Oh Jesus, I'm going to Hell...

I just really needed to get something off my chest. And this is horrible horrible horrible. But whatever.

There's someone here (I'm trying to keep it as vague as possible in case, in some horrible random chain of events, this person finds my blog) who keeps making fun of my Hebrew speaking abilities. Look, I never claimed to be good at Hebrew. In fact, I'll be the first to admit that when I speak Hebrew, I sound like an American choking on a hamburger. Whatever. I'm 19. Hopefully I'll be here in Israel for a while, and hopefully I won't sound like that for long.

With the exception of reading prayers, I had almost NO exposure to Hebrew growing up, and my couple days in Tel Aviv last week was the first time I had ever experienced being surrounded by native Hebrew speakers (Birthright doesn't count because I was surrounded by my fellow Americans). So, with that in mind, I'm actually quite proud of how far I've come, even though I'll still be the first to admit that my Hebrew is crap.

In the ulpan, there are several students with mothers/fathers/etc etc who are Israeli and spoke to them in Hebrew while they were growing up. These students are really good at speaking. One of these students makes fun of me almost NON-STOP when I try to speak Hebrew, and I was about ready to punch this person.

What did my parents speak to me? English. What was I surrounded by when I was growing up? English/Spanish. The only Hebrew I came into contact with was poorly pronounced prayers. How is it fair that this person expects me to speak as well as they do?

I really wanted to snap and yell, "You know, not all of us have Israeli parents who spoke to us in Hebrew since birth!" What especially pissed me off is that this person is planning on leaving Israel as soon as ulpan is over--fior this person, Hebrew speaking is not crucial. But for me, it is absolutely essential. There's a lot more at stake for me, and it's accordingly a lot more painful for me to bad bad at Hebrew. It's so frustrating that I seriously just want to have a nice long cry.

So today we had our first class, and we were handed a sheet in Hebrew with questions about ourselves, and we were told to write responses in Hebrew. And this was thrilling for me because it wasn't a speaking exercise. Reading/Writing is something I'm perfectly happy to do (even though, of course, I make mistakes). I happily settled down to work, and as I did so I saw that the person who makes fun of my speaking all the time (who was now sitting next to me) had an absolutely HORRIFIED expression on their face. Like, you would have thought that they had just witnessed an abridged version of World War 2 right in front of their eyes.

This person grabbed my arm and started pointing at random words. "What does this say??" "What does this say???" This person had trouble reading simple words like "sport," while longer words like "philosophia" had no hope at all of being read by this person.

And, oh my G-d, I just felt like the SMUGGEST bitch on the planet. It was wonderful. I was totally tempted to just start laughing in this person's face, but instead I just put on this psuedo-sweet voice and explained these painfully easy words. This person has now begged me to help them with their reading. hahahah! It seriously was the sweetest revenge I think I've ever experienced in my entire life.

I'm so glad that I didn't snap at this person earlier, and instead chose to take the "Jesus Road" by turning the other cheek. Maybe it's weird to say this as a Jew in Israel, but Jesus was right, you know. Turning the other cheek was a great idea, because now I get the ultimate revenge!