friday night we'll be drinkin' manichewitz...

not too much to report, went to ulpan yesterday and we picked up the pace. i think i'm catching on rather quickly and i can now have peices of conversation in hebrew. i have pretty much replaced "yes", "no", and "what" with "ken", "lo", and "ma". SABABA (SWEET). afterwards, we went to Kadima to work with the kids there. it's really nice because they give us a meal. after we ate, the kids go into their respective rooms to study. it can be a little awkward for me because unless they are working on english homework, it's really difficult to help them. however, alli gave me the idea to have them help me with my ulpan hebrew homework. one of the israeli volunteers agreed that this gives them a feeling of confidence. so i started working with this little boy named michael, helping with his math homework. he's so adorable, but i can totally tell that he has concentration issues. reminds me of myself, except more hyperactive. but we definitely bonded. i promised him i'd come back today, which i found out is his birthday!

(wonderful picture of me, i know. but you get the point. i'm there, jen, alon, buffy, jade, al, and rayna, plus all the kids. the names that i know are yaacov, michael, shlomo, shai, yael)

we went home after Kadima and chilled out for a bit before alli's new friends, assi picked jade, al, and i to go to tel aviv and meet up with jade's israeli friend izzy and his friends. OH! another cool thing about this program is that we get host families to hang out with on weekends or whenever while we're here as a sort of lifeline. al and i have been put with the same family, and the mom, orna, called us yesterday. most of our group has been paired up with families and about four of them live around the same area between jerusalem and tel aviv. they will pick us up on saturday morning and take us to a park where we'll all have a picnic! so cute! i'm really excited about that. whew.

anyway, in tel aviv we went to a club called 'cara calla', which had a pool in the middle where the bartenders swam around serving people drinks surrounding the pool. so crazy. we danced up a storm until it was time to go. unfortunately, al's purse broke off and disappeared. she cancelled everything so it should be fine. otherwise, it was a nice night.

today, we went to Kadima to wish michael and zamir happy birthday. al and i made michael cards and alon origami-ed them both some pretty cool characters. now i'm sitting here watching sarah palin's speech from the republican national convetion. i think she's full of shit personally, but that's just my opinion. i look forward to doing more research about her, mccain, obama, and biden so that i can vote wisely with my absentee ballot in november. however, fullness-of-shit is not a desirable quality in a candidate, just sayin'. however, it is interesting that i think i'm right, but there was a whole fucking stadium in st. paul last week that see the world's ethics and issues in a completely opposite way, yet think they're right too. hmmmm. something to think about. but the ignorant bravado typified by this kind of republican bothers the shit out of me. more later. photos tonight. i'm going to do all my laundry in the bathtub.



love,

sally