Tag: israel

Research Explainer: How giant clams record their diet in their shells

On By Dan KillamIn Biology, Chemistry, clams, scicomm1 Comment
Two giant clams near Eilat in the Northern Red Sea. To the left is the small giant clam, Tridacna maxima, and to the right is a mature individual of the rare endemic giant clam Tridacna squamosina, only found in the Northern Red Sea.

You are what you eat, and clams are too. We’re made of atoms, which come in “flavors” called isotopes, relating back to the mass of the atoms themselves (how many protons and neutrons they have). Nitrogen, for example, comes in two stable (non-radioactive) forms called nitrogen-14 and nitrogen-15. Much like scientists can track the composition of a person’s diet from the isotopes of their hair, researchers have used the isotopes of clams to figure out their diet.

Nitrogen isotopes provide us with a useful and detailed record of food webs. Plants and algae tend to have more of the light isotope of nitrogen in their tissues than the animals that eat them (primary consumers), and the animals that eat those animals have even higher nitrogen isotope values. We can measure the amount of “heavy” atoms of nitrogen with a unit called δ¹⁵N (“delta 15 N”). A carnivore at the top of the food chain will have a very high δ¹⁵N, while plants will be the lowest. Clams, typically being filter feeders, will usually have an intermediate value, since they’re eating a lot of phytoplankton (tiny microscopic floating algae) and zooplankton (animal plankton that eat other plankton).

But I study a special kind of clam, the giant clams, which have a cheat code enabling them to become giant: they have algae *inside* of their bodies. The algae make food using photosynthesis and share it with their hosts! In exchange, the clams provide the algae with a stable environment free of predators, plenty of fertilizer in the form of their own waste, and even channel extra light to help the symbionts grow faster. This partnership is called photosymbiosis, and is pretty rare in clams, though it is common in other animals like the corals that build the reefs where giant clams are found! Previous researchers have shown that giant clams have very low nitrogen isotopic values in their tissue, like a plant, because they get most of their nutrition from the algae, rather than filter feeding.

I am a sclerochronologist. That means I study the hard parts of animals, in this case the shells of bivalves. Like the rings of tree, bivalves make growth lines in their shells which can serve as a diary of their lives. Some of my past work has looked at using chemistry of the growth lines of giant clams to measure the temperatures they grow at, compare the growth of ancient and modern clams, and even look at how much the clams grow in a day! Today though, I’m talking about my most recent paper, which looks at how we can use the shells of giant clams as a food diary.

But when they’re babies, the symbiosis in giant clams is not yet fully developed. During this early period of their lives, giant clams actually get more of their nutrition from filter-feeding like a “normal” non-photosymbiotic clam, until they’ve had a chance to grow in surface area and become a living solar panel. Like all bivalves, the shells of giant clams are made of calcium carbonate, bound together by a protein scaffold we call the shell organic matrix. Proteins are made of amino acids, which contain nitrogen! If we can get the nitrogen out of the shell from the early part of the clam’s life, and compare it to the nitrogen at the end of the clam’s life, it might record the clam’s transition from filter feeding to its mature plant-like lifestyle! If our hypothesis holds, we should record a decrease through its life in the shell δ¹⁵N values.

A model I made of the clams’ nitrogen intake, with the left plot how they switch from filter feeding to getting most of their nitrogen from dissolved sources around 5-6 years of age. Because the nitrogen isotopes of those two sources are different, that manifests in the expected values from the clam’s body (the right plot)!
A map made by my talented partner, Dana Shultz!

So I gathered a team of talented collaborators and set out to test that hypothesis, using giant clam shells that I was able to get on loan from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Museum. These shells had been confiscated from poachers at the Egypt-Israel border. While I would have rather known these clams were still alive in the waters of the Northern Red Sea, being able to use them for research to understand the biology of their species was the next best thing! I had originally planned on pursuing a postdoc undertaking this project with Rowan Martindale, a professor at UT Austin who has studied the nitrogen isotopes of photosymbiotic corals, but when I started up at Biosphere 2, we ended up continuing with the project anyway as a collaboration! We measured the nitrogen isotopes of the shell material in the lab of Christopher Junium, a professor at Syracuse University, who has developed an exquisitely sensitive method to measure the nitrogen from shell material by essentially burning the shell powder and then scrubbing out unwanted material to isolate the nitrogen, to measure the isotopes in a machine called a mass spectrometer. Katelyn Gray is a specialist in isotopes of biominerals and assisted with drilling out powder from the shells with a Dremel. Shibajyoti Das, now at NOAA, is a specialist in measuring the shell nitrogen isotopes of other bivalves and he was master at doing much of the mass spectrometer work, and assisting in interpretation. Adina Paytan is a professor at UC Santa Cruz. She first provided the funding and support for me to go to the Gulf of Aqaba and collect these shells as part of an NSF-funded student research expedition! She also provided environmental data which helped us to interpret what the clams were actually eating!

