Sunday January 31st

Nothing to report today. Ulpan started an hour later at 930—it was not fun getting up after 2 days of sleeping “late”. The material is getting a little bit harder by the day, good thing because I’m getting bored! We took a field trip today to the cafeteria to learn about all the different foods thee in Hebrew, it was fun and we sing songs about all the verb forms, I feel like I’m in kindergarten. Quizzes everyday—boooo .
After Ulpan there was an orientation for registration to sign up for classes. Like Binghamton, it’s an online registration that opens beginning tomorrow. It’s not first come first serve because if classes get filled up there is a lotto system and students are randomly chosen in the class. The standard schedule is 15 credits- 6 credits must be Hebrew, 9 more credits. Each class class is 3 credits so basically we are supposed to take Hebrew + 3 real classes. I have to take 1 or 2 psych classes which only leaves one more class and I was hoping to maybe do the internship class so I may not really have actual choices. They offer SOOO many classes, its actually amazing. Some sound interesting, some sound boring- the Poli Sci kids really like it because this school is geared towards poli sci/international relations and they have tons of choices. Our classes are taught in English in the international school, the Rothberg school, so they all end by June 3rd. If we want to we are allowed to take classes in the main school, which are taught in English, but they end at the end of June so I don’t want to do that.
After orientation we went to a Tubishvat party. My friends and I sat at a long table and we had a giant seder with about 50 kids from the group. So weird, Julie Fulop- from cornell who was on my Meor Israel trip in May, goes to Tel Aviv now—ran up to me. Her and her friends took a trip to Jerusalem for the day because they were invited to this Tishabav party- very strange. It was nice to see her, we talked a lot about her schools. Seems like all they do in Tel Aviv is go out every single night--- very nice weather, lots of sunshine and they can go on the beach, but seems like one big party and nothing else—so Im starting to get happier that I didn’t go there. I HATEEE the cold here, wish I was in the bright sun and on the beach but I don’t think I would feel right there. She also said they don’t really do any group programs, they don’t have Shabbat dinners like us, they don’t have student trips, they don’t know their madrichem, and they don’t do seders like this which was so bizarre to me because they do SOO much of that here!! Anyway we had a nice seder- had olives, dried fruits, nuts, pomegranates, and lots of fun things, it was a good snack. Then we made flower pots for a friend and exchanged them. We painted them and planted some sort of plant that makes tea leaves, it was interesting. Lauren and I exchanged, mine was a disaster I feel bad for her, the one she made me is so nice- it’s a lovely decoration in our plane kitchen.
After the Seder we went back to our apartment and were starving!! The twins and I decided to walk to the supermarket and get things to make stir fry and rice. We had tons of vegetables from the Shuk on Friday that we wanted to use + we got an onion, soy sauce, and rice. We started cooking in our kitchen when Eli, our madrichem, knocked on our door. He was walking around to all the apartments making sure all the lists were updated of who was living where. He saw that we didn’t know how to cut vegetables, make rice the right way or pretty much do anything the right way so he took over and cooked us dinner!! So funny and so random- our staff was cooking us dinner in our apartment. It was very nice of him. He even stayed and ate with us so be all bonded! He’s our favorite, he does SOOO much stuff with us- leads tons of trips and really gets to know each one of us, we love him!! So we had a nice dinner with him and it came out sooooo good! We knew everyone would be jealous when we told them because everyone loves him. We call him a Munchkin because he’s very tiny!
After dinner Karen, Israeli roommate, actually spelled and said Keren decided to sit down with us and have the “talk” that we’ve all been anticipating. I hate to be mean but it was the funniest talk ever because we had NOOO idea what we were saying. All we got out of it was that she wants to make a job chart so we each do chores every week, we use way to much electricity and water and her bill us gone up 3 times since we got here (lies because we’ve only been here 2 weeks and you get bills monthly) but yea so she hates us. We had a huge argument with her about the water use. We all shower at 7 am and no one is getting up at 6 am to turn on the water heater which takes an hour to warm up, so we leave the button on before we go to sleep and she gets SOOO mad—she like yelled at us in Hebrew. We explained to her that we pay also, just in a different way, so we want to use what we pay for also. We told her how she needs to put her food in tuberware containers instead of putting pots in the refrigerator, that was a fun one. A lot of words were exchanged but I don’t think she understood any of it. She hates us. That’s about it.
Studied. Went to bed.