First Post from Haifa U!

Shalom! I have been here for almost an entire week already, so I figured I would post my first blog entry. Both flights here went very smoothly. I met two other girls in the Heathrow airport who were also going to Haifa. When we landed, the three of us braved the train to Haifa and then a taxi up the university. This was no small feat with all of our luggage, but we managed. When we arrived at the University, we were met by Ofrit who is a Madrichah. Madrichim are Haifa’s equivalent of Vassar’s student fellows, except they to much more social organizing. They organize all of our trips, movies, homework help etc. And they are around if we have any questions anything. Ofrit brought us to our rooms. I have a very nice single with my own bathroom in an apartment style dorm with 5 other girls. I don’t get internet in my room very well which is kind of annoying, but it works right outside in the courtyard. Outside my window I have a nice view of the courtyard which has a lot of trees and flowers.

We arrived Sunday morning and that afternoon I went on a tour of the campus and of the city. Haifa’s campus has a very simple layout, it’s basically a few large buildings that are all connected to each other. The dorms are at one end and the building we have classes in (called Main Building, just like at Vassar!) is at the other. It’s about a 10-15 minute walk to get there from my room. This involves a lot of stairs, as I have to go up about 4 flights of stairs to get to the main level of campus from my dorm, and then walking through all the buildings also involves many, many more stairs. After walking around campus, we took a bus down into the part of the city where there is a market. That night we watched an Israeli movie and then I finally got to go to bed. The tour was a really good place to meet other people in the Ulpan, and everyone was very friendly. There are people of all different ages and they have all different reasons for spending a month or two studying Hebrew. A lot are American, but there are also a lot of Europeans, mostly Germans. It has been really interesting to find out where everyone is from why everyone is here.

On Monday we had orientation, which basically meant we made sure all our forms were in order. Then that night there was a welcome celebration with falafel and a drum circle. Tuesday was our first day of class. My class is very difficult, and while I could move down a level, I am going to try to stick with it. My teacher is very nice, and she only speaks in English when we really don’t understand what’s going on. Class starts at 8:30am and goes until 1:00 in the afternoon, but we have a half hour break and a 10 minute break so we are never in class for more than 1.5 hours at a time, and it’s really only about 3 hours total. Still, we learn a lot in one day. In yesterday’s class (Thursday), we learned the future tense and she put all 5 verb groupings on the board. Hebrew has 5 different kinds of verbs, but we always kind of ignored the specifics of this at Vassar. I also realized that I need to work on my pronunciation, since at Vassar it really just mattered that we knew how to spell the words, not say them. So I am back to writing in vowels in my notes and homework which seems really weird. Hopefully after this weekend of intense studying to catch up I will feel better about class.

Our week goes from Sunday to Thursday. We have trips on Fridays and on some other days too. Yesterday we went on a more extended tour of Haifa and saw site all over the city. Today we toured the Golan Heights and learned a lot about Israel’s battle history there, and about all of its wars in general. Tomorrow I am going on a tour of the Bahai gardens. The scenery is incredibly beautiful here. We have a great view of the Mediterranean from campus since we are at the top of a mountain. I am hoping to get to the beach on Sunday since it is T’sha b’av so we don’t have class. I have already met a lot of great people, but most of them are just here for Ulpan and not for the semester. I am looking forward to the semester starting when Jordana will be here and people won’t be coming and going as much. I have 3 Israeli housemates, but they are going to leave at the end of next week. They’re only still here because their exams got pushed back due to the professors’ strike. And then at the end of the month my two American housemates will be leaving since they’re not staying for the semester.

I hope everything is going well in the States! And let me know if there’s anything you’d like to hear more about. I could say more, but this is already very long!

---

---