...we tried to turn left and the president...

This sign is all over the city!

The past couple of days have been crazy ones.  I have been working on a really big project in the lab, and I have been putting in a ton of hours.  I was also swamped with Pesach shopping and preparations, and to make matters worse, President Obama is in town.

The country has been preparing for his visit for over a week.  There are flags and signs and banners EVERYWHERE, and now that he is here, there is security in more places than just EVERYWHERE.

I thought that by staying on campus for the majority of his visit, I would avoid the problem, but Wednesday, when I was trying to get back from the machsan (the place where we order and pick up equipment (PVC pipes, pippettes, printer paper, etc.)), I was told I wasn't allowed to walk back across campus to my lab.  The president's helicopter was about to land in the stadium just outside of campus, and therefore, I had to make the most ridiculous circle ever just to walk somewhere which should have been less that ten minutes away.

The Israeli Museum with a blimp above it...at 615am.

The next day wasn't much better.  Obama was supposed to be visiting the Israel Museum (between my house and campus--I walk through its parking lot on my normal route to the lab) around 9am.  Postings on various governmental websites said that the roads would be closed in the area starting at about 745, the time I usually take my bus through the area to campus.  I decided to walk that morning to avoid any stop-us, and I decided to leave my house around 630 to be safely in the lab before 7 and before any road closures.  I did not miss the road closures, however.  And the police and soldiers coordinating traffic were not vary organized.  I can not tell you the number of times I had to cross to the other side of the street or swoop around various areas.  My twenty minute walk was almost doubled because the president was sleeping in a hotel across town.

That wasn't the end of it though.  I was supposed to tutor in the afternoon yesterday across town.  I was a bit nervous about the buses, and although the roads were supposed to be open during my arrival and departure from tutoring, I decided that I would walk instead of relying on buses.  I get an email an hour or so before I am planning on leaving from the family I work with saying that the roads by their house are already closed and that I will not be able to get there.  Obama was giving a speech in a convention center at least 20 minutes away from their house by car at the time that I got the email, yet somehow, just the fact that he is in the country has the power to shut down the whole city.  I wasn't too upset about being spared an hour and twenty minute walk, but it was still beyond ridiculous.

Most annoyingly (thus far), must have been my journey to dinner.  It would normally be a 20 minute bus ride, but the bus I wanted wasn't running.  I was too exhausted to walk by the end of my day, so I decided that I would take a bus to the central bus station and from there transfer to where I needed to go.  The bus I wanted came, and I got on.  It started to drive its normal route.  Then we came to a road block.  We needed to make a left turn, and the police wouldn't let us.  The president was across town where I tutor, though, so the block really made no sense.  The street we were turning onto was a two way street, and traffic was running in the other direction, but our direction was blocked.  It was so Israeli when our bus driver did a fair bit of yelling at the "lazy police of Israel" (his words, not mine) saying there should be someone at the start of the street we had come from telling buses that the routes would be closed, amongst other much more colorful things.

After a few tense minutes of yelling, we straightened ourselves out, continued straight to a traffic circle, turned around, and drove back the way we came to find another route.  It was even more Israeli when as we were approaching our "blocked left turn," now on the right, we were surprised to see people turning down the road.  In the two minutes it had taken us to turn around at the traffic circle, the road had been unblocked and we were able to turn down it and continue the normal route.  The rest of my trip was filled with traffic, both president related and otherwise, and it took me over an hour to get to my destination, but dinner was worth it...yummmm.

President Obama is leaving today, and I couldn't be more excited!  Enjoy him, America.  He's all yours.