Routine and Philosophizing

           I'm sorry I keep posting so late – I’m still adjusting to having school Sunday through Thursday. Although, for being school, language study is pretty relaxing: you only have one class to worry about, and that class is mostly about conversation. After five hours, with breaks in between, you’re done for the day; it makes for a lot of free time that I would be having at Harvard – although with Harvard cancelling school an unprecedented number of days for winter storms, things might even out.

           In any case, this is the second-to-last week of Ulpan, the intensive Hebrew prep course. After this I’ll be going into normal classes, but we can talk about that when it happens. In the meantime, class is going pretty well; I did much better on my last test, which made me much less stressed. It wasn’t so much the grade that worried me; it was that I knew the material, and I didn’t know what had happened and how to fix it. As it turned out, though, the problem was mainly due to a misunderstanding about the instructions, so things are now back on track.

           Today was a particularly tense day in class. We were discussing current events. I’m not sure why the teacher decided to discuss Ukraine in a class that’s approximately a third European, a third American, and a third Russian, but it did make for lively discussion. The program also includes other activities to get us out of the classroom: yesterday we had a lecture on the architecture of Jerusalem and its influences (in Hebrew) and today we spend the better part of an hour learning songs (in Hebrew).

           Outside of class, things are also looking up. I’ve fallen into a sort of routine: every morning I get up around seven, have a cup of tea, and look over class material or philosophize on one subject or another. After class I have lunch and head over to the gym, since after four visits, I finally have my membership. At one point, a friend and I attempted to attend one of the karate classes, but we couldn’t find the building, and when we asked at the gym, they told us we’d have to ask there. Go figure.

           There was a slight disruption in my routine due to a fire earlier in the week. A building a couple of stores down from my normal grocery store burned down, and the grocery store shut down indefinitely because of smoke damage. I’ll have to switch off between going all the way downtown to the market, which is cheaper, or just buying my fruits and vegetables at the supermarket here for convenience’s sake. This week I opted for the grocery store.

           This evening in particular, though , a group of us went down the street from the campus to get hamburgers, which were actually very good and not terribly expensive. (This particular restaurant also had cheeseburgers; I just don’t like them, even in the States.) There are several restaurants around to frequent if I feel the need to leave the coziness of my own room.

           This weekend, I didn’t feel the need to leave my room at all. I went out for groceries, but other than that I slept late, read my Bible (still looking for a church), and did a lot of philosophizing about life. It was the first real Sabbath I’ve had since I’ve been here, and I desperately needed one. By the end of last week I had sunk into quite the lethargy (which means for me, doing what I have to get done, but having difficulty bringing myself to do it or anything else). However, by halfway through Friday I was full of energy.

           I’ll leave you with one fun note about the buildings here. We have a ton of stray cats around, but they are the best-fed stray cats I’ve ever seen in my life. In addition, they know how to use the elevators; they dash in whenever the door opens and just sit there and wait, and if you let them, they’ll run into your apartment and only come out for food. They’ve got quite the system worked out. However, it doesn’t always work for them; one was quite put out with me earlier when he hitched a ride only to be dropped off back on the bottom floor.