Shavua Echat

Hello friends and family. I've now been in Israel for almost a week now and let me just say that it is currently SNOWING here (so classes are canceled for the day); unfortunately, it's also raining, so that's no good. In any case we are having a fun snow day though. I woke up really late and Abi and Aurora and I made hot chocolate and waffles with our nifty waffle maker and maybe I'll even do some...gasp...homework. Who knows? School might be canceled again tomorrow too.

So far ulpan (immersive Hebrew) has been pretty good. I'm in advanced Level Bet so I think it's a pretty good level for me, it's intermediate-ish and a lot of it is grammar which I am terrible at to begin with so it's good for me to actually learn it. I understand everything the teacher says though. We had an extremely intense experience yesterday when a large blond Israeli woman came in with a piano to have a Hebrew singalong with some of the classes. She was very dramatic and played lots of the songs lounge-style. Oh, Israel. I'm getting pretty good at taking the bus (except, well, I'm only taking one bus, so it's not that complicated yet). Sometimes I get confused with money because I think that shekels are agurot and vice versa and it's also obnoxious that the American dollar keeps dropping as it has been doing all year. Sigh. I've also been meeting some nice people from ulpan. It's mostly Americans with a bunch of Canadians, a handful of Russians and South Americans, and a couple Japanese students for good measure. I might be starting yoga and/or dance classes sometime this week which should be fun. Also there is an ulpan trip to Caesarea next week- that sounds fun too. Stay warm, all of you. I miss you.