So I'm really bad at keeping this up. Maybe my lack of replies to all your wonderful emails makes a little more sense now. I guess its because I don't know how I feel, so I don't know what to write here. But enough is enough, so here I go.
I am in Israel. Living in the student village (Kfar Studentim) of Hebrew University on Mount Scopus (Har Hatzofim), the highest point in Jerusalem. The dorms have little kitchens though no stoves and are white and now have very nearly only foreign students here and the lawn is manicured and the grass is so rough it hurts and I don't like it much though I have a pretty amazing view from my bedroom window of the Old City and the Desert and if I crane my neck far enough out even the Dead Sea.
I have been here one month already, in Ulpan, or Hebrew study, from 8:30 to 1:15 Sunday through Thursday. I am in the lowest level, but I now know so much Hebrew! Wow, going from zero to sixty in a matter of weeks even with speaking English almost always outside of class is really something. Hebrew is a pretty easy language to learn. It comes easier to me than most other people in my class, I'm not even one of those people who has a natural genius of languages. I met someone this weekend who knows Spanish just from living through the 90s' telenovela craze in Israel in her teenage years! My having studied Spanish certainly does make this venture a lot easier.
There are perhaps 15 people in my class. A handful of French students about to start their first year of university in Israel; a handful of American college students; a German man who, as my college graduate friend explained, is a "real adult", working for the German consolute or the like, recently transferred to Israel; a German girl Demaris who is doing a joy year of Graduate school here; an American nurse who just moved here with her husband who is doing his masters in Biblical studies, and an Israeli? Palestinian? Jordanian? (she has all three passports) girl who lives in Bethlaham and just graduated from high school. We have two teachers, Maya and Ronit, who switch mornings and afternoons to give us two different perspectives. The curriculum is very structured, we use the book Hebrew From Scratch which coincidentally is published by the Hebrew University (its the same one used in the states) but the vocabulary in each lesson is very random. For example, in today's lesson I learned that to ogle (someone) is ...עושה ל, Telephone (the game) is טלפון שבור, luck, the sign of the zodiac, is מזל, and a shoe is נעל. Now make a sentence using all our new vocabulary.
But really, Ulpan is good. It goes extremely fast. My one complaint are the chairs, which kill my back and make me squirm. I have three weeks left, then I am off to Turkey and then to Egypt! Wow, world travelers don't rest.
Speaking of which, several weekends ago the student activities office at the Rotherberg Internatioanl School of Hebrew University organized a trip to the Golan Heights for a night. As part of this adventure, we stopped to say Hi to Syria:
For the most part, though, I am sticking it out here in Jerusalem. I do not consider myself a city girl by any means in the least, but the other dad my mom pointed out to me that I'm not entirely not a city girl (Hebrew double negatives are enveloping me), I live in Portland and like it and here I am in Jerusalem. How is this happening? I suppose its a bit true, though I would never prefer it. Jerusalem is difficult because it is tourist capital of Israel (Hmm, wonder why..?) which really puts me in a funk. On the plus side, its absolutely fascinating!!!
What's that? The Kotel? Dome of the Rock? A huge crowd of Jews? Oh, no big deal, just my back yard.I spend a lot of time at the Shuk, the outdoor food market.
See those dried figs? A pound for just under $2.50.Wow, the other night I took a taxi home from Kabbalat Shabbat services downtown (the entire country's bus system, Egged, stops running an hour before Shabbat starts on Friday until a half hour after Shabbat ends on Saturday. By the way, an interesting note: the first several buses from downtown on Saturday are free, due to all the people coming back from shabbat services in the Old City because it is part of Jewish observance to not carry anything or spend money on Shabbat.) Halfway home, however, we met a roadblock, and a human one at that. Perhaps 50 Haredis (very observant Jews) - men, women, and children, were blocking a main road right near the Western Wall in protest of a parking lot for the Wall staying open on Shabbat. So there's some pretty apparent contradiction at work here. These people are upset because Jews are not to work on Sabbath, and Jerusalem is a Jewish city; Shabbat is a Day of Rest. Yet, here they are becoming heated and filled with anymosity, going so far as to throw bricks at cars (remember that part about not carrying anything on Shabbat?). Furthermore, a tenent of Judaism which personally is very important to me is that one is to be careful not to make others uncomfortable. My taxi driver Yacob tried to drive through but was stopped by men laying down in front of his car egged on by angry shouts reminding us what day it was (you're not supposed to drive on Shabbat!). To each his own, if only it could be possible. Only this week I learned that Jerusalem recently elected a new governer, who for the first time is secular, thus inciting the reactions of the haredi community concerned at the trend towards secularism in this holy of holy cities. As Yacob kept repeating, "Holy land, not holy people."
Ima called me on the telephone. I was distracted talking with her, then I turn around, and see two live fish flapping about wholeheartedly in this here box.
The edge of the Shuk where all the boxes are relagated to.
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