A figure showing the four shells we sampled from, with the sampling areas in each hinge area showing colored and matching with the corresponding isotope plot to the right (colored points). 3 of the 4 shells show declines in isotope values with age. Shaded ribbon behind the data shows the model output.

So what did our crack team of scientists find out? We found that three of the four tested giant clams did indeed measure a decline in nitrogen isotopes over the course of their lives. Their earliest growth lines in the hinge areas of their shells record elevated δ¹⁵N values similar to other filter-feeders from the region. But as they aged, their later growth lines show much lower δ¹⁵N values, more like photosymbiotic corals and plants from the region. So clams indeed recorded the transition in nutrition as they became solar-powered! This degree and directionality of change in nitrogen isotopes was much greater than has been observed in any other clams measured in this way, which made sense considering their unique physiology. The clams have another area of the shell, the outer shell layer, which is closer to the symbionts than the hinge area. In this outer shell area, we did not observe much of a consistent trend in nitrogen isotopes. It’s likely that the outer layer is highly influenced by the photosymbionts even at the earliest stages of life.

Growth lines in the hinge area of two of the shells lit from behind, with the drilled areas for this study visible as well. The outer shell layer is the opaque and was also sampled for this study.

There was one clam that differed from the others in showing low δ¹⁵N values through life in its hinge shell layer. To help explain these differences, I created an independent model of the clams’ internal chemistry based on their growth rate, which slows as they age, and also is faster in the summer. When the clams are young filter feeders, they get most of their nitrogen from plankton, debris and other material floating in the water column making up floating material we call Particulate Organic Matter (POM). Meanwhile, when they are in their photosynthetic life stage, they get most of their nitrogen from nitrate, which is essentially Miracle Gro for the symbionts. The model showed that the clams should record a flip from filter feeding to photosynthesis around 4-5 years of age, which was confirmed by three of the shells! But what about the one that didn’t show this trend? My colleague Adina had fortunately measured the isotopes of POM and nitrate in different seasons in the Gulf of Aqaba. We found that in summer, as expected, POM δ¹⁵N is lower than nitrate. In the winter, meanwhile, that relationship is flipped! So if a clam grew more in winter, it would not record the same transition as was seen by the other clams. We think the clam that was the exception to the rule might have been more of a winter grower.

The chaotic nutrient environment of the Northern Red Sea, showing how in different seasons, dissolved nitrate has higher or lower δ¹⁵N values than the Particulate Organic Matter that the clams filter-feed on.

But long story short, we were able to demonstrate for the first time that giant clams show nitrogen isotopic values in their shells in line with expectations from their diet. Other clams have been measured this way, but the fact that we were able to conduct these analyses at all is a testament to the sensitivity of the elemental analyzer in Chris’s lab. Giant clams have *very* low concentrations of organic matter in their shells, so the forward march of technology was a major factor enabling this study to be possible.

Why does it matter that we can measure the transition of the clams from filter-feeding to photosymbiotic in their shell records? Well, giant clams are not the only bivalves which have photosymbionts. There are other clams in the fossil record which have been proposed to have had symbioses with algae, but until now we’ve never had a definitive geochemical way to measure this in fossils. We hope that this approach can be applied to the organic material in fossil shells, which is often well preserved, to see if huge clams in the Cretaceous and Jurassic had a similar way of life to the modern giant clams! If we can demonstrate that was the case, we can see how such species responded to past intervals of climate change, which will help us understand how giant clams will fare in the warming, acidifying ocean of the present.

