Basically I'm retarded.

Oh fuck am I frustrated. Not frustrated enough that I wanna call it quits and pack up and go back to the US after only two weeks, but frustrated enough that it warrants a blog post. (Then again, what DOESN’T warrant a post on this blog? It seems like I talk about pretty much any minor thought that has ever crossed my mind at any point in my life, including some things I haven’t thought about since I was 5.)

Fuck, why am I so bad with this language? It’s humiliating because I’ll get on the bus carrying a newspaper in Hebrew (which isn’t too difficult for me to read), but the person sitting next to me will ask a question or something, and I’ll either a) not understand what the hell they’re asking or b) understand the question but not know the answer, and stumble helplessly through Hebrew as I attempt to explain how/why I don’t know. And the person either snaps at me with something like, “It’s a simple question!” or gives me this kind of sympathetic or embarrassing look that says that they understand I’m hopeless with the Hebrew language. And then I’m embarrassed to open the newspaper, because I’m afraid the person sitting next to me who just learned that I can’t speak Hebrew to save my life will think that I also can’t read Hebrew, and that I’m just pretending, like a little kid who picks up a book and pretends to be reading, but is in fact holding the book upside down.

Even more embarrassing is that the only bit of spoken media that I can actually understand almost word for word are children’s cartoons in Hebrew. Radio? Hopeless….maybe I’ll get the gist, but in terms of the finer points of the conversation? Nothing. Music? Nothing. TV news? Nothing. The only TV show that I could sort of understand was “HaAlufa,” and that had Hebrew subtitles, and it was also a soap opera so it was kind of easy to understand what was going on.
Instead I’m stuck watching “Winnie the Pooh” in Hebrew—and I can’t even sit back and relax as I watch it. I have to concentrate on every single word in order to understand it. So I’ll be in the TV room of my building, and me, a couple other immigrants, and a sizeable crowd of small children watch “Winnie the Pooh” or whatever else together.

On Friday at work I thought I was going to start crying. An Israeli came into the store (this is not all that common), and she was a girl about my age. I was trying to help her in Hebrew, and was doing just fine until she asked me a question that I didn’t understand. I hesitated for a moment trying to figure out what she could possibly have said, and then I figured I should ask her to repeat what she said. So she did, this time slowly and deliberately and loudly—not in a kind way that showed she was sympathetic to my language barrier or that she was patient, but in a way that suggested she was pissed off with me for being such an idiot. And I tried to catch every single word, but I still had no idea what she was saying. I felt really panicked, and I hesitated for a bit, and as I was thinking of what to say next, she snapped at me in completely exasperated Hebrew that I actually understood: “IT’S TERRIBLY EASY, WHY DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND! THIS IS NOT DIFFICULT!” At which point all words in any language completely left me, and instead I just let my face immediately turn bright red. Completely humiliated, I shuffled back behind the counter to grab my Israeli coworker to help this Israeli bitch.

The worst part is, I STILL have no idea what she was trying to ask me.

So I guess my point is that the life of an immigrant (or even the life of a long-term tourist, as I found last time I was here), is the life of people constantly telling you that something is completely simple or obvious or easy, when to you it seems impossibly confusing.


I don’t know. It’s just scary. I mean, for right now I’m not too concerned because I live in a kind of closed environment, surrounded by a crapload of other people who don’t speak Hebrew. But five months from now, I will no longer be in this building. Five months from now I’m going to be in real society, and I’m still not going to be fluent, and instead of just experiencing brief moments of being made to feel like an idiot when I’m outside of my apartment building, every single moment of my life is going to be me feeling like an idiot. And, oh fuck, I’m so scared of the army now—I don’t want to spend 2 years being the person in the unit that everyone else thinks is a retard.

There is some kind of silver lining in all this shit though: today my boss got into a huge argument on the phone with someone in Hebrew. Mind you, my boss is an immigrant. Hebrew is NOT his first language. But I was listening to him, and I was so proud to hear an immigrant holding his own in an argument. He was yelling in such fast Hebrew that I could barely keep up with the conversation, and he didn’t stop every other word for a long “ehhhhhhh” like new immigrants unfamiliar with the language often do. Minus his slight accent, he sounded just like a native Israeli.
Now, I’m not particularly close to my boss or anything (he’s a very nice old man, but I only started working there last week), but I was so proud of him and it actually made me feel really good about myself too. Sure, the subject of the argument was not exactly a happy one, but I couldn’t help but smile and think, “Wow, someday my Hebrew will be just like his!”
Unfortunately, my boss has been here for well over 20 years, maybe even 30…so it’s not all that comforting to think that maybe when I’m 40 I’ll stop sounding so goddamn retarded.