The Laughlins

Mark and I just completed our second week of ulpan. I had a dictation test yesterday and a noun/adjective agreement test today. I think they went pretty well...we'll see. I have a reading test on Sunday!! I am definitely faster, but still not very good at all. Mark was supposed to have a test today, but they postponed it until Sunday. On our last tests, I got a 90%, and Mark got an 86%, so they both went pretty well - better than I expected at least. There were two "firsts" for me today (maybe more that I can't think of too): 1) I saw an albino man about my age - white hair, eyebrows, arm/leg hair, and very fair skin; I couldn't see if he had red eyes though :) 2) We heard gun-fire/weaponry of sorts for about an hour during class today. The campus is located on the top of Mt. Scopus and overlooks a number of towns - sound seems to carry pretty far here as well; I guess I wasn't that surprised since I knew what the newest developments were this morning. It is just a different experience to be within earshot of real gunshots (not "for fun" or hunting gunshots). Anyways, that is not meant to scare any of you the are prone to worrying, as they were still a few miles away, and the campus itself has a lot of security in place. On Sunday, they have a briefing of sorts on campus concerning the situation in Israel right now, so Mark and I will probably go to that.

This is our first real two-day weekend. It looks like we will be going to the Jerusalem Film Festival Tonight and then tomorrow afternoon for movies. They play about 20-30 different movies each day in 6-10 different theaters in the Jerusalem area. I have added a link at the top of my link list if you are interested - click on any movie title to read a description. Tonight we are going to see "The New Jews."

I am adding pictures of the park across the street from us, and the sunset that we see each night - it is quite beautiful. You will also notice a number of graffiti paintings by "rudes." I looked this up on the Internet today, and "rudes" is apparently one guy (maybe more) who is a graffiti artist in the Jerusalem area. They are stencils, and they look much more interesting than your average graffiti.