Twice a Snow Day!

We had a snow day, that’s right, they cancelled school today due to around one inch of snow. So I got up really late and then was invited to talk a walk to the Old City with a group of very nice people. What a stupid idea! The snow here is a big mix of rain and snow, thus making the ground incredibly wet and cold. None of us have had any good snow gear. Every piece of clothing I had got completely soaked through and we only walked for like a half hour and didn’t get anywhere near close to the Old City before we hoped in a taxi and came back to school. It took me about a full hour to warm up after my freezing journey. My clothes is still sitting soaking in the common room. I spent the rest of the afternoon playing set and watching Sex and the City with a group of like 20 -30 people in these girl’s suite. This evening I went over to another friends suite and just hung out and drank a little. I was invited to go to Tel Aviv this weekend but I turned down the offer because I wanted to spend the weekend here because there is a trip to the Old City.

And now this morning I woke up to another text message letting me know school was cancelled again today due to the snow, looks like its going to be a really fun weekend!

Hugs and kisses, xoxo
Adra

PS- jbl I love you!

SNOW in Jerusalem

Can you believe it, but, it is now snowing is Jerusalem?! So I just got back from going outside to play in the “snow” (and by snow I mean a very chilly mix of rain and a few snowflakes that makes the ground wet and will not accumulate and yet we may not have school tomorrow) Anyways, my crazy Israeli roommates were so excited about it, they kept running and talking pictures and saying things like “zeh magniv”. We took a bunch of cute pictures so I will post as soon as I can. In other news, the Rothberg (Hebrew University’s International school) informed us that we should go shopping before the snow so Rotem (my roommate) and I took a trip to the Mister Zol (Mister Cheap, supermarket). It was actually really good to go with her, she helped me to get a lot of yummy food that I would not have known to get without her and when we got home from the supermarket I cooked my own dinner. I made pasta with sauce and I made sauce the way Jason (I love you so much, baby!) always makes with some of my own ingredients :) ! Right now I am just finishing up my homework for the day in Ulpan. All my homework consists of grammar, which it turns out it easy for me (who knew?, but I’d like to publicly thank Marc Brettler for kicking my butt in Bib Heb and teaching me all this crazy grammar stuff). So Ulpan level gimmel is pretty easy for me when it comes to grammar but is a pretty difficult challenge when it comes to vocab, I miss about every 10^th word said by somebody in class and I am constantly asking the girl next to me what words mean, but I think I am going to start to make a sheet of new words that I learn everyday, I’m hoping that will help me, however this is a daunting task because I believe that between 5 hours of Ulpan class and 4 pages of homework I have probably learned over 100 new words today.
Anyways I should get back to the homework because when I am done Rotem and I are going to watch the movie of “Singing in the Rain” in Hebrew without subtitles, which should be a really interesting experience. (Thankfully Rotem also loves movies and musicals, I may have found my Israeli soul mate, heheJ) Speaking of musicals, as I went to choose music to play while doing homework I was drawn to Thoroughly Modern Millie and as I listened it reminded of what a great time we all had together last spring, so everyone in Mattress have so much fun, you don’t know how much I miss being in rehearsal and just being around theater people in general!

Please Please Please PLEASE feel free to email, facebook, or comment here, I want to talk to everyone but I just don’t have working internet yet.

B’ahavah,
Adra

First Day of Ulpan

Shalom!
So today was the first day of ulpan, and I'm happy to say that it was actually a great day. I started of the day by buying myself a steady internet connection which may have been a little expensive but will totally be worth because the internet connection that i am stealing off of now kinda sucks. Then we walked to school, stopping, of course, for coffee on the way. I began the day in ulpan bet 3, which I figured would be a good fit if not maybe a little easy, well it turned out to be way too easy, so I got moved up to level gimmel (Jason, look how smart I am at hebrew!), which is a little difficult for me but i'm glad because i want a challenge so that I will learn alot more. I think i have some homework fo that but I missed most of the class due to the slowness of changing levels in the middle of the day. I also got to see alot of people today that I hadn't seen since the group flight and it was nice to reconnect and begin to make real friendships, everyone here so far seems to be such sweethearts and i really like everyone. Soon, I am going out to dinner with some kids who go to the Columbia/JTS program, they are really nice plus all of us can shabbat together which is great.

Oh, so if you didn't get the memo (J/K) I switched rooms yesterday because I could not stand my disgusting french roommates. So now I am living in a suite with 4 Israelis. Last night, I met all four of them. 2 boys and 2 girls. The girls are Rotem and Rachel and they are best friends, they are both really really over the top nice to me. they are very eccentric, in a good way and want to include me with everything tat they do. The boys are Eshai and Eli, Eshai speaks great english and is just a nice guy all around and Eli is just kind of crazy but in a very funny and nice way. The suite here is so clean and they share everything which is great for me because then I can learn to cook Israeli food and all that good stuff.

