Yesterday was the first day of work and class. The way the schedule works is that everyone works 24 hours a week, and we have 4 hours of classes Sunday through Thursday, but don’t have class on Friday or Shabbat. Each week we switch off who goes to class in the morning and who works in the morning. For me, this week I start work in the kitchen at 7 AM, get a break for breakfast at 9AM, then work again from 9:30AM- 11:30AM. I start class after lunch at 1 PM in the afternoon. It goes until 5 PM and we have two breaks. Every other week, when I have class in the morning, I actually don’t have anything on Friday. This means I have Thursday night and Shabbat to travel throughout Israel on these weekends.
So far, the ulpan class has been very interesting. I am in Kitah Bet (class 2 of 4). Although, everyone in the class knows Hebrew in some form or another, the teacher, moreh Tamar, explained that we would start from the beginning, but do an accelerated version of Kitah aleph. So far we have been learning the aleph-bet, not in the regular order of things, but in a way that we can create, and read simple words. The strange thing about the class is that about half the class learned Hebrew in a Synagogue Hebrew School setting, so they can read and write, just understand very little of what is spoken and/ or written in complicated sentences. The other half of the class never learned Hebrew in a class setting. Though they can communicate to the teacher in Hebrew without any hesitation, when it comes to reading and writing, they act like dyslexic kindergarteners, messing up reading two letter words. The teacher said that two weeks more in and we would all be in the same place. I am a bit worried that when the Hebrew speakers learn the phonetics, they will leave the non-hebrew vocab lacking people in the dust.
(my friend Moses from Mexico, who I sit behind)
Working in the kitchen has been pretty fun so far. The first day of work Yaron gave us bad information about our start time. He told us to arrive at 9:30 instead of 7. So we only worked half a day. There are six of us that work in the kitchen. Justin, a 22 year old, self-made, internet advertiser, works unloading shipments, while my roommate Noah, another gapyearie Emily, and another kid (I haven’t bothered to learn his name yet) work in the hot kitchen. I work in the cold kitchen with an 20 year old, Olim (new immigrant) from Australia: Ofir. Although she is technically a returning citizen (she was born in Israel), I still group her in the category of people who are staying in Israel after the kibbutz-ulpan program ends. The first day, for the whole (daunting) 2 hours, I just shredded onions through a food processor. It went by quickly just talking to Ofir.
In addition to Ofir, a man older man named Yizach, and a middle aged woman whose name I can’t remember at the moment work with us (I will find her name out tomorrow). Well actually they tell us what to do, how to do, and when we are doing it wrong. But they have been very nice so far.
Today, it was a little challenging getting up at 6:45 AM since I haven’t been used to it for almost a year (2nd semester senior year I got up the latest I possibly could with being late, usually 7:20). It is a little weird working for two hours without breakfast (breakfast doesn’t open until 7:30 AM so we can’t have breakfast beforehand), but I managed. Today I got to do more of a variety of mindless tasks. I got to cut up sweet potatoes, shred zucchini, shell hard-boiled eggs, and peel avocados.
The last two were to be used for a salad that was to be mixed together. The time went by pretty fast, and before I knew it, the end was upon me. The people were very nice. When the shift ended they gave us free freshly baked pizza that was being served at lunch, so I didn’t need to even buy lunch today!!!
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