Blinkers, wigs, and tea

Some random thoughts as you head toward the weekend (where I already am!)…

The other day, I saw two cars in the space of a few minutes using turning signals! You’re going to have to trust me that this was significant. The fact that I noticed the signals should be a sign of their rarity, and two in one day…wow.

I learned a great fun-fact in Hebrew recently as well. To understand this one, you have to know that Hebrew is based on root letters. If two words have the middle three or so letters in common, they’re probably related. (This is why we bow on the word “baruch” in many prayers. It has the same root letters as the word “berech,” knee.) So often learning one root can give you understanding of a whole family of words, which is nice, as long as you can remember the roots. So we were learning the news, and talking about how four people had died shortly after receiving flu shots. The word for “flu” in Hebrew is of the same root as “influence.” We all thought this was weird. Our Hebrew teacher told us, in complete seriousness, that it was because “influence” and “influenza” are from the same root in English. She dismissed our insistence that this makes no sense, because English is not based on roots, and the words are unrelated. But I think we all remember the word for flu now.

I got a flu shot a week and a half ago, and I’m still alive! See above for why this is exciting.

I saw a uniquely Jerusalem sight the other day. I was walking up to a friend’s house, and on the way, I passed an orthodox family, parents and a child. The woman was wearing a scarf on her head (since orthodox married women cover their heads at all times; many wear wigs instead of scarves or hats). What was she carrying? A Styrofoam head with a wig on it. It doesn’t sound quite as funny typed out, but you’re going to have to trust me.

I woke up earlier in the week with an awful sore throat. Aside from that, I felt completely fine, but I sounded pretty funny for a couple of days. (I am now fine, with a little bit of a cough left, but I promise I’m okay!) On Monday, when the sore throat was at its worst, all I wanted to swallow was warm liquids. I made myself a cup of tea with honey before I left for school. After services, I had another cup, but there wasn’t any honey available. After Hebrew, my cup was empty but my throat still hurt, so I refilled my mug with hot water, and found honey, and reused the same teabag. It wasn’t as good, but it was warm! At lunchtime, I made myself another cup (also decaf) from a teabag I had brought from home. The school café person was happy to give me honey after hearing me talk. After that, I decided I needed to be done with tea for the day. Except that night, I went to my friend Nicole’s to work on our Rabbinics homework. Her fiancé is British. Before I had my coat off, and before he heard me talk, he offered me a cup of tea. How could I turn that down?! I might have offended his Britishness by putting honey in it, but it felt good! After we finished the homework, I went to another friend’s house to hang out for an hour before coming home to finish up and go to bed. It was cold out (and nobody’s heat is turned on yet), so she decided we were all having tea. Again, how could I say no? It was good. So if you stopped keeping track, I had six cups of tea on Monday. I think they were all decaf, but four of them were for sure. I became a finely tuned peeing machine, but my throat felt better when I woke up on Tuesday!

I walked into the supermarket this morning with my shuk cart. I had already been to the shuk, and even though I didn’t need all that much from either place, it seemed like the best way to combine two shopping trips. As I walked in with the cart, a man asked me, in very slow, well-annunciated English, where I had gotten my cart. I started laughing when I answered him in clearly-native-speaker English. Looking back, it might have been more fun to answer in Hebrew.

I have one class that I didn’t expect to be one of the highlights of my week, but it is turning out to be just that: biblical grammar. My Hebrew class has an amazing professor for this class, the man who several of us had heard was the only one who could effectively teach it. We’re the only Hebrew class he teaches for biblical grammar. (I also have him next semester for Bible, which should be fascinating and hard, but I’ll learn a lot!) He teaches in a very organized and very straightforward and logical way. I love that I can follow along with it. I tend to pick up on grammar quickly, possibly because it is so logical, and possibly because it’s in the genes (thanks, Mom!). But some of my class struggles with it a lot, and I just get it. It’s really nice to have one class where I feel like I really know what I am doing, at least for now! It also has nice placement in the week: we have it right after Radio Day in Hebrew, when I’m usually feeling incompetent and not so brilliant. And then Yossi comes in and we learn grammar, and I feel much better about my Hebrew skills!

My Ethopian family is still a lot of fun. We played with sidewalk chalk this week, and based on the dirty kids = happy kids equation, they really loved it! There was chalk everywhere. The mother has decided she wants to feed us. (She is, of course, a Jewish mother!) She started making cups of coffee for me and Karen, which is interesting, because I’m really not a coffee drinker. Except, apparently, for on Tuesday evenings. She also puts out plain bread (which I have been skipping, because it’s not so exciting and the kids like it, and I’ve just had dinner when I get there) and some apples. The apples are by far the best I have had in Israel! I eat those happily, alternately cutting a piece for myself and one for the two-year-old who also seems to love apples. It’s as if the mother can’t really communicate with us, but wants us to feel welcome, so she gives us food. We also feel welcome when we knock on the door, and are greeted with shrieks of glee and knee-hugs from the little kids. I love this project!

Every year, the history professors run a “Duma simulation,” which is basically all of us simulating elections to the Russian parliament in the early 1900s, but all from a Jewish perspective. A friend of mine was asked to chair it and to find a co-chair, and he asked me to run the program with him. I’m good friends with his wife, who is not in the program, but the two of us had never really hung out a lot before. We got together to organize the program, and we had such a great time! We had to send out an email to the class explaining the program and the procedures, and we ended up taking over an hour to draft this email, because we were having so much fun with it. The whole program is next Sunday night, and if people get into it, it should be a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to it!

For our Israel seminar this week, they wanted us to talk to “real Israelis.” We were sent off campus for a few hours, armed with a survey about consumer habits, to talk to some people. I went with a group of friends to the Hebrew University campus. The way we went, it was a 40 minute walk, through East Jerusalem, but on a beautiful day. While a little concerned when I first realized where we were walking, I got over it and enjoyed the completely new scenery. We split up and talked to some people. One of the people my partner and I talked to was an older man (in the 50+ category on the survey, but several decades older than that). He liked having an audience! It turned out that he had lived in Germany until about 1940, then moved to Israel, to the United States, and finally back to Israel. He was a really interesting man, and then it turned out that he lived nowhere near the Hebrew University campus where we were, but more or less across the street from HUC! He gave us his name and told us to stop by and visit. Random encounters like that are always so great.

That’s about all the random thoughts I can muster right now. It’s 11am, but I’ve already been to the shuk, the grocery store, a friend’s to borrow the right size pan, made brownies, tasted batter, and tasted the finished product. They’re delicious and I’m exhausted! But everything has to happen early these days; I’m leaving for Shabbat services this “evening” at 4:00!