Fuck, I'm never going to learn Hebrew.

Oh. Holy. Fuck. I just had my first ulpan class? Oh fuck. I'm in a Level Dalet/Level Hay combo class (I'm only in level dalet--for my non-jewish friends, it goes alef, bet, gimmel, dalet, hay, vav, then fluency...or maybe level vav is fluency), and the woman talks SO fucking fast. And she has this weird bubble-voice.
I can understand everything she's saying (though RESPONDING is a totally different story...), but she talks so fast that if I blink or breathe or in any way divert 100 percent of my mental and physical effort away from what the teacher is saying, I get completely lost. I seriously did not think it was possble to speak so fast. I feel like even my liver and kidneys have to get in on the effort, and I feel like my body is just going to have to deal with unprocessed urine until I learn to understand without much effort. I found myself thinking during class, "If this teacher doesn't stop talking and let me not having to translate a million words per minute for just a second, I'm going to throw up. This has to end NOW."


To a certain extent, I felt really good in class because I thought to myself, "Wow, I can understand a lot," because at this point I've learned a large part of basic vocabulary in Hebrew and can kind of get by. But at the same time, I feel like I've now reached this mountain of refined and specific vocabulary that will take me a million years to learn. And basically I'm going to sound retarded for the rest of my life. Or I'll be one of those Ango immigrants you meet all over Jerusalem who, after years and years in Israel, still talk to Israelis on the street in English.


Also, my teacher's very funny because she'll make some sort of reference to an Israeli children's or folk song and sing a couple bars and move on, and all of us are totally confused because we have no idea what folk song she's talking about.....hahahah, oh the joy of being an immigrant....

I need some moral support. Call me if you know me.... and call me even if you don't know me but you have my number....which should not be anybody I don't know....