I've got a bad case of the day before yesterday

Good News?
On Monday I’m going to the enlistment center place thing. A few days after that, I should be receiving 100 percent confirmation that I’ll be doing the army (assuming all goes well and that they don’t reject me for whatever reason….). I’m both excited and nervous. I’m afraid it’s gonna turn out to be like my Misrad Hapnim experiences where everything seems to go wrong.



I’ve had a really bad headache the past couple days, and so today I slept in during class. The director of the ulpan called me like 45 minutes after class had started, and started demanding to know what was wrong. It’s so fucking difficult to have a conversation in Hebrew when you’re feverish and are disoriented from just waking up.

A translation of my conversation in Hebrew:
Him: What’s the problem?
Me: I have a headache.
Him: Okay, take a pill and then come to class.
Me: No, but I’ve had a headache since yesterday and the day before yesterday.
Him: You also have the day before yesterday?!?!?!? If you have the day before yesterday, you have to drink a lot of water, okay Samantha???

I felt really confused. How the hell could I have a “the day before yesterday.”



I then realized, a little too late, that I had said “diarrhea” instead of “the day before yesterday.” Shilshom (yesterday) versus shilshool (diarrhea). I think that this is by far one of the most embarrassing Hebrew errors I’ve ever made. I always confuse the two words and I guess with the fever I couldn’t keep it straight which one is which. From now on, I’m just gonna say “Yesterday yesterday” instead of “the day before yesterday” in Hebrew, because this was beyond embarrassing.


About an hour late I arrived at class, and I walked into a tense situation. Apparently the guy that I smacked and that yelled at me a couple weeks ago had gotten into a verbal fight with our teacher about her teaching methods. (For example, if you don’t know how to conjugate a verb like l’shalem, she’ll say, “How do you conjugate l’daber” and that’s supposed to get you to think of the correct answer. It works for some people, but for some reason it confuses the hell out of this guy.)

During our breakfast break, our class (minus the teacher) was eating together in the dining hall, and the guy was ranting about our teacher in Hebrew. During his little monologue in which he addressed our teacher, he used the male form instead of the female form. Our teacher is a female. No one corrected him because it’s fucking annoying to be corrected all the time, and the guy was speaking really fast and was in the middle of a story. Mostly, no one really gave a fuck. But my roommate interrupted, and in an incredibly arrogant voice said, “It’s LACH, not LECHA!” As if she were exasperated with this guy and couldn’t believe how stupid he was.

Oh G-d. That was the wrong thing to say. The guy looked like he was gonna stab her. He started speaking really viciously, saying that he didn’t correct her when she was reading in such a way that suggested that she was a terrible reader (we all know she’s the worst reader in the class), so she shouldn’t be correcting him when he’s speaking. A small argument ensued, and five hours later the guy is STILL pissed off about being corrected.

I don’t really blame him. It’s not fun to be corrected by your fellow English speaker when you’re speaking Hebrew, especially when you’re corrected in such an arrogant way. And I’ve noticed—when I was learning French in high school, it didn’t bother me too much when I was corrected because at the end of the day, it didn’t matter if I could understand French or not. But now that I’m learning Hebrew and trying to live in this country, I’m REALLY sensitive to being corrected, because I’m constantly feeling like my Hebrew isn’t good enough for me to live here. I usually don’t mind corrections if they’re from Israelis and if it’s done in a nice way though.

But this was not a polite correction done by a native speaker. This was a rude, arrogant correction done by a fucking Australian. So the guy was HEATED.

Moral of the story though: Don’t fucking correct someone when they’re ranting and telling a story about something that has really upset them.

Funny thing about this guy though? He found out about the crazy French guy who was threatening me with this and that and who was driving me crazy—and IMMEDIATELY he went up to the French guy and started screaming at him for treating me in such a way. Is this supposed to be an apology—a rather aggressive one at that--for yelling at me?

Everyone at this fucking kibbutz is a loose cannon though. You may ask me, “Sam, why are you trying to hang out with such aggressive/mean/whatever people? Why are you friends with this guy who yells at anyone and everyone, including you? Why are you hanging out with a French guy who is on the run from the French police for arson and attempted murder?” Well, the answer is that I don’t have a choice. These are the people I know in this country. For some reason that apparently only makes sense to G-d, I’ve been put with these people. Yesterday the aggressive guy got into a fight with a kibbutznik in the dining hall. He told me the story: “I was standing in line, when some twat who lives on the kibbutz pushed me out of line and cut in front of me. He said, ‘This is MY kibbutz, MY home.’” And hearing that pissed me off. Yes, I may have just arrived in this country a couple months ago, and yes maybe my house is Oliver Twist’s tool shed, and yes maybe I am completely miserable here—but I have no other home in this country! Yes, I understand I’m not a kibbutz member and that this is only a temporary home (5 months is still a long time though…), but again, I still have no other home. It pisses me off that these people can tell us that this isn’t our home, because it makes me feel homeless in this country. Worse than that, I’m a parasite to these people. I may hate this home and this may be a terrible home, but it IS my home. And similarly, I may have serious issues with the aggression of some of the people here in the ulpan, but they ARE the people here. There are no other people here. This is what I have. Might as well make the most of it.


Tomorrow we’re going to Jerusalem on a field trip. Should be interesting…