These results also help explain the lives of giant clams themselves. We hope this kind of data can be used to measure the symbiotic development of giant clams in different places, with different types of food and nitrogen available, where we’d have the potential to measure pollution. Interestingly, the time that the model shows the clams transitioning to photosynthetic maturity is right around the time that they reach reproductive maturity (5-10 years of age). We’d like to investigate whether the time of clam maturity is controlled by the development of their symbiosis, which itself might relate to nutrients in the clams’ environment. If clams can grow faster, then they can mature faster, and potentially reproduce sooner in life. Will giant clams be able to thrive in the presence of increased nitrate, which is a common pollutant in coral reef environments? Like all worthwhile research projects, we have dozens of new questions to pursue as a result of this work, so stay tuned for the next installment in this journey of clam knowledge!

The Mystery of the Giant Clams of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean

On By Dan KillamIn Biology, clamsLeave a comment

I have always been fascinated by scientific discoveries that are hanging right in front of our noses. Cryptic species are one such surprise. Sometimes, researchers using genetic sequencing are surprised to discover that a group of animals that all look the same from the outside are actually reproductively isolated from each other; separate twigs on the tree of life. This surprise has happened over and over in the history of natural science.

It turns out such puzzles are frequent among the giant clams. These unusual bivalves are specialists in coral reef environments, growing to large size with the help of symbiotic algae that create sugars through photosynthesis. Within the genus Tridacna there are ~10 accepted species which vary in size, shape, color and mode of life.

Tridacna squamosina (right) sitting next to the small giant clam T. maxima (left) on the Israeli Red Sea coast

I specialize in the three species known (so far) from the Red Sea, including the small giant clam Tridacna maxima and the fluted giant clam T. squamosa, which are both found worldwide, all the way from the Red Sea to down past the equator along the Great Barrier Reef. The third local species, T. squamosina is more unusual, so far being only known from the Red Sea (an endemic species). T. squamosina is an example of a cryptic species, having previously been assumed to be a local variant of T. squamosa. It looks pretty similar, with long scutes (flap-like appendages) protruding from its shell, thought to help stabilize it on the flat bottom of loose coral rubble. But unlike T. squamosa, T. squamosina lives exclusively at the top of the reef in the shallowest waters closest to the sun. It has a very angular, zig-zag pattern in its plications (the wavy shapes at the edge of the shell) and a characteristic pair of green stripes where the soft tissue meets the edges of the shell. The soft tissue is covered with warty protuberances.

Pictures of details of T. squamosina from Richter et al. 2008

It was only first described in detail in the early 2000s, when an international team of researchers figured out using genetic sequencing that it was a distinct species and named it T. costata. They noted that in their surveys all around the shores of the Red Sea, they only found 13 live specimens, making it an extremely rare and possibly endangered species. Fossil specimens on local reefs appeared to be much more common, suggesting it had a much larger population in the past. Then in 2011, another team at the Natural History Museum in Vienna discovered a shell of one had been forgotten in its collection for over 100 years. Rudolf Sturany, the researcher on the 1895 research cruise who had originally collected the clam, had called it T. squamosina.

The T. squamosina shell in the collection of the Museum of Natural History in Vienna (from Huber and Eschner, 2011)

In taxonomy (the science of naming and classifying organisms), the first team to name the species wins, so the name T. costata was synonymized (retired) in favor of the earlier name T. squamosina, which became the name of record. It must be annoying to spend so much time working to name a species and then discover you had been scooped over a century before! But such is science.

A mystery clam thought to be T. squamosina, later identified as T. elongatissima found off of Mozambique by iNaturalist user bewambay

The strange part was that there were some murmurs over the last few years that T. squamosina was not only found in the Red Sea, but also had been seen along the coast of Africa as far south as Kenya, Mozambique and Madagascar. Divers and snorkelers had taken pictures of a giant clam that did indeed look strangely like T. squamosina, with a zigzag shell opening and green stripes at the edge of its tissue. But some aspects of these individuals seemed off. In the Red Sea, T. squamosina lives freely, not embedded in the coral as these pictures showed, and the geometry of the angles of the shell seemed a bit different. It also would be difficult for T. squamosina to be connected in population from the Red Sea all the way South to Mozambique, as there are natural barriers which would prevent its planktonic larvae from riding currents to intermix between the two regions. When populations are separated by a barrier, the flow of genes between them is cut off and evolution begins to separate the populations from each other until they are separate species, a process called allopatric speciation.

