Wow, I suck at this language. Oh well!

I promise these friggin’ posts will slow down once I get on the kibbutz and actually get a life.

Right now I'm waiting for things to come back alive after Shabbat.......henyways.....

I have a hard time believing that Hebrew is a first language for Israelis (okay, excluding olim and Arabs and other people….but you know what I mean). I keep thinking, “No, you’re Jewish, surely you must have gone to a crappy Hebrew school just like me.” I keep watching the kid’s TV channel because I have a better hope of understanding what goes on there, and it’s so frustrating because even when I watch TV shows meant for little babies just learning how to speak, I STILL don’t understand a great deal of things. This morning there was a kid’s show that showed an animated dresser. Out of the dresser came a pair of socks, and a voice said, “Mah zeh?” followed by a long pause, allowing for a little kid to respond. And I laughed because I actually understood the sentence, and I thought it was ridiculously easy…but then I got really sad really quickly when I realized that I didn’t know how to respond to the question. What are these? Socks. But in Hebrew? Turns out they’re garbayim or something. So that was a great confidence booster….I couldn’t even respond to something on an infants’ TV show.

It almost makes me wish that Hebrew had been my first language. But then I hear some of the people here try to speak English, and I think every single day from now on I will thank whoever’s responsible for ensuring that I was raised in an English-speaking environment and that English is natural for me. Some people here speak English so ridiculously—I feel I’ve earned the right to say that now, because my Hebrew has been made fun of a many times already. But the difference is that I can leave here and no one will ever expect me to know Hebrew. But wherever you are in the world, English-speaking people and people who speak differing foreign languages will almost ALWAYS use English as a means of communication. It seems like most people on the planet are expected to know English. I’m glad I never had to put in any effort to learn English, and maybe that’s the payoff for my troubles with Hebrew.

Having said all that, I’m still having fun and I’m still learning a lot of Hebrew each day. Every single day things get easier to understand and already I’m noticing that I’m reading faster. I’ve not even been here for a week, so I can only assume that things will keep getting easier and easier given time. Also, from reading signs in Jerusalem I noticed a pattern, and I think I figured out how to conjugate in the present passive for most verbs. So that’s pretty exciting.

Anyway, here’s another Israeli thing I need explained: Why does it look like everyone has solar panels on their roofs? Does everyone use solar energy for things here? That can’t possibly be true… Though it’d be totally awesome if it were. I’m gonna have to put some research into this and figure out just what the hell those things are.

Exciting news though! Today near the beach I saw hairy men in their 20’s who were NOT looking for Avi! Instead they just walked around in tank tops spitting on things and looking like assholes.

More exciting news: EVERYONE on the beach was playing this weird game where it’s like ping pong but with no net. It didn’t look like the game had any point. People didn’t seem to be trying to outsmart each other or trying to hit the ball out their partner’s reach. It seemed like you just hit the ball as hard as you can, which makes the world’s most obnoxious noise, and then the person you hit it to hits it back as hard as he can, which makes that same world’s most obnoxious noise. You then repeat this for 2 hours, trying to go as fast as you can so you can get as many obnoxious POP noises in during whatever your time span is. I kind of want to give it a go…