Working from Herzliya, Israel

This is my second day working in Sun’s Herzliya office here
in Israel. This is an exciting time to be here, between
the Palestinian legislative elections and Prime Minister
Sharon’s long illness causing an effective transfer of power.
My husband John is taking a bus tour today to Bethlehem and
Jerusalem. Since Bethlehem is in the Palestinian section, John
may see something of today’s voting. There was a big conference
here in Herzliya at the hotel next to ours and Israel’s acting
prime minister, Ehud Olmert, spoke. When we were walking back
from work last night, John and I took a detour to avoid the
small group of yelling protesters outside of that hotel. There
wasn’t any trouble but it was clearly best to be someplace else.

There have been 17 SEED mentoring program applications so far:
2 from Israel and 15 from Russia. The deadline is 30 January.
I am working through a number of emails from managers of
applicants asking for support, advice, or information. Managers
of staff who were not accepted to prior SEED terms are asking
for an analysis of how their staff member could improve. Other
managers are asking for advice on potential mentors for their
staff.

When travelling, one of the greatest challenges is food. Not
so much finding good or tasty dishes but in trying to figure out
what to order and the contents of what we are eating.
Cooking and food terms in English classes are often very basic.
A person might know the word for bread, for example, without
knowing the word for pastry, pie crust, or cake. In Russia,
we had several discussions about the difference between blinis,
pancakes, blintzes, and crepes. I think that blinis, blintzes,
and crepes are the same thing in Russian, Yiddish, and French.
Pancakes are thicker and courser. The word for cream in Mandarin
appears to translate as “milk oil”. This makes sense logically
but it is odd to see “milk oil” on the label of a package of
cookies. Last night, John and I went to a pleasant restaurant
and all was well until we came to dessert. The poor waitress
had to describe their ten options. We finally picked something
that she said was squeezed melon and ice with stawberry ice
cream on top. What arrived was stawberry sorbet in a pool of green
melon puree – very nice!