Field Trip

No you didn't read that wrong.

Yes, grown men (sorry if you object to the usage of that term ;)) went on a field trip. Tuesday morning, the L.A. Smicha class of 2006, hopped into a fleet of cars and left their home base. Their destination? Corona, home of the cheese and egg plants! (No not the purple vegetable type eggplant. I mean the place they process chicken eggs... You know, the egg plant ;))

So there we were, on the road again. Drivin' like wild with the wind in our hair, and the sun in our hearts (don't ask me what that's supposed to mean). We were on our way! Footloose and fancy free! No one and nothing could stop us now... We stopped almost immediately because of our empty gas tank. Pulling over into one of the numerous overpriced providers of petroleum (lotsa P's in that sentence), we took out a second mortgage on our dorm, and topped off our tank. Then we were on the road again! With the wind in our hair, and the sun... Ok I'll stop now :).

Fast forward an hour. Nothing interesting happened on the drive, unless you count me falling asleep ( I wasn't driving at the time ;)). We arrived in the parking lot of the cheese plant. That must have been quite a shock for the poor secretary. About 30 bearded men piling into an office the size of a bathroom.

They dressed us up in these ridiculous outfits. Lab coats, hair and beard nets, safety goggles, and hard hats.

Say cheeeese ;)

I'm still trying to figure out what the hard hats and safety goggles were for. To protect us from a runaway wheel of violent Monterey Jack? Or maybe to ensure our safety from the infamous out of control Cheddar cubes? Either way, we learned a lot. It was interesting to hear what they said, and compare it to what we're learning in the books. It's pretty cool how we knew so much so long ago, that science only figured out recently.

From there, it was off to the egg plant (insert vegetable joke here). This tour was my favorite - There were so many cool machines! From the knives that sliced open the shells so the yolk could drop in little cups, to the wires that sliced a hard boiled egg perfectly in half. The rolling pin that shelled the eggs, and the suction cup thingy that could pick up dozens of eggs at the same time! Like I said, lotsa machines :).

They made us dress up here too (see other pic), but no safety goggles or hard hats. Just thicker hair nets. They also gave out blue lab coats, but there weren't enough. Good thing Levi kept his cheese plant coat, I used that. I didn't see a single chicken the entire time we were there, but maaaaan did it smell!

Levi, Meir, and I then bade farewell to the eggs, and made our way to Irvine. The scenery in Corona is incredible. Check Levis blog, he may have posted some pics. We chilled with the Tenenbaums for a bit, had dinner, then made our way back to L.A. where we attended a wedding. The guy was from NMB no less! So that was cool. Then we headed back to yeshiva, and crashed (into our beds, not a car or a pole or something. Sheesh people...). We were exhausted. Must have been all the driving, learning, and dancing...