Hi from Haifa University! As Naomi mentioned, she and I are enrolled in a one-month summer ulpan at the gorgeous university campus. I am truly enjoying this ulpan, but I can’t say it’s not intense; the classes are conducted entirely in Hebrew, and each day is tantamount to a week at university. My level has a lot of improvisational dialoging, reading newspapers, writing short essays, and listening to speeches given in Hebrew. Having learned Hebrew at home, the hardest part for me is not the speaking or understanding, which comes naturally, but the grammar. For most people here it’s just the opposite; they learned Hebrew in school, so they have all the building blocks in place yet have a very hard time actually conversing. I, on the other hand, struggle every time we learn something new on the grammatical side of things, yet understand every word the teacher says while she explains it. It is also worth noting that Kim, my teacher, looks eerily like my mother – which helps! My Hebrew has definitely improved and I couldn’t be happier.

Outside of class, Haifa University is an amazingly fun and gorgeous place to be. Our dorms are much more like apartments, with six single rooms each with their own bathroom and a shared kitchen. My roommates are Naomi, my friend from Gratz, and Lauren, who went to high school with me, plus one other student from the ulpan who we never see and two Israeli roommates, Liron and Liora. We have made such amazing friends here: Hailey and Maggie, twins from Boston; Ryan, my partner in crime at school who spends half the class explaining grammar to me while I spend the other half translating for him; Kirill, Tzviran, and Thomas, Israeli students who go to the university; Miriam from UChicago (and her friend Charlotte who has been traveling the world and came to visit for two weeks)… we spend all our free time just hanging out around the campus, navigating the bus system in Horev center, or doing homework on the beautiful Dado beach in Hof HaCarmel. Being in Haifa also means being able to see my family, like the other day when I had dinner with Chana Ruti and Rachael (all three of my mom’s sisters), or when Michael brought me a carload of vegetables and fruit from the shuk which we are still trying to get through. I also got to go to another cousin’s wedding on the moshav in Beersheva, where I spent the evening laughing and dancing with my whole wonderful Israeli family.

Last weekend I had an amazing Shabbos, and next weekend should be too: a bunch of us are heading up to Ramat Eshkol in Jerusalem, and I will get to reconnect with some of the Jewel girls too. I can’t say I miss America one bit, but I can certainly say I love Israel!