Ulpan begins!

Shalom, readers! So yesterday I began learning Hebrew! During the ulpan, a three-week summer session, we have Hebrew class for four hours per day, five days per week (plus a sixth day this week). I am in level Aleph, the introductory level! On Sunday morning I woke up bright and early (fifteen minutes before my alarm!), got ready, and headed out for the fifteen-minute walk over to campus. Apparently there’s a shuttle as well, but at the moment, I’m quite happy to walk it! We’ll see how I feel after a few weeks :P It IS uphill both ways...!

I found my classroom, and discovered that two of my friends are in my class! Yay, Zev and Sarah. Zev and I met on the plane (you may remember him from a previous post), and Sarah was one of my roommates at the hostel in Tel Hai. Both are entering their freshman year of college – so young! Our morning teacher’s name is Sheron, and she is very sweet – I like her a lot so far.

Learning another alphabet is reminding me of learning Japanese all over again! I know I’ll get the hang of it pretty soon – it’s going well so far, albeit slightly overwhelming. We had two hours of class, then a half hour break during which Zev, Sarah, and I got calzones and iced coffee for lunch (all for 24 shekels, or less than eight dollars). Israeli iced coffee is more akin to a Dunkin Donuts coffee coolattas, but a little richer and less sweet – delicious!

We headed back for forty-five more minutes of class, then had a fifteen-minute break before our final ninety minutes of class, for which we had a different teacher, Michal. She’s also very nice, and I tend to like having two different teachers for a foreign language...generally different teachers appeal to different learning styles, and they have different things to offer.

I’ve got to admit, I won’t be sad to see the end of ulpan. I’m looking forward to the beginning of the semester when I have other classes to look forward to as well!