BEST. YOM. RISHON. EVER!

A quote from the class:
Teacher: “Use ‘military police’ in a sentence.”
Student: “Everyone hates the military police.”

Most importantly: If the front cover of Yedioth Ahronoth is any way of judging, Tzipi Livni needs to learn how to hold babies. She looks like she is smothering some poor little thing with her arms/death traps of steel and, amazingly, she also looks like she is about to drop the baby at the same time.

Oh my goodness. I just finished class for the day, and wow…..the first half of class I felt normal and whatever, but when I got back from break. Holy Fuck. I felt like a genius. I was speaking Hebrew without thinking and just…..oh man. I actually had a hopeful moment where I felt like sometime in the NEAR future I’ll actually be able to spend entire days in Hebrew-mode. Like, I was responding to something the teacher said and explaining my opinion on something, and normally this is REALLY difficult for me in Hebrew…..but this time, the words just came, and even the teacher looked surprised when I had finished. And I was like, HOLY SHIT, I can actually speak Hebrew in a fluid way, although not fluently. And it was seriously one of the greatest moments of my life. If my life had a soundtrack, this moment would be “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” as loud as possible. In fact, I’ve just now put on that song as loud as possible on my computer, and I’ve opened the windows to let all of Jerusalem know.

Yeah, I know full well that tomorrow I might sound completely retarded again, but the fact that I just had this brief moment of success, just this one, means that it can happen again. Yes, dear readers, I believe in miracles.

Can I also just say that I love elections here? Not only is there a political rabbi blessing me from posters on like EVERY single bus here in Jerusalem, but then in the news that same rabbi says that to vote for a certain other political party is to vote for Satan.

And now a question of protocol: this girl in my building added me as a friend on Facebook before we even got to Israel. I recognize her when I see her around the building, but we have never once exchanged words and we have not actually met in the real world. I have seen her a million times in my building, and not once has my existence or the existence of our Facebook friendship been acknowledged.

See, this is why I hate people who add people on Facebook before they’ve actually met. I already learned from experience in college that you don’t do that (Facebook was very new to me and to the people in my year at the time), because then when you actually meet your neighbor who you added as a friend on Facebook like 2 months before your freshman year started, you already know a bunch of random trivia about them. Yeah, this might be the first conversation we’ve ever had, but we both know which movies the other likes and whatnot.

So anyway, today I got into the elevator to grab a newspaper from the lobby, and this girl that added me on Facebook back in December walked into the same elevator. And she is sobbing. A complete and total wreck. And here we are, in this tiny elevator together. I keep panicking silently, thinking, “Well, should I say something comforting?” I mean, I know her name. I know where she’s from. I know quite a few things about her. But I’ve never actually met her. See, Facebook just creates these situations where social protocol is ambiguous.

In the end, I figured that since she added me, it should have been her obligation to introduce herself in person, so it’s her own damn fault that technically speaking I don’t actually know her, and so it’s also her own damn fault that it is not socially appropriate for me to say anything to her when she’s sobbing in the same tiny elevator that I’m in. I figured my best bet was to just hope that the ride would be a short one.

So instead we just rode down together in the elevator, less than a foot apart, her sobbing the entire way down and me intensely praying to G-d that the elevator wouldn’t break.