I had my interview for my internship: working with seeing-impaired children. But, for all I know, I could be working at some illegal underground operation. Besides the fact that it took me 15 minutes to find the office, my boss-to-be spoke very little English so she decided that it would be a good idea to conduct the interview in Hebrew. It's not that I couldn't understand her, but I would like to know exactly what I'm getting into, not just bits and pieces. She showed me around the school I will be working at and the kids are adorable and the staff seems nice. My boss said that in addition to helping with the babies, I will also be helping with the physical, occupational, and speech therapies. I am excited for that since it may involve a final decision in my career choice.
I somehow found my way out of the building and into a taxi where I was driven back to the hostel in Jerusalem to wait on the bus for an hour. We were supposed to go to the Jerusalem Mall, but we were cornered in by two very small white cars. My Madricha (counselor), who has a great Australian accent, eventually called the police to come tow the car, "but that could be in three weeks for all I know". We finally got moving, but our time at the mall was shortened before our tour of the Fence. Now, I'm sure the tour guide was a great guy, but...A) He spoke monotonously B) Had no accent to make fun of like the other tour guides we have had C) talked as if he was gonna die at any moment and D) Called settlements neighborhoods, which they are, but he refused to acknowledge that they were also settlements. This tour was given on the bus and there was A/C, we hadn't gotten a lot of sleep the night before because the tour of the Kotel Tunnels we took the night before didn't end until almost 1 am and we had to be up at 7 am. So, a lot of people fell asleep as we reached Gilo, The 8 Meter wall, and the best view of the Old City and the Dome of the Rock.
We then continued onward towards Tel Aviv to our new home, Beit Leni, where we would begin three weeks of Ulpan. We had taken a placement test a few days before, but I am convinced they just put names in a hat and placed us randomly. There are 6 levels and both my good friend and I were placed in level 4. She moved down a level and I moved up only to find out that that level was still learning past tense, which I have learned only a million times so I am currently in the highest Hebrew level. Woohoo! Go me.
My room at Beit Leni is temporary housing, luckily, because although it's spacious, there's nowhere to put anything, if that makes sense. I changed the set-up of my side so that I could at least have a head board, but my roommate's bed in basically in the middle of the room. We have a "kitchen", but no oven and the water here isn't the best. I'm not talking about taste, I'm talking about stream. I was in the middle of taking a shower (a cold one because the hot water button, called a Dood, wasn't working) and the water decided to stop working. So I basically had to somehow wash my hair without water. The water came back 2 minutes later and this happened for the rest of my shower. Needless to say, it was not fun.
The Madrichim planned events for us this week so we wouldn't be bored at night, which is really nice of them, but sometimes it's nice to relax after sitting in ulpan for 5 hours. A teacher came to talk about Rosh Hashannah (RH) through various texts. And, not that I'm bragging or anything, but we spent a majority of the time on my comment. There were passages from Jewish texts. One said something like, on RH you stand before G-d in order to be judged. It is a day of sorrow and seriousness while in contrast, the other text said that RH was a joyous occasion full of dancing and eating. So we discussed the difference and like all conclusions when it comes to Jewish texts, we found none. The Madrichim also got us into a dance club that is apparently relatively new in Tel Aviv. That was fun because, while I've briefly met most of the people on the program, it was nice to mingle and actually remember people's names. The only annoying thing about the club was the they had flashing lights and it felt like I was having a seizure. On the upside, though, there was an outside where you could have conversations in a normal tone.
I will post my Rosh Hashannah in the next post, but I didn't want to make this too long. So there's your update!
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