Finally! Internet!

The internet situation has not really settled itself out here yet, thus the delay in any sort of communication with anyone.

So this post will probably be much less detailed than I wanted it to be. But once we actually get the internet connected in our apartment I will try to write daily so there won't be, as trent says, "massive unreadable posts."

If you guys want to get in touch with me, I will probably love you forever. E-mail is the very best, Skype will also be good, once I get internet in my room. The phone also works- and it definitely won't charge you for the international call, just a local one. The number is 443-992-4835. For every communication, just remember that the time difference is 7 hours from the east coast, 8 from minnesota, you know the drill.

Anyways, Israel has been a whirlwind so far. We got in yesterday morning and experienced what felt like the longest day ever. Housing here is incredibly unorganized and we were all basically sat down in a courtyard and told to find people to room with or go in by ourselves. This also included waiting for 2 hours while group by group filled out forms and housing contracts. It was kind of ridiculous, but did allow me to find my roommates! I'm living with 4 other girls: Kira, Samantha, Erika, and Amelia. They are all really sweet- and we're excited to decorate our apartment and watch disney movies and chick flicks together! It's been a while since I had a core group of girl friends (ok...well maybe not, I guess that's what I have at home, but not really at school).

Crazy story starts now: So we're sitting in the big courtyard waiting for housing when I turn around to find a seat and who do I see? Dan Curme- from Carleton! He was in my Hebrew 101 class. We both kind of looked at each other like 'what are you doing here??' Very exciting. It was calming to see someone I recognized, someone I could talk to about carleton stuff, and basically someone I didn't have to repeat the same 4 questions with (name, hometown, school, year, etc).

Today our ulpan started and it will probably be the most intense academic experience I will every have. Basically 5-6 hours solely in Hebrew for 8 weeks. Today was mostly an overview and one of my teachers said we could have up to 4 hours of homework a night. Basically, I might forget how to speak English with all of this Hebrew every day. I'm so excited to get close to fluent, though, and I know it will be incredibly helpful for my job as a TA in the winter.

There is a ton more I would like to write, but I haven't had dinner or started my homework, so that will have to wait.

Topics to discuss in a future post: prayer on planes, Shabbat, my apartment.

Please comment or e-mail or whatever. I miss you all to death! (and hopefully our internet will be up before shabbat starts and I can do some major catching up then)