Mom and Dad come to visit and Tal's wedding

My Mom and Dad were here a few weeks back and we had so much fun together. It was a whirlwind trip packed with activities, food, spending time together, food, Tal and Ariel's wedding, food, exploring Tel Aviv, food, vacation from work, food and oh yes, how could I forget, food. :)


They arrived on a Monday night and after giving them a quick tour of my place (where they'd be staying; I stayed with Leora and Ariel) we headed off to the nicest restaurant in Tel Aviv, Messa. Eating here was not simply a meal, but rather, an experience. The decor, the ambiance, the lighting, and the mood all pointed to why Messa is considered one of the top 80 restaurants in the world. The night was full of amazing tastes, great conversation, excellent drinks and topped off with fabulous desserts. This meal foreshadowed one thing that my family loves to do - eat. This is a picture of the five us at Messa.

Since they were only here for five days and five nights, we hit the ground running the next morning and visited an exhibit that I'd wanted to see (well, really visit, not see) for quite some time. We journeyed down to Holon, a suburb of Tel Aviv, and visited an exhibit called Dialogue in the Dark. For an hour and fifteen minutes you are led around in total darkness simulating what it's like to be blind. In fact, the tour guide is either blind or greatly visually impaired. It's in a completely enclosed environment that has been constructed to capture the sights and sounds of a normal day. After an hour you are brought to a cafe and you buy your food and eat in the dark. It is a really great experience and for those readers in Israel, I highly recommend checking it out. You can read more about it here. From there we headed off to a nice luncheon with the YouLicense Team and noshed on a traditional Middle Eastern meal while overlooking the Mediterranean. This is a picture of Mom and I after the meal. To finish off the day we headed out to Rehovot to visit with the family two days before the wedding.

On Wednesday we took a mini-bus to Jerusalem. We started off the Jerusalem experience with some traditional Israeli street food, schwarma. After getting some shopping done for presents for people back in the States, we headed to Yad Vashem - the Holocaust Memorial Museum. I don't want to go into too much detail here, but suffice it to say that the new addition to the museum is incredibly well done and manages to portray the horrors of that dark age in a clear manner. It was one of the saddest places I've ever been to and is a must see for any visitor to Israel. We were there for three hours, but the memories creep back into the mind a long time after that. That night we went to Abu Gosh, an Arab village just outside of Jerusalem that has the most delicious hummus in the country. We met up with my friend, Aaron, who lives nearby and while we were eating my cousins unexpectedly ended up at the exact same restaurant - quite the coincidence. Here's a picture of us. Don't I have the cutest little cousins in the world??

Thursday was the big day, the main event and the reason for my parents' visit - cousin Tal's wedding. This really deserves a post of its own, so I will wait until next time to write about it. For now I'll put up a couple of pix. Suffice it to say that we had a great time, Tal and Ariel are now a very happily married couple, the wedding was tons of fun and again, the food was stellar. More details will be coming soon. At left you have my aunt and uncle and the happy couple. At right you can see the dance floor - all night party!

Friday and Saturday we relaxed. We had a fun Shabbat dinner out in Rehovot with my family. Cousins Joann and Brad (from Pittsburgh) and family hosted everyone for a fun and meaningful get together. Saturday we spent walking around Tel Aviv, throwing the football on the beach with Dad, walking down the boardwalk with Mom and eating dinner at the Port.

I was sad to say goodbye to my parents on Saturday night, but we have many happy memories from the week we spent together. Definitely the hardest part about living in Israel is how far I am from my family and I look forward to the next time I get to see them - sister Paula's wedding.

So, until next time, Merry Christmas to my Christian readers and Happy Movie Watching and Chinese Food Eating to my Jewish readers:)

YouLicense - The Online Music Licensing Marketplace

I have a great job. Make sure you check it out - www.youlicense.com

How in the heck did a guy who studied International Affairs and Spanish end up working in the music industry you ask? Pure coincidence...

