I started the day feeling homesick and exhausted- not a great way to feel at 8am on my walk to Ulpan. But class was pretty good- there's something I'm starting to really like about being surrounded in Hebrew 5 hours a day, or at least I find comfort in it somehow. The one problem with class yesterday was that I managed to run into people from the ortho house (It's kind of a long story, but on friday night we were dragged to this Jewish student center house for kiddush and dinner and then guilted into going for dinner the next night. The people who run the center love to guilt trip and are quite religious so we fondly refer to the place as the ortho house) every time I left my classroom. They are nice but pushy, and I can't deal with pushy people.
Highlight of Ulpan: we talked about the fake debate over whether or not to make the word for computer male or female (in Hebrew all nounse have a gender). The female side of the argument wanted the word to be male and the first fake reason in the fake debate is roughly translated as: "the word for computer should be male because in order to get to its heart/ to get it to do what you want, you have to turn it on." Oh, Israelis....
After Ulpan I finally got to take care of some things- I sent postcards, set up my computer account on campus, bought my textbooks, and got some snacks. Samantha introduced me to this chocolate with pop rock type stuff inside- as if pop rocks weren't trippy enough by themselves, and it's pretty delicious too. Then I went to the dorms and finally got my internet set up- probably the most exciting part of my day- so find me online or on skype- I want to talk!
Since we were feeling so accomplished- we decided to make out way to Malkha Mall- the biggest mall in Israel (where we went last week) to get things we still needed. We knew what line we needed to take to get there and we thought we knew what side of the road to catch the bus on. We waited for about a half an hour for the bus to come and got very excited for our trip.
(My apartment-mates waiting for the bus the first time- when we were still optimistic and liked each other)
About 5 minutes later we found ourselves in the main building of Hebrew U with the bus driver telling us we had to get off. We went around to the other side of the bus terminal at Hebrew U and waited another 30 minutes for the bus to come back going the other way. By that time it was rush hour in Jerusalem and we spent an hour and a half or so getting to the mall. It was an interesting ride at first because we rode through some really religious neighborhoods and I people watched, but it soon got long and frustrating. We finally got to the mall with less than 2 hours until closing and we were already exhausted. We did quick runs into office depot and a home depot-esq store and then had dinner and were back at the bus stop. We waited another half hour for our bus home and when it still didn't come, 3 of us decided to take a cab back. The ride was only 15 minutes! The two that took the bus back finally got home an hour after us.
(My apartment-mates waiting for the bus the first time- when we were still optimistic and liked each other)Remind me never to experiment on public transportation again.
Tonight I'm going to Tel Aviv! Very exciting!
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