That being said, orientation for Hebrew Union College began on July 13. It was the typical orientation that you would experience right before entering college or any other graduate school. Except that in this orientation we were given a security briefing as well. I will make sure to include both the notes I took on our security briefing as well as the ones from the disengagement update session. That way you all are aware of what is really going on in Israel and not just watching the television for updates.

School began on July 17, a Sunday. In Israel schools and work begin on Sundays and go until Thursday. Some people work half days on Friday while most people including HUC have the entire day off. In Israel Friday and Saturday are days devoted to the Sabbath, Shabbat, and the city rests for these twenty four hours and resumes normal activity on Sundays. I am still getting used to this weird schedule and have accidentally called my mom at work on Sundays forgetting that it was not actually Monday.

I am now in Ulpan which is intensive Hebrew learning sessions. Surprisingly, I was placed in level “gimmel” (the third highest level out of five) and I am loving it. We start most of our days at 8:30 a.m. with a couple of breaks in between and end at 1:00 p.m. Our entire class is spoken in Hebrew. There are about fifteen students and I am getting to know most of them, and enjoy having them in my class. Our teacher, Sara, only speaks Hebrew. This is both frustrating and rewarding. In order to speak to Sara and ask her questions we must do it in Hebrew. I am trying to get used to being taught in all Hebrew. I am used to being tutored in English while learning Hebrew. It has been a fun experience thus far, especially because I absolutely love learning Hebrew.

As for our social lives…David and I could not be better off right now with the community and social group we were blessed with. There are plenty of significant others, in HUC terms they are labeled as “SOs,” most of whom are male and about David’s age. They are definitely having fun together. For example, four of them went to Ikea, about two hours away from Jerusalem, in a small rental car. We are constantly invited to do different things. We are invited to Shabbat dinners, out for ice cream, power walking, working out, coffee, etc. Not only do we have a very supportive group within HUC, but we have gotten together with a couple of my Israeli friends from my Birthright trip last July, and we have seen friends from Canada as well as other Israelis that we know and have run into.

Last night we decided to have a casual coffee get together and invited some HUC students to meet us at Café Aroma, one of the popular coffee places in Israel. We ended up having around twenty people meet us and it felt great having so many people show up and want to hang out with David and me. It was definitely a blast.

Today I had my first experience with the YMCA gym that I joined. I had completely forgotten that I would be working with new equipment and with grams instead of pounds. This was no easy task. I ended up improvising a bit and met Musaf, the personal trainer. He was quite a bit helpful and I was glad to finally be working out!

Tonight, David and I were invited to Don Goor’s apartment for dessert. Don was the senior rabbi at the synagogue I worked for in Los Angeles. He just recently bought a brand new apartment and it was so beautiful. Several of the other couples who have connections to Don came as well and we sat around drinking sodas and eating dessert. It was a comfortable feeling to be surrounded by people that I like in an apartment that was so amazing. It is now way too late for me to be up and I need to finish my Hebrew homework.

Good night for now…