL and I will always love Melbourne so this URL stays.

Secondly, for those who know me, I am currently living in Israel teaching English for the next 10 months as an Israel Teaching Fellow.  That I guess is the point of this blog.  I've been here for nearly 3 months and I have seen a lot of things that have made me think and I want a place that I can write about them - aka right here.

So, first is first, background:

I am currently living in Rishon LeZion, Israel's fourth biggest city that is south of Tel Aviv.  Lucky for me, Tel Aviv is 30 minutes away by bus so whenever I have a free day, I usually find myself there.  For the history buffs out there, Rishon LeZion directly translates to 'First to Zion' and there have been Jews here since the late 1800's.  It's a pretty cool city that is fairly lively, and out of the Israel Teaching Fellow cities to choose from, pretty sure I chose #1.

I live in an apartment basically in the centre of town.  I live with three other girls; 2 Americans (one from NY and one from Minnesota) and 1 South African.  It really is awesome.  We have family dinner once a week which involves me cooking and we spend a lot of time discussing all the essentials in life; boys, food and how to avoid getting yelled at in Hebrew while living here.  

I 'teach' at a local elementary school in Rishon.  I say 'teach' because I am not really teaching.  I take small groups (between 4 and 6) of kids out of mainstream English class and we play games, do fun English activities and talk.  Some of the kids I work with are fairly advanced and others are not. It is super fun though and even though everything else in Israel can be super stressful at times, the kids never fail to make me laugh.

Other than teaching, I attend Ulpan (Hebrew class) twice a week which I find mildly painful and I also volunteer once a week in Jerusalem with the Ethiopian National Project.  They are a super awesome NGO doing really great work in the social integration space in Israel so check them out (http://www.enp.org.il/en/).  

I guess that sums it up.  Stay tuned to hear about my life here and my thoughts on various things related to Israel life (like the price of hummus and where the best felafel is haha).

Now it wouldn't be a real Mona blog post if I didn't include some photos of food I've been eating so that's how I will end:

Red Velvet in Tel Aviv - the best cupcakes and cookies!

Death by Max Brenner in Rishon

Wings in Tel Aviv - Texas Flavour (honey BBQ)

MM x