A large specimen of T. elongatissima observed by iNaturalist user dawngoebbels off of Kenya

I figured that someday, researchers would collect tissue samples from these mystery clams to settle whether they were actually T. squamosina or something else. And this year, a team did just that, traveling along the coast of Mozambique, Madagascar, Kenya and other places, collecting samples of tissue to compare how all the different clams they saw were related in a family tree. They genetically sequenced these “clamples” and in the process, found that the mystery clams were a new cryptic species, which they called T. elongatissima!

Shells of T. elongatissima from the Fauvelot et al. 2020 paper
For comparison, a shell of T. squamosina collected off of Sinai, Egypt. You can see why they’re easy to mix up!

T. elongatissima closely resembles T. squamosina, and they are sister species on the bivalve family tree. It’s hard to tell them apart without training. Even a professional would probably mix some of them up if they were all placed sitting next to each other. The major differences appear to relate to shell shape, with T. elongatissima having a less symmetrical shell than T. squamosina, and a bigger opening at the rear hinge for a foot to poke through. The symmetrical shell and closing of the foot opening may represent changes that T. squamosina took on to adapt to be able to sit freely on the bottom, rather than embedding in the coral like T. elongatissima seems to prefer. If you’ve read this far, you may be thinking “Who cares? A clam’s a clam and these look practically the same. Aren’t you just splitting clams at this point?” At the end of the day, a species is a man-made concept; an organizing tool for use by us humans. Species are the characters in our reconstruction of the history of the world. What can we learn about the world by having identified this species T. elongatissima?

A giant clam family tree! Notice T. squamosina and T. elongatissima right next to each other.

The researchers behind the new paper discuss that based on statistical analyses of the genetic differences between the species, the most recent common ancestor for T. elongatissima and T. squamosina probably lived more than 1.4 million years ago! Some researchers have previously suggested that T. squamosina probably began its development as a separate species due to geographic isolation by low sea level, caused by repeated glaciations. With so much water trapped as ice on land during this period, the narrow Strait of Bab al Mandab, currently the gateway to the Red Sea, became a land barrier as sea level fell (kind of like opposite of the Bering Sea land bridge that formed allowing humans to migrate to the Americas). Ancestral clams trapped on the Northern end of this barrier were proposed to have evolved to become the rare T. squamosina.

This has occurred with a variety of species that became Red Sea endemics (meaning they are unique species that evolved in the Red Sea and are found nowhere else), including a unique crown of thorns starfish. The issue is that during this time of low sea level, the Red Sea went through periods where it was a rather unfriendly place for clams to live. All sorts of creatures went extinct in the period when the sea was repeatedly cut off, because the water became extremely salty, along with other unfriendly changes. So it’s unlikely T. squamosina would be present for us to see today if it only lived in the Red Sea throughout the entire length of time.

A map from Fauvelot et al. 2020 showing the distributions of different giant clams the researchers identified along the coasts of Africa and the Red Sea. Notice the bright red dots representing T. squamosina, only found in the Red Sea, while green dots represent T. elongatissima. Notice how the currents (arrows) seem to meet and then go offshore from Kenya. More on that in the next paragraph.

The researchers of this new paper propose that T. squamosina was more likely to have initially branched off due to the barrier of the Horn of Africa. The seas off of Kenya and Somalia harbor a meeting of southward and northward currents which then group and head offshore, away from the reefs that giant clam larvae are trying to get to. So any tiny floating planktonic clam larvae would experience a strong “headwind” preventing them from crossing that point. It would also mean that during times that the Red Sea was not a happy place to be a clam, T. squamosina may have found refuge on the coasts of places like Eritrea, Oman and possibly even as far as Pakistan. During times when sea levels rose and Red Sea conditions became friendlier, it recolonized the area.

As far as we know, the Red Sea is the only place T. squamosina is now found, but it may well be present elsewhere like Yemen or Oman. If T. squamosina was found in other regions, it would be tremendously important for its conservation. Right now, the species is thought to be extremely rare, with a very small native range. If it inhabited a broader area, that would mean more reservoirs of genetic diversity. This would reduce the odds that it will go extinct as reefs are put under stress from climate change, pollution and overharvesting. To survive as a species, it helps to not put all your eggs in one basket. If you’re only found in one small place, it increases the chances that a disaster (like climate change) will wipe you out.

