Gotta love analogies

Immunology is a really complicated subject (not to mention that our teachers for immuno aren't the best). Just glancing over a page from the book in front of me, I see paragraphs talking about cytokine secretion influencing the type-commitment of T helper cells. If they have a TH1 profile, they will secrete Interferon-gamma, Interleukin-2, and Tumor Necrosis Factor, which fight bacteria and viruses. If they are TH2, they will secrete Interleukin 4, 5, or 10, which fight against parasitic infection or infections in mucosal areas. The T helper cells receive signals from their surroundings in order to decide which cytokine profile to secrete. These signals are generally cytokines released from other immune cells such as macrophages. The interesting thing is that T helper cells that are already committed to a certain profile can influence others to commit to their profile as well...Now here's the analogy put forth in "How the Immune System Works" (a great book that, as you will see, makes things much easier to relate to on a "normal person" level.

"Committed Th (T helper) cells can also influence the cytokine profile produced by other Th cells in the neighborhood. In this sense, helper T cells are like 'evangelists' who try to 'convert' other Th cells to their 'religion.'"

Oh, man...but, it makes it make SO much more sense...

Ok, off to play volleyball. Have a great day everyone!

A little reflection...

Two things you should know: (1)There's a gate to the university labeled the "Gate of Peace." Ironically, this gate is never open, but instead padlocked. (2) Everywhere you walk in Beer Sheva, and most other places in Israel for that matter, the sidewalks are littered with broken glass.

Gate of Peace

Broken glass shards litter Israeli streets

Reflecting the faces of those walking above.

Ordinary sand destined to be great

Tested and tried, put into the furnace

Shaped by a Master’s hands into something useful yet delicate—

beautiful.

But pressure and carelessness undoes this exquisite work

Shards with sharp edges and hazy memories of what had been—

These are all that remain

Trampled by my foreign feet, rushing about my business

Caught up in my own “completeness” from the same Master’s touch

And forgetting the incredible beauty of mosaics—

diverse pieces of brokenness

united to reflect something bigger than themselves.

Will I risk the my own pain from their sharp edges

In order to pick up these pieces

To lay them before the Master Artist and maybe join in His work?

Or am I more content in the rubble

In front of the padlocked Gate of Peace.

A little more of what I'm learning...thank goodness it's almost the weekend!

A little something from my note-taking today in biochem...right now it makes perfect sense, but I'm pretty sure that if I look at it again tomorrow I'll have NO idea what in the world it's talking about...

Method of action of glucagon

v Receptor on cell surface involving cAMP.

v Activates a cAMP dependent protein kinase. This causes the phosphorylation of phosphorylase kinase, which activates phosphorylase, phosphorylating the above-mentioned enzymes regulating the synthesis/breakdown of glycogen. Using this kinase increases the signal by several orders because each of the different enzymes activates a number of others further down the chain. 1 molecule of glucagon can activate 1000 phosphatase enzymes.

What I'm learning

Hello everyone,

I just thought that I would drop a little, very short note of what I'm

learning in class today. So far I've had Microbiology, where we talked about respiratory tract infections (which was actually rather interesting because I'm coming down with a cold); histology, where we talked about nervous system tissues and structures (by far my favorite system), and now I'm here in immunology learning about transplantation and major histocompatibility complexes. Here's a picture from our powerpoint.

It's a naked mouse that has received a skin graft of chicken feathers....I kind of want one

Well, I should get going so that I can pay attention to what's being taught. Love you all..

Oh, PS, a helicopter just landed on the lawn directly outside of our class...just another day in Israel.

Succoth update

Once again, sorry for the lack of updating. I have no real reason except for laziness when it comes to jotting down everything that's been going on here.

Where should I start? Well, Keiko and I almost have everything working in our apartment. The only thing left is to get the gas working reliably (it worked for a couple of hours and now no longer will light our stove/oven). We did get a microwave though, so at least we can make some hot food every now and then. I've been really fortunate though because I've been a part of a lot of group meals/potluck things for the past couple of weeks, which means hot cooked food for me while I only have to bring a salad because I have no way to cook. The group meals have also been a great way to get to know some of the other people in my class as well as a random group of Israeli students who I play volleyball with every week.

