I moved from the beginner Ulpan (Hebrew lesson) class to the intermediate - although I never should have been in the beginner one, I was just too scared to speak. Intermediate is with all the kids who are here on the 10 month program (so they were beginners when they arrived in September), and have mostly lost steam or don't care about learning anymore. So, again, I should probably move classes but I doubt I will. The advanced guys just know so much more vocabulary than I do and can string together sentences of more than 6 words...
Volunteering's been fun - I went to the senior center for the first time a couple weeks ago. I think it's basically an Alzheimer's daycare, so they speak no English and have no interest in learning. So it's a wonderful place to practice Hebrew! And, though they're at extremely varying levels in terms of the disease, some of them are very cute and want to talk or color or just hold hands and walk around. I'll get some pictures next week.
I also started at a new school in town, Sharet. It's an elementary school but it's muchmuch more organized and structured than some of the schools I went to at the beginning where I felt like a zoo tamer just screaming at kids all day. And I get to work with the teacher who teaches the 1st-3rd graders....I love the babies.
We also started going to a Yishuv last week where we thought we'd be helping pick vegetables, but it turns out we just weeded around the cucumbers and tomatoes for an hour and a half. But it was an enormous greenhouse (1 of 3), and they gave us t-shirts and refreshments and a tour around the gardens with their little animals and a new bar they just opened at their place.
And then, for the holidays and vacations:
Holocaust day was 4/19, we went to the religious elementary school and listened as the kids sang songs then stood with them while the sirens sounded and the entire country was silent for 2 minutes. Everyone's supposed to wear white, and that little guy photobombed our picture.
The next Tuesday night til Wednesday night (4/24-25) was Memorial Day (to remember soldiers and people harmed in acts of terror). They took us to Latrun, a place just outside of Jerusalem where they've got a lot of old army tanks, a memorial wall of soldiers names, a beautiful lookout, and an enormous amphitheater.
Then on Wednesday, one of my roommates and I decided to go hiking in Jerusalem and be there for when the sirens went off. But, at our first stop we ran into another MASA group, the Honors program kids from Hebrew University, and their tour guide invited us to join them on their day, so we did. We were at Kiriyat Anavim for when the sirens sounded, then went to Mount Hertzel and some other lookout point where there were more tanks, and a wonderful lookout over Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. At the graveyards they hand out thousands of flowers to put on the graves, it's spectacular.
Then that night, I went back to Ramla to shower and get to Tel Aviv for the beginning of Independence Day, which means tons of celebrations, concerts, fireworks, bbq's...a day of joy.
