Wow a New Post

So it's been a little while my last posting. I need to work on this a little bit, so here's how my day went today.

I woke up late because I have no class and I wasn't able to sleep last night until about 4 am. It might have had something to do with planning a trip to Egypt. So when I finally woke up, I got myself together and headed over to Andrea's (my new buddy in the masters program here) apartment to plan out the trip.

We're going to leave the day after Yom Kippur, fly via Jordan and use an 11.25 hour layover for a day trip in Amman. Then we'll head over to Cairo for about a week. Should be awesome. I'm looking forward to checking out an Egyptian Synagogue on Sukkot. I can't wait to see the sunrise at the pyramids, see the sphinx and just wander around in Egypt. I don't know when I'll be able to go again so I'm going to make the most of it. And of course I'm going to get some great footage. I'm so excited!

We then went with Loren (another masters student, and a guy) to the absoption center where he has been living since he made aliyah this summer. It's a reeeeeeeeally long building in Be'er Sheva, where hundreds of new immigrant families live while they study Hebrew and get used to the country. I met Jews from Turkey, Peru, India and Yemen. Then while we were walking around we passed a group of teenage boys playing and speaking in Russian. I made a comment about there being lots of Russians and then heard all about how they weren't Russian but Ukrainian, Latvian, Belorussian, Azeri... I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, we were walking by a mural with lots of different national flags next to the Israeli flag. Not very subtle, but then again, I don't think that was the point. It was really powerful seeing all those different Jews who were coming together, as new olim.

We sat down (Loren and I, Andrea sat with the women) and spoke with some of the Yemeni Jews for a little while. I was a little upset with myself because I wasn't really able to talk with them in Arabic so much. I really need to step up my reviewing. But I was still able to talk with some of them in Hebrew and at one point, one of them was translating from Arabic to Hebrew and I was translating from Hebrew to English. Kinda funny, but very interesting. While it is great to see all these Jews coming together in Israel, the Yemeni Jews I met were not happy at all about leaving Yemen (some had arrived just last week) and told me right out that if there weren't so many problems there and if they felt safer, they would all have preferred to stay there. I asked them if they would be willing to be interviewed about it on camera and they agreed so it looks like I have a possible topic for my next film. They then asked us if we were hungry. We said no, but they brought out some home made laffa anyway. Delicious.

We then turned around and saw that Andrea was gone. She had been taken up to one of the apartments by one of the Yemeni women who was intent on feeding her. Sadly, Andrea didn't know who to say she was a vegetarian in Arabic. Not wanting to be rude, she proceeded to eat a whole chicken (well, not a whole chicken, but that's how she described it). When I told Yehiel, our Hebrew-Arabic translator, what happened, he laughed and said that Yemenis love to eat and love to watch other people eat. I could get used to this.

When we got back to the dorms, I went to study some Arabic. Having not studied it for over a year, I'm noticeably rusty. But I'm sure that if I really force myself to review and study, I should be ready in time for class. Although, I'm still not sure which Arabic-in-Hebrew class I'm going to be taking, I'm sure it will be much different that what I've done in the past. I'll have to practice translating directly from Arabic to Hebrew a little bit to get used to it.

A little later I went over my class schedule. I've decided on the three non-language courses I want to take: Milestones in the Zionist-Arab Conflict 1881-1948 (Benny Morris), Studying the Modern Middle East: A Historiographic Review, and The 1979 Iranian Revolution: A Thirty Year Perspective. But I'm a little annoyed. I had recently been thinking about taking Persian (Farsi) in Hebrew as well, because I think it would be fun, interesting and would serve as both a Hebrew class and another language class. But there is only one beginners class and it is the same time as Benny Morris' class. How can there only be one class for the entire university?! Oh well.