My professor said it's going to get up to 40 degrees this week. Phew

Yesterday was a day of firsts. I woke early and finally went on my first run in Israel. It was delightful. While cooler in the mornings—at least yesterday morning, it is far from less humid. I felt like if my legs got tired I could simply have swum back with my arms. But it was beautiful in Carmel Park, and it felt good to run again. My family knows I cannot estimate distances, but I was out there for half an hour, and based on pace and walking breaks I’d guess it was between 2 and 3 miles. Wow, hills galore!

I also gave my first presentation in Hebrew. I was very happy with it. My topic was Israeli Sign Language. The bulk of the presentation I had written out in my best Hebrew and then sat down with my professor and she helped me make it into, you know, actual Hebrew, and helped me with my pronunciation. Before beginning the presentation I wrote new vocabulary (both Hebrew, and some English such as “ISL” and “OGS” (German Sign Language)). Then I opened with a video of a song performed in ISL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsoRXuIBVqs&feature=related

When I finished, I was gathering my belongings to go sit down when my professor suggested I open the floor for questions. Haha, in my stumbling about in a new language, I’d completely forgotten how one gives a presentation. (I was the first in the class to present.) So I opened the floor for questions thinking there would be no way I’d be able to improvise answers in Hebrew. But I was pleasantly surprised! Of course my answers came in stalling, broken Hebrew with many gestures and an English word thrown in here and there, but I was pretty proud of how much I was able to say, anyway. :-) The questions included things like, “Why is there no universal sign language?” and “How did you get interested in sign language?”

Class ended an hour early so that all the students of the ulpan could attend a film screening of a new Israeli film coming out soon. We were the second group to get to see it, and it was very good. It is called “Gei Oni”. It is set in the late 1800’s in Israel and follows a Russian Jewish girl who escaped from a pogrom with her uncle, new baby, and brother. It is based on a book, which I’m not sure of the name, and I think it’s a good portrayal of the time and events that were going on then. The actors did a great job, and while obviously a tough subject matter, it has humor sprinkled throughout and leaves you with hope at the end. The director was there and he spoke to us a bit before and after and it was great to hear about his language choices for the film. It begins mostly in Russian with Hebrew and English subtitles, and then as she integrates into Israel and it becomes more of her home, it switches over to Hebrew with English subtitles. There’s a few scenes with English with Hebrew subtitles, as well, where fitting. If you have an opportunity to see it, I definitely recommend it.

After the movie, it was back to my room for a quick lunch with a friend and then up to the bus stop to join about 30 other people for “oh, it’s just an easy hike over to the hanging bridges and back”. Ha, I was glad I brought my camelback and chacos. Unfortunately some others took the “easy hike” claim to heart. Anyway, apparently we started off down the wrong trailhead. It was a wonderful hike, reminding me of somewhere I go regularly, but couldn’t put my finger on, and I decided it looked like Big Bear (where I don’t go regularly, ha).

A fellow hiker taught me how to eat fresh carob (I didn’t know where it comes from!). And we discovered a cool little cave. Then we paused at a clearing while our leaders deliberated.

They pointed out a rock quarry across the way, marring the side of the mountain in order to build more houses…our guide impressed on us that it is nothing new, that it has been there as long as she can remember, and expressed concern that if we keep it up, there will one day be no mountain left.

At the trailhead is an artificial park. They planted all the trees and bushes by hand to add some greenery to this part of Haifa because there were getting to be so many neighborhoods back to back that there was no nature, and the air quality is less than desirable. As it is a free park, it was not economically sound and the owners were going to close it down at one point. But a family bought it with a foundation in remembrance of their son who was killed by a suicide bomber at the checkpoint he was working. He was in the same regime as one of our leaders. His family raised money to save the park, named the main path after him, and set up a kind of game for kids where along the path there are markers that give instructions like, “Now look on the ground and see if any animals have left their marks here.” “Now listen and see what you can hear” “Remember to ‘pack in and pack out’. Take all your trash with you out of the park.” etc. I guess there’s also a part where they crawl on the ground and other things that are important skills they will refine when they join the forces after high school. (I’m not sure if you’re aware: Israelis enter the Israeli Defense Forces after high school. The females for a minimum of 2 years, the males for 3. There are few exceptions, mostly to do with religion.)

When our trail returned us to where we started and we had not come across the hanging bridges, we took the second road and found the easy trail we’d been promised. :-) Walked over to and across the bridges, and then back to the bus stop to wait for quite some time in our sweaty clothes for the rolling air conditioner. I’ve heard several people remark on the bad driving in Israel. I haven’t noticed it, yet. I’m not sure if that’s because I grew up in southern California and it just seems normal to me, or if I haven’t seen it yet. But I have noticed their street lights are a little different from ours, and I think it’s cool. They begin the same, Green, Yellow, Red. But then, when the east/west bound turns red, there is a moment, and then the north/south bound turns from Red, to Yellow, and finally to Green. So the Yellow gets double stage time here. And she does a great job with it. :-)

A friend who is much further along in her Hebrew was mentioning how interesting it is to see which concepts each language has many words to distinguish. Like the ever-popular example of the Eskimo tribe with multiple words for what we call simply “snow”, in our generalizing. Apparently Hebrew has multiple words for “fear” and “wall”. She could not remember them all, but there is one “fear” that is related more to anxiety, another more connotative of a phobia, and I believe two more. I was interested in what differences the “wall” words would imply, but she doesn’t know, yet. Walls to keep in? Walls to keep out? Walls of different materials? Walls inside the house versus those on the exterior of a building?

She and I tried to look at our own language to see what we have many words for. Of course it is hard to tell with your own language, since if it has many different words, speakers of the language probably wouldn’t consider them all as one thing, and would find other languages with only one word for all of the concepts absurd. But I brought up how Oregon weather forecasters have multiple phrases (obviously it’s quite a different linguistic thing to have multiple phrases than words, but anyway) for sunny parts of the day. There are Sun Spots, Sun Breaks, Partially Sunny, and what else? Intermittent Sun? I did experience being corrected when I used the incorrect phrase in Oregon. Haha I also noted that I’ve noticed a lot of my girlfriends have multiple ways of avoiding the words “mad” or “angry”. We are frustrated, annoyed, irritated, offended, hurt…not angry. She asked if it is a bad thing in America to be mad.

Well, I need to head to class now, but I will leave you with a joke I heard recently and thoroughly enjoyed: What is blue and fluffy?

Pink fluff holding it’s breath.