The only way we will know for sure is to visit reefs in understudied places like Yemen, Oman, Pakistan, Eritrea and Somalia, to understand the richness of the giant clams present. These areas are understudied for various reasons: lack of research funding for non-Western researchers, lack of interest from the scientific community too focused on familiar places, and geopolitical situations that make it difficult to conduct research. But I hope someday to collaborate with people in these countries to better understand the giant clams present in such understudied regions of the globe. It is virtually certain that there are more species of giant clams, both alive and as fossils, waiting to be discovered.

Israel: Field Report!

On By Dan KillamIn travel, UncategorizedLeave a comment

So I’ve been living in Israel since the start of November after a whirlwind of defending my PhD, moving out of Santa Cruz forever and suddenly moving to another continent for a postdoc. I’ve been working on clams, taking samples, using an SEM and planning a new manuscript, but I have also been learning a lot about living in a country that is at once strangely familiar and completely foreign. I’m coming back to California tomorrow for a Holiday break, so I took an hour to reflect on what I’ve learned about this country so far. Here are some random things I’ve learned about Israel during my time here.

Israel is small

Capture.PNG

Israel is a tiny country by my Californian standards. You can take a bus along the entire length of it in less than seven hours. I am in Haifa on the farthest northern part of the Mediterranean coast, but in 2016, I lived down in Eilat for two months. Despite its small size, Israel has a variable climate depending on where you are. Up in Haifa, they have have a classic Mediterranean climate which reminds me of California in a lot of ways (think chaparral and coastal dunes, though a little more humid than I’m used to and with more thunderstorms). The Negev desert is in the South, which is intensely dry, hot and sometimes completely devoid of vegetation.

Happy naturalists!

Hooded crow in Haifa
House crow in Eilat

For birders, I’ve noticed the North is dominated by hooded crows from Europe while the South is dominated by house crows, an Asian species. In general, because they’re at the nexus between Europe, Asia and Africa and the gradient between those ecoregions, Israel and the Middle East overall are very biodiverse. As a result, there is a vibrant culture of naturalists in this country who want to know about every aspect of every species. When I post something to my iNaturalist, within a few hours someone who is an expert on that taxon confirms or corrects me, without fail.

Delicious food+drink

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Living here, I have been subsisting of a diet based largely on hummus, falafel, shawerma, tahini (try the dark kind!) and pita, with plenty of veggies thrown in. In fact, there are restaurants where they just serve you a bowl of hummus with pita and you have at it. Be prepared for the food coma. For beers, I guess Danish beer companies got a big foothold here early on because the defaults are Carlsberg, Tuborg, Heineken etc. The biggest native Israeli brewery is Gold Star, and they’re not bad! And there are a growing number of Israeli craft breweries. Overall I approve, though they sometimes experiment a bit too much and taste odd, and a lot of them don’t really seem to know what an IPA is.

Cultural diversity

Israel, as you may or may not have heard, is indeed a very complicated place. There is no doubt that the tensions are high between Israelis and Palestinians and Hezbollah and Iran, which is often in the news. But day to day on the ground, Israel is a very safe place and safer than what I’m used to in the States. The crime rate is much lower than almost everywhere in the US, and I can walk around Haifa at night without ever feeling at risk. That is more than I can say for Santa Cruz and many parts of LA.

Haifa is a special place. It is a uniquely diverse city with a significant Arab population. The student body at the University of Haifa is over 30% Arab in descent and I can walk through hearing four languages in one hallway. The main temple of the Baha’i faith is here in Haifa.

There are Israeli Jews of all sorts of backgrounds, including Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Yemeni, Ethiopian and more. There are secular Jews, Conservative Jews, Orthodox Jews and the Haredim (Ultra-Orthodox), along with myriad others I haven’t learned about yet. There also is a huge population throughout Israel of Russian Jews who came here following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russian is spoken heavily here and is on the street signs. Like America, Israel is a hugely diverse place and I believe could be a great strength for their future growth and prosperity.

Language and cultural challenges

As a secular American, there were some parts of Israel that have proved challenging to adapt to. The biggest challenge for me by far is that Israel’s national language is Hebrew, which is a very challenging language to learn. I now know the numbers, some letters and some words, but there’s no way I’m going to be able to pick up conversational Hebrew during my time here. And as all foreigners know, not being able to read and write makes literally everything about “adulting” more difficult. I have had to learn never to assume that English is understood here. I speak slowly and use hand gestures. I do everything in person, never over the phone. Trying to do something logistical over the phone has not once worked. Seriously, don’t even entertain the notion of trying to do stuff in English over the phone here.