When I got to Israel I was determined to put all my energy into learning Hebrew and focusing on ulpan and once I felt comfortable with that go out and look for a job. However, if I've learned one thing in the last 7 years, it's things often don't happen as you planned. As fate would have it, my Israeli sister, Leora, passed my resume along to YouLicense and only a month after getting here I was being called in for an interview. After meeting the CEO, Maor Ezer, and the VP of Marketing, Tomer Kaplan (pictured at right), I was convinced that this was a great opportunity to be part of an exciting start-up company and a very original idea. Fortunately, the feelings were mutual and they agreed to take me on part-time until ulpan finished even though they wanted a full-time employee.

What is YouLicense? We are the online music licensing marketplace. We've created a platform that allows people who have musical content (artists, labels, publishers) to interact directly with companies/people who want to license music. We function much the same way Ebay functions, with an easy to use website where buyers and sellers can interact in a safe and secure environment. We provide a medium for both small and big musicians to license their songs for use in TV, film, ads, ringtones, public events and many other uses. We feature phenomenal Indie artists, bands, dj's, composers as well as other creators of music. We have a very unique search system that is very beneficial to people looking to license music. Users can come and search for music via genre, style, mood, instruments and other options. Additionally, we have a new option on our site called 'Opportunities' that allows a business to create a post specifying their project and what type of sound they are looking for and then receive targeted submissions from our ever growing catalog of artists. We have been open for business only since the beginning of August and have already had many deals made via our site and tremendous feedback. We were selected as a finalist in the Popkomm Music Festival as one of the most innovative start-ups in the music industry. Go check us out and see for yourself just how cool we are - www.youlicense.com

What do I do at YouLicense? I work as part of the Professional Services team. When we bring in big publishers or labels, I work hands on with them uploading their content to our site and ensuring that their artists are well-represented via their profile page. This work is very specific and I have to be very careful not to make mistakes. Also, I help with writing press releases, editing content on our site and providing feedback from our clients. Lastly, I make cold-calls. I call potential buyers from all over the world and invite them to come see YouLicense for themselves. I have had success with this in large part because we are making people who license music lives easier and their job better. We have thousands of artists from all over the world on our site and are the future of the music licensing business. If you have any questions about who we are or what we do, shoot me an e-mail at evan@youlicense.com.

So now I'm here with our office view overlooking the Mediterranean. Life isn't too bad...

The next post will have lots of pictures. My Mom and Dad were here a few weeks ago and I'm going to write another long post for that:)

Have a good week everybody!

Ulpan is over

I've been here for five months. Five months! Wow, time has both flown by and at the same time it feels like I've been here for a long time and can't remember what things were like before I arrived.

Anyway, ulpan is over. Tomorrow marks the last day of class and the first night of Chanukah. Today we had a party in my class to celebrate our crazy Hebrew journey together and also to sample food from all over the world. When ulpan first started there were probably around 30 people in the class, about 60% women and at least 10 different countries represented. This morning we were down to about a group of 15 and I was the only guy who had survived the class; most of the others had dropped down to another level or just completely left the ulpan for one reason or another.

I was put in charge of the party by my teacher and I must admit that I thought I did a lousy job of organizing it. However, to my surprise, it really came off well and there was way more than enough food from many parts of the globe. We had food from Russia, Peru, Estonia, Finland, the States, Israel, Georgia (the country), and more. It was a great spread and we enjoyed spending a few hours together visiting and reflecting on how much we had learned. Our teacher, Ayelet, was very sweet and wrote us each a card describing how we interacted in the classroom.

Nu (hurry up), so how's my Hebrew you ask? I'd say it's kacha-kacha (so-so) but I guess it's a little bit better than that. I understand a fair amount when people are talking and I'm beginning to hold my own in conversation (though at times I feel 100% lost). It will really be on me to improve it over the next 3 or 4 months because I am going to be taking a nice long break from studies. I start full-time at YouLicense (www.youlicense.com) on Wednesday where I've been working 25 hours a week for the last four months. A post will be coming soon about my work...

Now that I'm not in school and less busy, I'll try and kick these posts up to every 5 days or so. Stay tuned for these future stories: My parents' visit and my job.

Til next time, you stay classy San Diego. (name that movie:)