The Laughlins

Well, we have survived our first week of ulpan! It was six days long this week! We leave our apartment around 7:50am and walk to school. Class starts at 8:30am, and we are given two breaks (30 minutes long or less depending on the day of the week). Classes end at either 1:45 or 1pm depending on the day as well (M/W or T/TH or Sun). We walk home from school, make dinner, take showers, and do homework most nights. Once a week, we have to go do our laundry in the evening, which takes longer than it did before now that school is in session. There were about six people in line ahead of us when we went last time - it was kind of a pain. Our general feeling so far...we are learning a lot, but the process is very long and hard. I feel especially at a loss since (up until one week ago), I had never read nor written a sentence in Hebrew, and now they expect me to be able to do that at a normal pace. Most all of the students in my class are either Jewish or have some background/classes that they have had in Hebrew, so they have had much more previous exposure. I am kind of intimidated by the fact that I have an oral and reading examination on Thursday this week, and it will probably be in front of the whole class, since that is how they do most things here. Mark and I both think that our tests went pretty well on Friday though. Mark is probably more confident than I am, but I will let you know the results when I find out. At this point, I am happy just to pass (which is not the usual response that you would get from me regarding school). I was the last one to finish the test, and I had to work through all of the break following the test just to get it done. Once Mark starts classes in Sept/Oct, I will probably start doing the city ulpan in Jerusalem because it it cheaper and focuses more on conversational Hebrew. However, I am learning a lot right now. Mark and I were invited to a young couple's house for lunch after congregation today. Luke (27) and Sarah (22) Miller have been here for a year - Luke is doing the same MA that Mark will be doing. They are from Canada and got married a couple of weeks before we did (Seth introduced us). Seth, Sarah F (whom we met at the IBEX picnic), the Millers, and Mark and I all hung out and talked until about 5pm this evening. We are hoping to do some traveling with them when we have breaks from school. We had Seth, Kristy, and Josh over to our apartment last night for dinner and a movie. We watched "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou" in English with Hebrew subtitles. It was fun. I had the "Man of Constant Sorrows" song stuck in my head most of today. Josh spent the night on our floor, and went to Jerusalem Assembly with us this morning; he lives many miles off of campus, and buses stop running around 3pm on Fridays because of Shabbat (so we told him to crash here). That's about it. I totally forgot to take pictures last night though! Sorry! I will try to take more soon and put them up. We are going to a picnic with the Jerusalem Assembly Young Adults group on Monday night and on Thursday or Friday, we are hoping to either go see "Pirates of the Caribbean" or one the movies at the Jerusalem Film Festival that is going on right now.