Ok I have get ready to go out to dinner. Please email me or call, I would love to talk,
Miss you all!!

Adra

First Shabbat in ISRAEL

From Saturday January 26:

Well, Hi! Right now I am sitting in my room in my suite at the Student Village at Hebrew University on Mt. Scopus in Jerusalem. It really has been a whirlwind couple of days. I left Boston at 4 am on Wednesday Jan. 23 flew to New York to get on the flight to Israel, and I arrived in Israel at 6 am on Thursday Jan. 24. From the airport we had a full day. And what a day it was, we arrived at Hebrew University at around 8 am where we were told to make groups of 5 people to become our suite for the semester. So even though many months ago we all had sent in form to request housing, in the fashion of most things in Israeli, those forms did not matter and we had to create our own housing. So we sat, and we sat, and we sat (all of this by the way was outside in the courtyard, and it was not warm that day) and for 6 hours we sat around until we allowed to head down to the office where they gave us our housing. There we sat for another few hours because, we came to find out, there were not any open suites left and they had to split people up and move them into any open rooms that were left. So eventually at about 3 pm (now remember I had been up for over 24 hours at this point and hadn’t eaten anything since getting off the plane) my friend Rosie who I went to high school with and I were given two rooms in a suite that two French guys and one full year international girl from Connecticut already lived in. Now, don’t get me wrong, all three of them seem very nice, Allison is great and will be able to show us the ropes since she has been here so a while already but so far I have only seen her for a few minutes at a time. Now, Stephen and Hillel, well they seem nice and Stephen speaks pretty good English but the kitchen in this suite is ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING and if you know how I am OCD about cleanliness you can understand how MUCH this bothers me. Also, Hillel hardly speaks English or Hebrew and I don’t speak French so that will be interesting. OK, so back to the kitchen, there are bags upon bags of garbage left out and not garbage can, dirty dishes everywhere, things just strewn about on the counters, the kitchen table is really dirty as it the stove. And I won’t even get into the fridge, it smells SO BAD like I want to puke when I open it and the freezer is worse. So since they took us to the mall on Thursday night and the market and Friday morning, I now have a bunch of food and cookware that are all staying in my room because I refuse to leave it out there with their stuff. But I did have to put my perishables in the fridge (OYE VEY) so I will need to find a way to get them to help me and Rosie clean up this place.

Ok, you ready for a new subject? The People here and it has been so far so good. I have been meeting a lot of people and trying to talk to everyone I can, and of course as it is in the Jewish world, everyone is playing the Jewish geography game and everyone knows someone that someone else knows, it’s hilarious. I have been spending a lot of time with Zach (if you’re a Brandeis person, I’m the one and only Zach Barr) and we are having a lot of fun together. I also have been spending a lot of time with this very cool girl named Anysley, who is a non-Jew here to study the conflict but she is so into everything Jewish I didn’t know she way a goy until she told me. After going to the shok in the morning, which was so much fun and really made me feel like I was here for real. Anysley and I and a few other girls who wanted to celebrate Shabbat headed down to Emek Rafaim last night to go to Friday services at Shira Chadasha (an egalitarian minyan with a mechitza that sings Carlebach melodies and the congregation is made up of almost entirely Americans) it was an awesome service and it was just like we do it at B’deis! And so Shabbat dinner last night, all the Brandeis kids were invited to this woman Cheryl’s house because 1) she lives really close and 2) she is the Israel study abroad liaison so she wanted to make sure everything was going good and give a us a free meal.

Oh yeah, by the way, did I mention that I have to cook for myself this semester! So I am assuming I will get used to knowing when I need to eat and I will soon be able to buy exactly what I want but because of the disgusting state of the kitchen and my own problems with reading the labels on food in the super market, I only have fruit and vegetables and some pasta to eat right now.

Alright, last couple of things to note:

I) It is raining right now in Jerusalem, which is cool because there has been a drought

b) I will not have internet in my room for about another two weeks but I will be bale to check my email and stuff on the computers in the International building. But if you want to call me, here is my Israeli number 0526136687

3) I have not yet finished unpacking because it has been so crazy but when I do I will post pictures of my room and suite and my really nice view.

Ok, much love to everyone and I miss you all so much, and I can’t wait till I have internet and can talk to you all.

Adra

PS- jbl <3>

Well, I am sitting in my room in my house, exhausted from wrestling with my luggage for the past two hours, including much screaming at my mother and unpacking and repacking the bags many times over. One of my bags is almost more than 70 pounds and I cannot believe how much shit I packed into that bag. But i was able to get everything for the next 8 months in one duffel bag and my hiking backpack. I still have to figure out how to get my carry on bag to be smaller for the flight to Israel but right now I am just thinking about how excited i am to go back to Brandeis for the next 5 days, can't wait to see everybody.