Everyday Happenings and Brand New Hobbies

Greetings from J-ru! J-lem? Jru seems to be the more popular with folks around here.

At any rate, hello! I have been getting asked (more like bugged!) a bunch about when this new blog post was gonna hit the cyberwaves, so here it finally is. Up until now I have been waiting for exciting, noteworthy things to happen so that I would have something "important" to blog about. The problem is, as I'm sure you all know well, usually life is kinda mundane, and when the routine takes over it might be weeks before anything unique occurs. So I've decided to change my tactic and use this blog as a place to write thoughts and feelings that arise while I'm living here in Jerusalem as well as the standard travel blog. Sound good? I hope so.

As for what's been going on lately:

Ulpan is ulpan. It's going well, I'm learning a ton, and my Hebrew seems to be improving every day. The only problem is that it's painfully boring and tedious.

I will interrupt this paragraph of complaints to say one thing that has struck me as quite interesting in my Ulpan experience: My Ulpan class has 7 Arab Israeli students who grew up in Jerusalem, and make up about 1/3 of the class. They have lived in Jerusalem all of their lives and for the most part understand Hebrew perfectly, but they are in Ulpan in order to improve their reading/writing skills so that they can go to Israeli universities. I didn't expect this to be the case, but our Ulpan book is full of texts and stories about Judaism, both Biblical and contemporary. We've read about the sacrifice of Isaac, different rituals of the Ultra Orthodox in Israel, and many other similar things. Maybe this shouldn't surprise me, after all I am living in a Theocracy, but somehow I didn't expect that a textbook so full of religious studies would have found such a welcome at Hebrew University, the nation's most prestigious academic institution. Then again I guess I understand that it is in the best interest of the State to include Jewish education when it comes to teaching new immigrants, the majority of Ulpan students. Aaaanyway, I can imagine that if I were one of the Arab Israeli students it might strike me as a bit strange. In addition, our teachers always ask these students to tell something about Islam when we read about Judaism. This is a great idea because it shows that they're trying to be inclusive and sensitive. The only problem is, all but one of them are Christian. For some reason none of them have chosen to tell the teachers that, and nearly every day we have awkward moments of our teacher asking, "So how is the Ramadan fast going?" and the students looking at her with blank faces. This is just a small example of the incredibly complicated, interesting dynamics of this region.

Okay, back to the complaining: While I'm certainly emotionally invested in learning Hebrew, the act of learning it all day every day is not the most spiritually stimulating of tasks. This situation along with the fact that the "oh man I'm living in a new place and everything is so exciting!" feeling was quickly turning into the "oh yeah, this is where I live" feeling were kinda getting me down. I was feeling a bit bored and very antsy, so I decided that I needed a new hobby! On the evening of a day when I had been feeling particularly glum about the routine, I found myself singing in the shower and feeling happier than I had in days (I think I really missed being able to sing all summer because I wasn't able to work at Camp Tawonga this year) and thought it time to finally take up guitar. Let's be honest with ourselves here. Who HASN'T dreamed of sitting in the grass under beautiful oak trees playing their favorite (insert famous classic rock band here) song? So I was walking around mulling this idea over when I ran into my friend Aucher after a long day of Ulpan. Aucher (pronounced Oh-Share) grew up in L.A. the daughter of Israeli parents, and is simply my kinda girl. It turned out that she was on her way to, you guessed it, a guitar lesson! She had stumbled upon a jam session in a basement coffee shop in downtown Jerusalem and asked one of the guys if he would teach her to play. When she found out that I had been thinking of picking up the guitar that very same day she invited me to come along, and I went! The guitar lesson was held on the roof of Daniel's (the hippie bohemian Israeli dude) apartment, and it was conducted IN HEBREW. AND I UNDERSTOOD IT!! This, my friends, was a big deal. So now it looks like I'm picking up a new, fun hobby and getting additional Hebrew practice out of it as well as fun time with a new friend. I must say I am rather pleased. In general I've realized that I need to start being more proactive about hanging out with the friends I've made at school because I don't live with them, and I think this is a good start.

In other news, it is finally starting to cool down in Jerusalem! For this I am very thankful. Matan and I had a lovely picnic yesterday and there were (gasp!) clouds in the sky and (oooh!) a nice breeze. I really can't wait for Fall to begin.

Ah, I have just heard the lovely call from the kitchen that dinner is ready, so I must bid you farewell. Like I said, I think you can expect more frequent but probably shorter blog posts about the smaller goings on here in Israel.

Love to you all,

Kate

P.S. If anyone could Express Mail over a Gordo's burrito that would be great. Thanks.

Here are the photos for your enjoyment:

beautiful day at the park - clouds!

log rolls are harder than they first appear

yeeeee!