More Ulpan

By the way, check out this pretty cool link to a research survey. I know we don't love surveys but it's an interesting idea! http://tinyurl.com/5ll9vr

This past Thursday, Roni told us that we'd be going over verbs on Sunday. I anticipated that she'd do a quick review of past tense and move onto future. She didn't.... spend more time talking about shoresh. Ugh. I was beginning to think that I really ought to move up regardless of what other people commented about that particular class. I met with Rina to discuss my Hebrew placement and she granted me permission to sit in the next class the next day. I found out that this program's Bet course was divided in only two sections- one section covering the first half of the book and the other section on the second half. I told her that I'm almost on the second half and it just seemed kind of stupid that I was repeating and I was paying to make real progress after all. I also was beginning to think that if it wasn't for graduate school orientation and the need to move to Ann Arbor and settle for a bit, I'd like to stay for another month just to finish this level!

After class, I was pretty tired so I took an easy by just going shuk shopping. I took the 24 bus all the way down. It was a pretty nice ride. It passed supposedly the Middle East's largest mall, the Grand Canyon (Kenion). It was literally built in the valley so imagined our Grand Canyon having a mall in its canyons! Or told me it's not even worth comparing to the malls in the US. But the sight was quite amusing.

I came back from the shuk and fixed some dinner and did my homework. And spent some time updating this blog.

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Today, I rose very early- quarter to 6 in hopes of getting to the gym just as the doors would be open. You see, I've been battling with the university over entering in the gym when it opens for the past week. There's a short route from the dorms but apparently the workers don't unlock the doors until 7 AM (and yes, unusually Israeli, on the dot). My program booklet said the gym opens at 6:30 AM so I was quite... aggravated given that I need to be out of there by 7:45 in order to shower and eat before ulpan. I complained to the monitor and he said that I have to go through another main building to get in and it's really open at 6:30. So today, I took the time to find the doors. Eventually, I found an open entrance in the Rabin building, which is next to the Terrace building, where the gym was located. I almost wanted to shout "victory!"

In ulpan, I went to the advanced Bet class. I was nearly overwhelmed. I didn't quite have a good feeling about the teacher and she spoke very fast. Also other students seemed to be more advanced in their speaking abilities. So I began to think, "Well, I'm finished with David Copperfield and I might as well bring my other Bet book with me to the beach for reading in order to finish this level." So at the break, I told her thanks but no thanks. I went back to Rina and told her that it's a tough choice but I'd rather just stay where I was.

Later, I began talking with some people around me who came from that class and we agreed that this program wasn't quite working in our favor. We needed a class that's in the middle of the two. One girl said that there's really a huge gap between the two classes which made figuring out which one to study with more difficult. I began analyzing Haifa's summer ulpan program overall- it seemed to me that it was pretty small and largely catered towards Aleph level students as I think the highest level is Gimel (third level). Hebrew University's program was most definitely larger as I remember seeing a lot of Bet classes, meaning it might have a wider range of abilities. So if I had gone to Jerusalem ulpan, I might be exactly where I should be. But for now, I'm just going have to make do. I have to really remember how much I want this PhD. No Hebrew, no PhD. But studying Hebrew is tough without ulpan.

I've been having a bit of trouble with time management in terms of studying so today, I decided to try bringing my Hebrew homework on the beach. After all, I was out there for 3 hours and I could get everything done.... and I did. Now I have the rest of the night to work on my essay for Thursday's assignment!

Tomorrow, hopefully off to Nazareth!