Can I just say that I am so thankful that I played volleyball in high school, and still remember quite a bit of it. It has been such a great way to build bridges with so many people. There is one other guy in my class who played a lot in high school and is really good and then 2 other guys who are naturally pretty good and really devoted to coming out and playing whenever we can get a game started up. I can honestly say that I've had more fun during our 2 on 2 games than in my entire last year of playing in high school. We also randomly met a group of Israeli students who can play decently, and meet with them at least once a week to play. One girl, Adi, lives right down the street from my apartment, and has been crucial in helping us get a lot of the logistical stuff worked out with our new place.

This past week has been Succoth, the feast of booths, where many of the Israelis build sukkas (sometimes translated as booths, other times as tabernacles) outside of their homes. It is supposed to remind the Israelis of the time when they were in the wilderness dwelling in sukkas before they were allowed into the promised land. Well, because it's a week-long holiday, we had the whole week off! I spent most of the time in Beer Sheva, but also went up to Jerusalem for a couple of days and am now over in Dimona for Shabbat. While in Jerusalem, I was able to meet up with Jill (a woman from Reality--my church back in Santa Barbara who is now working in Jerusalem as a teacher at an international school) and Sally (another woman from Reality who came to visit us over Succoth). It was so amazing to get to be with a few people from home and get all caught up on what's going on back in Santa Barbara, Goleta, and Carpinteria...not to mention receiving a few gifts from America that we can't find very easily here (tasty vitamins, M&Ms and taco seasoning)

Hmmmm...what else? School is going well...classes are different than I expected--a lot less organized and totally based off of powerpoint. Sadly, I have learned that I have a very hard time paying attention after about 45 minutes of powerpoint and really don't learn well when that is the only thing used. The problem is that we get a print out of all of the slides and they go through the slides fairly quickly, which doesn't really give me time to take notes. The thing is, in order for me to learn something, I have to write it down, and so not taking notes is NOT helpful in the slightest. Luckily, I got a new laptop a couple of weeks ago to replace my other one that is *hopefully* being fixed at the Lenovo factory in Tel Aviv. This new one was only about $200 and small enough that it can easily be transported to and from school, and has a long enough battery life that I can make it through a 2 hour class with no problem being away from a power outlet. Now I am able to take notes by typing most of what they are saying and is on the powerpoint, which makes me pay attention and think through everything. So, the last week that we had of class was great! I actually felt like I was learning something, which was pretty much a first since I'd been here, at least as far as the medical school part goes.

Well, that's all for now. I'm gonna get some sleep before we head off to the Ramon Crater tomorrow. I'll try to get in another update tomorrow night.

shalom. im col ahava sheli (peace. with all of my love)

Carolyn

Long time no post

Once again, my apologies for the lack of posts lately. We now have consistent internet, so hopefully I'll be updating a little more frequently.

I'm choosing to see our new apartment as a place of adventure...you never know what's going to happen here. Very very very few things have gone according to what was planned. While we were promised desks, closets with drawers, a working oven/stove and wash machine, and lights by the time we moved in, none of that came to pass. Our desks arrived about a week late, our closets were pretty much a box with a rod to hang things on (we eventually talked our landlord into getting 1 shelf installed at the bottom for each dresser), our stove/oven still isn't hooked up because we don't know if we have gas tanks outside that are ours and if we do, what company services our tanks, the kitchen lights still don't work, and--the most fun of all--our wash machine doesn't drain correctly...instead we have a geyser erupt at the end of every rinse cycle, spewing water out of the tube that is supposed to drain into some bigger pipe in the floor. Keiko and I got emptying the water into buckets and pouring it down the sink drain down to an art, and then we were informed by our neighbors downstairs that water was leaking out of the pipe coming from our apartment into the downstairs hall...and not just into the hall, but onto the electrical panel. So, yeah, we're seriously lucky that the apartment didn't burn down. And then, yesterday we discovered that one of the reasons for the leakage downstairs might have been the fact that our sink drain pipe thing disconnected (it had been taped together) and water was draining into the cupboard under our sink and out of a hole in the bottom where the actual pipe goes out of our house. The sink is now officially off limits until that's fixed, which may never happen seeing as our handyman has stood us up a number of times.

