65 And Sunny!

The first week of Ulpan is over, and it seems like it went too quickly for my tastes.

I'm getting a little bit better at reading, and more adept at flipping from Hebrew to English in my head, which is nice.

My teacher, Mazal, is a very cheerful, short, motherly type with a "delightful personality!" She's very patient with us, and I think everyone loves her at this point, though it took some people a few days to catch on to the Israeli sense of humor.

In my way, I've managed to make friends with a few people from every clique that's formed in the past week, so most of my friends don't like each other overly much. I appear to have developed a knack for making friends with people who are much more religious than I am- which confuses the hell out of me, as I can't imagine what would make a religious person want to come near me. I would think they'd be afraid I'd get my blasphemy on them! Maybe they're curious about how real people live, or maybe they secretly want to win me over- either way, they're in for a disappointment, I think.

One of the more amusing people I've met is my roommate Simcha, who is radically right wing but *not* very religious. Since I'm a hop, skip, and a jump from socialism, we yell at each other pretty much constantly. But in a nice way, as he is one of those rare people who can have an intense, angry, loud, passionate debate while laughing at himself, at me, at the world, and then be perfectly friendly when the debate is done. Dror, another of my roommates, is the same and joins in as well, but she works weird hours so I see her less often.

Today was a beautiful day, sunny and peaceful and warm(ish), so we went and sat on the grass outside for most of the day. There's a patch of grass surrounded by lavender bushes in the students village, and you can see the Dome of the Rock if you sit there. Beautiful day, good books, good company, great view.

One week in Israel gone, and at this point the only complaint I have is that, well, one week is gone!

The Dawn of War

Today began my war against the Hebrew language. So far? I'm losing.

My impressions of the Ulpan class are mixed. In some ways, the level they put me in is very easy. I understand everything the teacher says, and can talk with her plainly and freely. Already after four days of wandering around Jerusalem talking to shopkeepers and bus/taxi drivers, my grasp on the language is coming back. But today, I discovered a different Hebrew, the dark side of the language, if you will- classroom Hebrew.

Classroom Hebrew has a whole new world of things I never wanted to know- root words, verb groups, conjugation patterns, vowel patterns, grammatical rules, tenses, and all of the fun things that I've never thought about in the same breath as Hebrew. While I speak very nearly fluently, and the only thing I lack is a wide vocabulary, grammar is a new concept to me entirely, and it isn't fun yet.

The other kids in the class have had years and years of classroom Hebrew, and this is what that means- they have trouble forming even the simplest sentence, to answer questions like where are you from and where did you study Hebrew. But they have at least heard of roots before, and they read quickly and with an ease that absolutely stuns me, considering they probably have little idea what the words mean. My reading, on the other hand, comes slowly and with an enormous effort.

It's incredibly frustrating, I think, to try to learn a language you already sort of know. It almost seems easier to walk into a class knowing nothing than knowing a little bit, or the wrong thing. I now understand why native Spanish speakers have so much trouble in high school Spanish- when you're fluent in a language, why would you care what the subjunctive tense is? But I will have to care, because the only way (apparently) to learn new words is to pick up the grammar as much as I can.

So the first day of the Hebrew war was, I think, a rout of sorts. But I am regrouping for a fresh attack (at dawn. Ugh. So early.). I'm doing extra exercises from the book, in addition to the assigned ones, and have every intention of buying myself some Dr Seuss books to struggle through. Hopefully the situation will improve!

A Fuzzy Little Feeling...

Yesterday I had a chance to explore- for the first, last, and only time- the religious side of Jerusalem.

The day before, when we walked into the student village, an odd looking man was standing in the courtyard, talking to a few other people from the Rothberg school. We stopped by to see what was what, and he turned out to be Jeff Seidell, who runs the Jeff Seidell Student Center. He told us his friend Tzipporah was having a Shabbat lunch for students, and we were welcome to go. This sounded just fine to me, so I said sure. Little did I know what I was getting myself into.

The next morning, me and the other kids who were going met Tzipporah's husband Yakov and a younger man as well at the north gate. I knew something was up when I saw Yakov, with his long beard and tzitzit, and the younger man looking so very pale and thin and strange. I got a funny feeling about it when I noticed that the two of them shook all the guys' hands, but just nodded at all the girls. But I didn't know how truly bad it was until we got to Tzipporah's house.

Let's start by saying I was the only woman in the building wearing pants. In case that wasn't uncomfortable enough, men and women were sitting clumped at opposite ends of a long table, so I was subjected to a few hours of girl talk- OY. Tzipporah, as it turns out, is an ultra-Orthodox American Jew who made aliyah a few years ago and lived in a West Bank settlement for a few years. I got along better with her 2-year-old daughter than with her (the 2-year-old didn't really talk).

