Updates on the past few days

Since I last wrote to you all I have graduated the Winter 2011 Ulpan! Hooray! We had our last day of class this past Thursday, during which we had a potluck breakfast party and then took our final exam. During the potluck breakfast, we utilized our last opportunity to get to know each other by playing "Two Truths and a Lie". Now generally I’m pretty terrible at this game because I can never think of anything interesting enough to say about myself, but to throw a twist in this version, we had to say our statements in Hebrew. So with limited vocabulary we shared interesting facts about each other. It was fun to get to have one last hurrah before everyone set off to various parts of the world (many of the students not from America are not actually staying for the semester, they just came for the Ulpan, so they went back home, which is quite sad because I got to be close with a few).

I spent Friday down at the Old City, where Cody (who has become a little “Ir Atika” expert) showed us some cool stuff, including a water cistern that provides water for all of the Christian quarter. We also went up to the roof of the Austrian Hospice (where I got to utilize my German skills reading signs, picture captions, and the menu in their café, whose special of the day was Käsespätzle—YUM, we should have stayed to eat). The Austrian Hospice is not only a beautiful hotel that visitors can stay in right inside the Old City, if they book over a year in advance, but it also has a rooftop that affords one of the most beautiful views of the Old City. We went up to check it out and it really felt like we were on top of the whole place. There’s so much of the city that takes place on rooftops--houses, yards, basketball and soccer courts, even chicken coops—so being above even those and looking down on the whole city from one spot was incredible. It’s from this viewpoint that you can even more clearly see the amazing mix that is Jerusalem. Without pivoting at all you can see the domes of the Church of the Holy Sepluchre, the bell tower of a Lutheran Church, the towers of a mosque, and roofs of synagogues, with Israeli flags flying all around. It really was a remarkable view.

To keep you updated on other things: I started my classes for real! Hooray! I’ll put up a post describing them soon, but I’ll just let you know now that I like them very much and I’m really excited for what the semester has in store for me! I still can’t believe I’m in Israel. It’s already been one month but I have a beautiful four more to go.