Our Second Week

1/15 - pov lilly

After our late night getting back from En Gedi, today was a bit of a later start. The extra hour of sleep was much needed, so extra thanks to Liel! We got in and told Liel all about our trip, while also feeding the fish, of course. Today I got to work on my first MechE project!! That’s short for Mechanical Engineering, in case you're not an MIT student that understands all the lingo. I am absolutely, without a doubt loving all of the marine biology and marine agriculture that we’re doing, but I also miss the workshops back at school.

There’s a small workshop next to the labs where the fish are for fixing all of their tanks and whatnot, but I hadn’t been in there much yet. First, Liel needed a new shelf for his algae room. All the project consisted of was cutting one piece of wood in a straight like with a jigsaw, but I'm pumped! It took all of 20 minutes from start to finish to measure, cut, and cover the wood in foil. It looks great.

My next project was making a mount for one of the tables for Liel and the students. They cut and seal nylon bags to grow algae in, but when the roll of nylon sits on the seams for too long, it rips more easily and leaks. My job is to create a mount that holds the roll of nylon so that this doesn’t happen. After a few hours in the workshop, a lesson from Liel on how to use a hand grinder, and a few tests, the mount was ready!! We still have to paint it and sign our names on it at some point, but otherwise it looks pretty good!

Besides that, today was a pretty chill day! We had coffee out by the water, met some students from the local university, and cleaned some fish tanks. The sunset was gorgeous, as usual!! Tomorrow we get to help the 10th graders set up their projects, which will be super fun!!

1/16 - pov marie

Today was a pretty typical day. We started off by counting and feeding the rotifers, harvesting the artemia, and feeding all the aquariums. We then had a quick coffee break by the sea to enjoy the beautiful weather.

After that, we went to class with the seniors. They were continuing their projects from last week, but this time they were actually doing the experiments. We divided and conquered each small group, rediscussing their individual experiments, helping them gather materials and set up.

I first helped Omer and Mika, who are the students investigating the effect of ** on the rate of photosynthesis of spirullina. They had six experimental conditions, 2 for each **. Once all of the erlenmeyers were filled with spirullina and the correct **, we covered them and put them in the coral room under the light.

Then I helped three girls that were testing the effect of pH on pulsing xenia; they are the super cool coral that pulse and look like tons of little grabbing hands. I was responsible for making the different pH waters using HCl. Now this shouldn’t be that difficult - you just have to add HCl drop by drop until you get the desired pH. However! this lab’s HCl is ridiculously concentrated, which I was not aware of beforehand. I didn’t even add half a drop and the pH dropped like 2 levels.

Anywho, we continued working with the students all afternoon, with a brief interruption by our very own, Daniel and Judie! During their surprise visit, we were able to meet some of the people that worked behind the scenes to get us in the village. They gave us a tour, which was quite interesting, since we had never seen the actual school school side of campus.

After work, Liel, Rafi, Lilly and I sat by the sea to watch the sunset, chat and drink tea, which has become our own little tradition.

1/17 - pov lilly

Today was the agriculture convention! Marie, Liel, three students and I caught a special bus around 7:45 that went and picked up more MIT students at the other youth villages. After some light breakfast snacks, we sat down in a lecture hall and listened to a presentation from Professor Eltshtein, who told us all about research in the Vulcani Center. Once she wrapped up, we went outside and listened to Dr. Sitrin tell us about methods of filtering roof water and restoring it to the ground through wells. While we were outside, Liel found some flowers and mini oranges that Marie tried, she said they tasted great but they looked kind of sketchy to me. Maybe if we see them again I’ll try them….

Next, we headed to the Ministry of Agriculture and learned about how farmers increase sheep profits through an invention that can weigh them, tell if they’re sick, and mark them accordingly. We also listed to a Phd student talk about some robots that her lab designed that use machine learning. They take pictures of the placement of plants and then use them to position themselves correctly so that they can sandwich the leaves in between two sensors and determine the health of the plant.

Then it was time for lunch!! After that we went to a farm, where we saw cows and blind sheep. The blind sheep were super interesting. They have a daytime blindness, and for the past ten years, scientists have been working on methods to cure this. They have found success as well, so now they are moving into human trials. Once we wrapped up the tour of the farm, we chatted with Judy (the overall youth village coordinator), Daniel (the overall GTL Israel coordinator), and the other GTL youth village students.

Then we headed back to Mevo’ot Yam, watched the sunset, ate dinner, and slept.

1/18 - pov marie

10 points to whoever can guess what we did first today.

If you guessed feed the aquariums, you win!

After that, we helped out with some seniors on their research projects. I helped two groups simultaneously that both had to do alkalinity tests. Once of them was testing the effect of pH on coral, and the other the effect of temperature. Surprisingly, picking up the coral out of their tanks was the hardest part. Normally, you just put your hand in the tank and pick it up. Not that complicated, right? The other option is that you can stand as far away from the coral as possible, above somebody else’s experiment that is delicately placed on styrofoam. You can then pick up the entire vessel that contains the coral, stick your whole arm in it, break the other person’s experiment, and then take out your coral. Really, either works.

Once we had all the coral in little urine cups, we went to the lab. I quickly explained how the kit works and how to do it, and then I let the students do it themselves. Once we finished testing the alkalinity for all of them, we moved the coral under the lights of the coral room and left to go run some errands.

First, we had hummus, obviously. Then we picked up fish food and then we went to a fish supplier to get some new fishies! He had this giant tank full of eels which was creepy and cool. Once all that was done, we went back to campus and got ready for our next adventure at 2:30.

Shark tagging! A few people at the University of Haifa work with sharks, and one of the things that they do is go shark tagging near the power plant; the sharks are attracted to that water because it’s much much warmer (so warm that the air felt like hot tub air). As the stupid American tourists we are, we showed up wearing leggings and tevas/birks (ie. completely unprepared). Seeing that this was not gonna cut it, we quickly ran around campus on the hunt for water, foul weather gear and new shoes.

It was maybe a 30 min boat ride to the power plant, and within 30 seconds we were very grateful that we had found spray gear. Although the waves didn’t seem that big, they were big enough to be crashing onto the boat, and in our faces. Twas quite refreshing though.

Once we got near the power plant, we began setting up the bait for the sharks. I got so good at cutting the fish (pinkies up, obviously) that I think I should start making sushi more often.

While watching the beautiful sunset, we patiently waited for a shark. Suddenly, one of the buoys began running around at the surface: shark! Once the shark had tired itself out a little, we began the process of tagging. It was super cool and a little intense - they took a sample of blood, took its measurements, and added a tracker, among other things. Neither of us knew what to expect, but it was really cool to see.

We waited some more to see if we could get another, but unfortunately, it escaped right when we got to it. Exhausted, we made our way back to the school. Everyone on the boat was so sweet and lived such interesting and cool lives (maybe I should pursue a career in shark research??), and just being able to join them was insane. Once we got back at 9:30, we cleaned up the boat, showered and packed our stuff to go to Tel Aviv!

Once we arrived at the hostel, we met up with Sam, Josh, Jessica and Kayla (who were also all staying at the same place). Lilly and I hadn’t eaten since noon, and so we got some McDonalds and then all went to bed, dreading the early wake up but excited for a day exploring Jerusalem!