We talked a little bit of politics, but I tried to steer away from that, because we all know I have some trouble keeping my mouth shut. Tzipporah firmly believes that the recent archaeological find that appears to support the existence of the first Temple is an obvious sign that everything ever written about Judaism is true. We talked a little bit about history- and how Jews had to pay special "taxes" under Ottoman rule because of a verse in the Quran that says that Jews are allowed to practice, but not with their "heads held high." This, according to Tzipporah, is why the Arabs hate us. I think there might be some other reasons too, but again I kept my mouth shut and made, instead, a mild comment on how the Quran seems to contradict itself in a lot of places, calling for jihad and preaching tolerance at the same time. Tzipporah observed that we're lucky because the Torah never contradicts itself. I, again, did not say anything. I guess throughout the conversation I was pretty quiet, because I don't think there is a lot I can say about anything to ultra-Orthodox Jews from the settlements who never served in the army and refuse to wear pants without offending someone.

The only truly positive things I can say are these: the food was good, and we managed to escape from that awful place after only 2 and a half hours. Thank God.

After that ordeal, me and a few friends walked to the overlook on Mount Scopus to read and watch the view of the city- which, yesterday, included a building on fire in one of the Arab neighborhoods. In the evening we took the bus to Ben Yehuda street and had some shawarma for dinner. We also made the grim discovery that Kinder has stopped making chocolate eggs. There are now Disney chocolate eggs with little Disney characters in them that you don't have to build. Not nearly as much fun, but we still got a Winnie the Pooh and Minnie Mouse.

We tried to take the bus home, but for some reason Bus 19 to Mount Scopus never came. We saw Bus 71 pass about 30 time- I have to figure out where it goes, so that I can move there! Eventually we gave up and took two cabs. I ended up with 3 of the guys, and when we all got in the cab, the driver immediately exclaimed about how enormous the guys were. I suppose I'm used to the general dimensions of American men, and they seem like perfectly normal sized men to me, but I guess if you compare, Israeli men are decidedly slimmer. Poor boys!

I chatted with the taxi driver about this and that- chatting with drivers is an excellent way to practice a language, the goal being to trick the driver into thinking that you speak it fluently- and discovered that he doesn't like the ultra-religious people any more than I do. My parents have told be that the taxi drivers are a good barometer of political opinions, so I guess on this issue I'm pretty mainstream.

Today we are going to campus to get oriented, and tomorrow the adventure really kicks off with the Ulpan!

Anchors away....

3 hours in Newark airport, 10.5 hours on a plane, 2 hours in customs/immigration, and 1 hour on a bus later, here I am in my brand spankin' new 8th floor apartment in the student village.

When we landed, it was raining like I've never seen it rain in Israel, which kind of glorious. The road to Jerusalem was lined with shockingly green fields, as opposed to the brown and grey I've been accustomed to. We dragged our suitcases around for a little while on arrival, trying to find the right building, and finally I waltzed into apartment 81, my home for at least the next four months.

I'm not 100% clear on my roommates' names, but here's what I've learned today:

Girl is an American graduate student who made aliyah last year.

Boy #1 is an Israeli with American parents doing a double degree in medicine and law (undergraduate, which apparently you can do here)

Boy #2 is an Arab Israeli from the North who doesn't speak English very well, but is also studying medicine and thinks brains are as cool as I do.

Boy #3 is an Israeli with British parents. Instead of introducing himself when he walked in and saw me in the kitchen, he said "I have a space heater. You should take it." It would seem that I look cold!

After/in between meeting all the roommates and unpacking in my **SINGLE** room, I took a nap underneath a couple of coats- as hobos do- because I didn't have any blankets yet. I later found out that most of the people I came here with did similarly odd things.

At 3PM we convened to walk to the University. We thought we were just going to see where the international school building was, and the cafeterias and such. What actually happened was, after a red eye flight, two hours of sleep, and having not eaten a proper meal since the night before, we were sent to a classroom and told to write an essay in Hebrew.

Now, I'm not upset because I have gotten my revenge already. They made me write the essay, but now they have to read my barely coherent, impossibly spelled, occasionally made-up words. Hah! Take that!

After that we went to a mall for people to get necessities (like, for instance, blankets). I met my uncle Zion there and he brought me lots of good things, including cake and two blankets! My Hebrew was stretched to its limits and beyond, but I'm very happy that I was able to have a perfectly legitimate conversation for over an hour with him. This whole becoming-fluent thing might work out after all.

16 Days...

In just over two weeks, I'm fleeing the country to spend a few months soaking up the Jerusalem wind and rain (and eventually sun).

Because I'm not sure y'all can survive 6 months without my wit and charm (let's be honest, who can resist?), follow my adventure here!

Love, Effe