Goodbye, Kita Bet (ב). I won’t miss you!

Today is the first day of my LAST week in Kita Bet (Level 2 of Hebrew) I’m soooo excited to be finished for many reasons:
1. It was an intensive summer class. 5 hours each day, 5 days a week. I’m just over it!
2. Finishing the class just brings me closer to my break and coming [...]

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Agada Week

This week in Hebrew class we started reading Agadot (אגדות). An agada is a fairy tale or legend.  Depending on how it is used, it can also be a folk tale or a fable.  Today we read about Andromeda from Greek Mythology, which just happens to take places in Jaffa. (go figure!)
During the rest of [...]

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Mediterranean Monday: Lets debate!

The other day in class we were learning the new verbs: (לדון) ladoon and (לריב) lareev.  Ladoon is “to debate” and lareev is “to argue”.  My Ulpan teacher gave us an explanation that just about cracked me up, and if anyone has lived/been to Israel you will totally understand why.  
She gave this example: In [...]

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Amen! (אמן)

Did you know that the word “Amen” is Hebrew?  It comes from the verb, leha’meen (להאמין), which means “to believe“.  If you notice the three letters of Amen, (אמן) come at the end of the verb form of  ’to believe’.  This is how Hebrew is…every word and its meaning is connected to the root word. [...]

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From the mouth of a child

Today I was humbled. 
There is a young Sudanese girl, 10/11 yrs. old who comes each week for Food Distribution for her mother.  She is the cutest thing and since she is in school here, her Hebrew is super good.  Today she brought her brother with her and I asked her (in Hebrew), “Is this your [...]

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The Writing’s on the Wall

מנא מנא תקל ופרםין
(Mene Mene Tekel Uparseen)
My mind has been stewing on this passage for a couple weeks now.  It was right there in front of them. They could see it with their eyes, yet their hearts were not able to understand.  Even the scholars and wise men could not make meaning of four little [...]

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Yesababa

The blending of two foreign words to form a Hebrew one, thats the charm of external cultural influence here.  
There is a channel on TV called Yesababa.  It is like the Family Channel in the states, playing kids shows and family movies etc. but all in Hebrew.  On all the movie channels, all the films [...]

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I’m back in Kindergarten…

I was so excited yesterday when I came across a book store selling all its books for 15 shekels (about $3.50 US).  I decided to get a couple to start practicing my Hebrew reading, and at this stage the best way to do that is with children’s books. There were so many good ones, but [...]

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It’s all Greek to me!

This morning I attended a church here in Nicosia.  The service was all in Greek of course, but luckily I had a translator (thanks, Penny!). As we sang some hymns, I thought about how many different services I have attended all over and in how many different languages.  It was a pretty cool thought, one [...]

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Download, please!

I’m back in the world of not understanding.  I had forgotten what it was like, not to be able to understand the language until now.  Its funny how when I think of my time in Brazil, it seems like I just always knew portuguese; but that was NOT the case.  When I first moved there, [...]

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