It's not all bad though. In the midst of this craziness we're getting to know our neighbors better, and luckily for us, they are rather gracious to the poor American students who don't know what they're doing and are having trouble navigating Israeli housing issues. Only one of our neighbors speaks any English (the one who stole our internet but completely cutting our line and plugging it in for here apartment the first day that we had it hooked up), and quite a few of them also speak French (I knew I should have paid much better attention in French class). But, yeah, in the midst of all of this, we're having a lot more forced contact with them than we would have had without all of these problems, and we are getting the chance to form very basic relationships with them that will hopefully continue to grow as our Hebrew progresses.

Last Thursday, Susan and I led a Bible study for our group of believers at MSIH and a few people involved in Ben Gurion University in some way. It was the first real "big group" meeting that we had, and man, I could hardly believe, that here we are, a couple of first years who don't really know how these things are usually done who are supposed to kick-start the year. Praise the Lord that it's not us, it's Him who teaches. He ended up leading is to focus on 1 Timothy 1:3-7. With so many people coming from so many different backgrounds, there's a lot of stuff that we can get caught up in forgetting that the aim of our charge is love. I can't even tell you what all we ended up talking about, but it was amazing to hear people who we really hadn't expected to come say that they were really happy that they had cancelled other things to come. The format was very homegroup-esque (discussion based), except we broke down into smaller groups of 4 at first and went through a few questions that we had prepared beforehand so that it would be harder for people to just kinda space out and not get involved. After about 30 mins or so of talking in groups, we all came back together and everyone shared, and yeah, it was so cool to see the Spirit move. Praise the Lord.

There's one more giant thing that the Lord deserves praise for. I found out yesterday that a physician in the States heard about me being over here and donated $1000. I can't put into words how amazed I am at His provision. On my way home from church last night I had "Kama tov chasdecha Adonai" (a song that I learned somewhere which means "How good is Your grace, Lord") stuck in my head. Now I hadn't found out about the money yet, but I was really at one of those points where I couldn't help but rejoice in the Lord. It's not that the service was particularly engaging--actually I had a really hard time tracking the thought process behind the sermon--or that anything else was really working out. It's just that I'm here, in Israel, like the Lord said I would be. And yeah, things are not easy right now, but that in no way reflects what's really going on in light of God's plan here. Look at the Moses before Pharaoh released the Israelites. When he came back to Egypt and asked Pharaoh the first time to let God's people go, Pharaoh made the conditions for the people worse--they were to make just as many bricks as before, but now without straw. And the people got mad at Moses and Moses questioned why he ever went to Pharaoh in the first place. There have been a few times that I've thought that we must not have obeyed the Lord in signing for this apartment because so many things are going wrong, but that's not true. Just because things aren't working out doesn't mean that we disobeyed or even necessarily that we're being attacked. It means that we're in a place where God can work wonders if we persist, are sensitive to His leading, and obey what He tells us to do. So yeah, how can help but rejoice in God's goodness and grace when I realized that He's in control and nothing passes through His hand that He doesn't allow. I can rest knowing that He is God and that His name will be made great in the earth. Kama tov chasdecha Adonai. And then come home and find out about the money. The goodness of our God blows me away.

Well, this ended up being a much longer post than I had expected. Good job to you if you read all the way through it. Shena tova (Happy new year...the Jewish new year just passed...welcome to 5770). I love you all. Shalom vey ahava. (Peace and Love)

Sorry for the lack of updates lately

Hey all,

I'm on a shady internet connection right now that could fade out at any second so I'll keep it super short. Hopefully I'll have internet set up at my apartment by Friday afternoon, but we'll see...we were supposed to have it yesterday but nothing in Israel seemes to work on the first attempt. We've had endless problems with our apartment and are far from really being able to settle in, which makes trying to study very difficult when there's always something that needs to be done just to make our home somewhat comfortable. At this point I don't really even care how quickly anything starts to work (we have no gas to cook on, our wash machine spews out water instead of draining it, lights don't work, desks just arrived, dressers/closests are not what we were promised, etc etc)...I just want to be able to have an attitude of love, grace, and forgiveness through it all and that I would be able to be a blessing to everyone involved. Please pray that I would take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ and that I would be able to be a light in my community and neighborhood even when things are clearly going very poorly. Well, I'm gonna get off while I still have some connection so that I can make sure that this posts. Love you all!

PS. Mom and Dad, I got the box! Thanks so much! I'll try to give you a call when I get a good connection.

PPS. Nicole, I got your postcard today and it made my day! I want to hear all about it and I have a few stories for you as well ;) love ya!