Instead, I recommend going to the place you need to go, ask the person for help with a dumb blank smile on your face, and people will try to help you do what you need to do, whether that is opening a bank account, getting your bus card, or signing a lease for your apartment. People here are generally very direct and no-nonsense in everyday business dealings, but they also have proven very generous and willing to help me, which is not something I can say about service in America. However, on the rare occasions when I’ve found someone who speaks English, is available, and is exactly the person who can help me with the task at hand, I feel as though I should drop to my knees and thank the God of Abraham for his mercy. Day to day life here is tough for a non-Hebrew speaker.

If there was one aspect of life in Israel which I will openly complain about, it is Shabbat (from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday). In most of the Western world, we take for granted that Saturday and Sunday are the days of rest. But here in Israel, it is Friday and Saturday, and Israel is very hardcore about their days of rest. On Shabbat, any eating establishment that wants to be Kosher has to be closed. Almost all public transport is shut down.

There are a small number of more secular, diverse cities, luckily including Haifa, where a couple buses stay running Friday night and Saturday. But on Saturday, if I realize I need groceries, my choice is to splurge on a cab or walk 25 minutes down to the nearest 24/7 market (basically a convenience store). There is a reason Shabbat is a big deal in Israel and I get it. There is no other country on Earth where Jews of all creeds and colors can know that they will get to observe Shabbat in the way it was practiced by their ancestors. But for me as a secular person without a car, it presents a lot of logistical challenges.

Miscellaneous

Here is a list of other things I found notable and unexpected about life in Israel

  • They really like malls. There are new malls opening everywhere and they are always full of people. As an American, I think of malls as very last century, but they’re still the main social place here for many people.
  • They don’t really use mops. Instead, they use giant squeegees to clean their floors. I still don’t get how to use one.
  • When you sign a lease, many landlords want twelve pre-signed checks. I thought this was very strange (where do they keep them?!) and then noticed an option in the ATM to save checks for “safe-keeping.” Weird.
  • Israel is a cell phone paradise. I can get an unlocked SIM card with 30 gb of data, unlimited voice and text for $21.50. This is absolutely insane. How is this possible?
  • In Israel, they charge tenants a bimonthly property tax. That is annoying!
  • People say Israel is super expensive and yes, prices on food and basics are somewhat high by standards of some US States. But coming from California, I have been so relieved. I now can afford to live in my own apartment and pay <25% of my income on rent rather than 50%. I can once again stay under $10-15 a day on food which wasn’t possible for me in California for the last couple years. So I have more discretionary income for fun stuff which has been refreshing.
  • As I’ve noticed in Europe as well, it’s fun paying with coins! They have 10, 5, 2, and 1 shekel coins and I find myself actually using them, unlike the useless pocket change in the states that I just save to trade in later. There are around 3.7 shekels to the dollar.
  • They have an excellent bus system (except Friday or Saturday 😉 ). Buses come by frequently in all parts of Haifa, are clean, and cost about $1.50 per ride (1/3 less than that if you set up your student access card). The bus card allows you to connect for free within a certain time period as well.
  • Most locks in Israel use keys on the inside and outside. I’m not sure if this is an Israel-specific thing, or just something the rest of the world has that the US doesn’t, but it was surprising to see that I’d have to use my key to lock my front door from inside.
  • They have smarter crosswalks in Haifa that generally bridge over a median, with two separate pedestrian lights. You may have to stop in the middle but it means less risk of someone doing a turn and hitting you, and that is good urban planning in my book. Eilat has done away with streetlights altogether, completely converting to roundabouts. I frickin love roundabouts.
  • Israel has a semi private system of healthcare, but with generally very high quality care and low cost.
  • In Israel, life is completely transformed by their mandatory military service. While I have been out of college for a few years, many Israelis are only just starting college as they enter their late 20s after being discharged. So the student body trends older at Israeli universities.
  • I thought I’d stick out as an American goy being here, but apparently I don’t. People keep asking me for directions in Hebrew and Russian and I just say “sorry, English only”, and they look at me with disappointment. I guess I can say I look Jewish!

In conclusion, I have enjoyed my time in Israel so far, and I have found myself just watching life going on around me with great curiosity, because it is a very interesting place full of constant unexpected moments. Let me know if any of you visit anytime soon 🙂