Day 2 of Ulpan...

If things continue as they are right now - I will have learned more Hebrew in a month than I did all last year at the U of R! It's seriously exhausting. We have two instructors and they switch mid-day. Only Hebrew is spoken at all times. And if you don't know how to say what you need to say, you have to ask in Hebrew. The instructors are really well trained. Even though they know English, they don't solve communication problems by using it. If necessary, they pantomime. The point being that you are fully immersed in the language all day long, and you use what you know of the language to learn more. So new learning reinforces and clarifies the old stuff. It's a phenomenal approach.

I need to take a moment to say that food here is really different, but realllly good. First of all, at the grocery store, you can buy a tub of hummus like we would buy potato salad for eleven shekels which amounts to about three dollars. Ridiculous. They have the absolutely FRESHEST vegetables I ever seen. The climate is perfect and the country is small so getting stuff from the farm to the plate takes much less time than we are used to in the US. They combine things that I never would have thought to try..the sandwiches are especially interesting and delicious...today i had a roasted eggplant, hardboiled egg, basil, hummus, and red pepper sub. I've only had one piece of a chicken breast since I've been here. Most things are vegetarian on account of Kosher diets.

I took a walk around campus yesterday to get some pictures (link below) to show you all the University. Apart from the dorms which are bare-bones, the Mount Scopus campus of Hebrew U is the MOST beautiful college campus I've ever seen! The climate definitely helps that, but everywhere there are flowers in bloom, walls draped in moss, palm trees, lush golfcourse-esque lawns, trickling waterfalls and such. The campus has SEVERAL botanical gardens. Go figure.

Pictures of Hebrew U Mt. Scopus Campus