Its been a while...

So I have not posted anything in several months, mostly out of laziness. I will not go into everything that has gone on in the past number of months but rather start anew in the hopes that I will be consistent in my posting from this point forward. So...the main thing happening in my life these days is that I began my spring semester yesterday. I am only taking three classes this semester, but before you go chiding me for being a slacker, the three classes are Talmud, Midrash and Halachah (Jewish law) and I am taking these classes in HUC's Israeli rabbinic program in Jerusalem. So that means that the entirety of all three classes is in Hebrew, spoken at a pace that would put an auctioneer (or the MicroMachines guy, anyone remember him?) to shame. I would say that I am functioning at about 60% at the moment, so I understand the majority of what goes on, but just barely. I am counting on my ear adjusting to the speed over the next couple of weeks, but for right now it just makes my brain hurt. If you want to try this at home you have a couple of options:

Option 1-If you kind-of speak/understand another language (if you're fluent it doesn't count), find a radio or tv program on-line and then have it play from 12 different speakers, and start the broadcast at 3 second intervals so that it sounds like everyone is talking over each other. Do this for at least 1.5 hours and that is similar to how my classes feel right now.

Option 2-If you are totally mono-lingual, find one of those foam or rubber squeaky hammers and have someone beat you over the head with it for an hour-and-a-half or so. It doesn't recreate the classroom experience, but it will enable you to feel (once it is done) how I feel when I get out of class.

So hopefully this is the worst of it and that each week will get a little easier and I will understand more and more, but for now, it is very overwhelming.

That's really all I've got at the moment. Like I said above, I am hoping to post regularly from this point on, but we'll see if that actually happens. So until next time, take care all and don't forget to save those wrappers!!