Zach: My Hebrew Progress

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(As dictated to Betsy.)

I’m happy with how my Hebrew is going. Every night we have treasure hunts or a scavenger hunt. In the treasure hunt, I read clues in script in Hebrew and I go to the place and find a treat (gummi treats, chocolate, etc.). In the scavenger hunt, my mom gives me one clue, which leads to another clue, which leads to another clue, and after a lot of clues I find a piece of candy or a dentist’s worst nightmare (not healthy snacks!). Here’s an example of a clue: ".תסתכל על המדף בסלון" (Look on the shelf in the living room.), but it’s written in script instead of block letters. My parents and I talk a lot in Hebrew. I can talk about my piano (איפה המוסיקה שלי? על הפסנתר ; Where is my music? On the piano.), about time (מה השעה? השעה שתים-עשרה ורבע ; What time is it? It’s a quarter after twelve.), and what I like to do (מה אתה אוהב לעשות? אני אוהב לשחק על המחשב שלי ; What do you like to do? I like to play on my computer). My tutor, Yuval, was giving me a lot of work, but he got sick last week and went to the emergency room, so I’m not really getting so much homework this week. I can understand my teacher sometimes, but recently she asked me to do something and the whole class started laughing because I just looked at her. Then she said it in English and the class stopped laughing. I corrected my Dad twice and that made me pretty happy. I watch TV, usually in Hebrew. They have a lot of the same shows here that we have at home … Pokemon, Digimon, but they’re in Hebrew. My parents like to watch “Bratz” because they can understand some of it. But it’s a really stupid show about how these girls and this woman and her daughters compete in fashion contests. There’s this new thing that’s new this year, a series called “Island” in Hebrew. The idea is that an asteroid hit the earth and almost everybody died, but there are a few Israeli kids that survived because they were on an underground train to the island. One of them has a book that tells the future, and there are some bad people who want the book. They’re trying to kill all the kids and kidnapped one girl and brainwashed her to betray her friends.

I like to go over to my friends’ houses once or twice a week. We play video games and watch TV. We speak English and Hebrew, and I can ask what to do next on the video game in Hebrew (מה עכשיו?).

(Stewart: “Bratz” is a cartoon. It is indeed pretty stupid, at least what I can understand.)

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