January 28th, 2010

Last night me and the 3 other roomies went to burgers bar for dinner. Burgers bar is my favoriteeeeeee place in Israel!! Its basically like a 5 guys, hamburger place, but healthier and less greasy. They have hamburgers, chicken, and all this stuff and you get it on a giant bun and you pile it high with vegetables and sauces, its amazinggggg!!! The people that worked there obviously only spoke Hebrew and were sitting there laughing at us (could not make it anymore obvious) everytime we spoke. These guys were rolling on the floor. We brought it back to our apartment and had a big roomie dinner at our kitchen table, it was really nice!

After dinner me and the twins decided to give laundry a try. We got all our stuff together and went down to the laundry room which is in the basement of one of the other buildings. It was packed, obviously, everyone had the same idea. We got the last 3 washers in the whole place! I’ve never had to pay for laundry at school before so I had nooo clue what to do! We had to go to this machine and figure out how to do it, it was very strange. I cant believe how expensive laundry is! Every washer is 10 sheckles which is about $2.50 and all dryers are the same. So if you are doing 2 loads- it costs $10.00!! For someone whose never paid to do laundry, quite a shock! In Israel they only use powder detergent, I don’t know why, but they do and its gross. I’ve also never used powder detergent before, no on in that room had, so we were trying to figure out how much to use it was really funny.

Theres this little coffee shop right next to the laundry room in that building. Its kind of like the college coffee shop in your building that you’ve always always wanted. Its got all these big couches, tables, light music playing, warm colors on the wall, hot drinks, cold drinks, desserts, and actual food. We went there yesterday afternoon to do our Hebrew homework and they have free wireless which is how ive been writing these posts because I don’t have internet in my room (STILL doesn’t work). We also sat there last night while our laundry was being done. Its really nice—everyone was there studying so it was a good place to talk and meet people! Very cozy

-Israeli Roomie decides to have her friends over for a breakfast party at 7 am. Luckily we were all in the process of getting up that time anyway for ulpan, but still who has friends over at 7 am. She was cooking up a storm of eggs, toast, French toast etc for her boyfriend and a few others. Again- she keeps telling me we all have to sit down and talk but we don’t know what she is talking about, we’re all always here when she is here and we don’t sit down and have this “talk”—its very very strange.

-Ulpan was good today. Got 100 on my quiz yesterday-- these quizzes are very strange, they are more like fill in the blanks and the words are already there so you just have to recognize them. We have quizzes everdayy-- had one today too and theres on Sunday. Since Shabbat is tomorrow the ulpan teachers organized this funny shabbat skit, all in hebrew. Had NOOO idea what they were saying but they were so animated and soo funny and had props. We also sang songs with a few other classes and had challah and meitz-- juice. I feel like im in kindergarten and they are going to pull out the fingerpaints soon with all the singing, plays and alphabet learning. Stillllllll learning the alphabett omggg... The teacher asked me again today if I want to move to a higher level but Im scared its going to be too hard. The gaps between the levels are not good- theres no real in between- it goes from realllyyyyy easy to hard right away- so I kinda just have to stay. Today was exciting because its like our friday. We dont have class Friday and Saturday-- but we do have it sunday, so this is the start of our weekend. Everyones sooo excited to go out tonight because we've been stuck in a classroom for 25 hours this week so we're ready to break loose!!

After ulpan, me, sam, sarah, and rachel had lunch in the cute cafe where I am right now right in the building next to us. it was delicious!! Its very strange-- theres only one man that works here-- he does the bar where people order drinks, he is the waiter if you order food, and he cooks the drinks in the back--- no help! I asked him abobut it and his response was-- its israel!

This afternoon there was a program with our madrichem. Madrichem are sort of like RA's but they dont live with us and they do more stuff. They are like our counselors-- we call them when we have problems, we ask them questions, they conduct trips, they are everywehere. Theres 4 of them. So this afternoon was a meet the madrichem (even though we already know them and they know me very well from my crying on the first day and my extensive room swtiches). And we also did ice breakers and played those very awkward meeting games.

Me, Sarah, Sam, Rachel, Rosie and our friend Lauren are going to cook dinner tonight. We only have a stove so it makes it kinda harder to think of things to make, you cant really have pasta EVERYDAYYY- but we all just went to the supermarket together and we're going to make pasta and vegetbales tonight for dinner in my apartment. Im excited, its our first cooking attempt :)

And tonighttt we're goingggg outt :) :)

People really study here, Im very impressed. No one really went out this week. Tonight everyone is pretty much breaking loose im very suprised. I guess because we get up at 7 am so its kind of hard but im a little suprised.

Cant waittt to sleeeeep this weeekend and make my room pretty :)