With the time change taking place over night last night, we in Israel were blessed with an extra hour of sleep. Though I set my alarm to wake up with enough time to work out and shower before getting ready for the day, I most definitely turned off my alarm and went back to sleep. I got to bed quite a bit later last night than I was expecting, so I soaked up all the sleep I could get. After I did finally get up, I spent a while on my computer until I literally jumped up because I saw that it was 10:00. And 10:00 meant that I only had fifteen minutes to be totally ready for an Ulpan and a Shiur after. Never fear, though, because the Ulpan teacher was running a couple minutes late, and over the years I have acquired the wonderful ability to get dressed and get breakfast together very quickly. I made it to the classroom by 10:21, with an apple in hand... And I was even wearing real clothes. Hurray!
Ulpan was a positive learning experience today. We reviewed how to order food and drinks in coffee houses, pizza shops, and falafel/schwarma places. Unfortunately because of my hatred for coffee and inability to eat dairy, the falafel/schwarma menu was the only section of real use to me. But I learned some good words from the other sections, as well. Mrs. Margolese, my Halacha teacher at NYHS, always said that "Hebrew language is very cool." Well, today we learned a wonderful example of why this is the case. Here it is:
When we think of the definition of the word "chametz" we instantaneously think "bread." And if it's not bread, it's a different food that we cannot eat on Pesach. Well, let's talk about the definition of the shoresh (root) of the word "chametz." The shoresh is chet.mem.tzadi, which means "to ruin."
Now, let's discuss how one would go about pickling something.. The answer is: soak it for a long time in vinegar. What is vinegar? "Ruined" wine.
Finally. If we are in a falafel place, desiring something pickled, what do we say? "Rotzah Chamutzim." Cool.
After Ulpan we had a class with the girls' Av Bayit R' Moshe Mernick, which was basically about Tefilah. His pure excitement and enjoyment of learning is truthfully contagious... I really like learning from him. I thought I'd share one thing which he briefly spoke about because I think it's awesome. He told the story of how there was at some point a group of doctors discussing the fact that many elderly people would die of heart attacks after getting out of bed in the morning really quickly. It was explained that the reason for this is because when a person is sleeping the heart doesn't have to work very hard to pump blood to the body. However in order to pump blood like it does during the rest of the day, it must transition, upon waking up, to pumping blood faster. And if a person got up and out of bed too quickly, it could cause some people to have a heart attack... Something like that. So many of these doctors were doing intense research to try to figure out how to combat this issue. One doctor stood up and said, "After tons and tons of research on this matter, my conclusion is that if a person wakes up and waits twelve seconds before getting up and out of bed his chances of heart attack will be reduced greatly." The whole audience of doctors gave him a standing ovation, until one Jewish doctor stood up and asked to say something. He said, "For thousands of years Jews have been waking up each morning and saying, 'Modeh ani lefanecha melech chai ve'kayam she'hechezarta bi nishmati bechemla rabah emunatecha.' Twelve words in twelve seconds." The crowd stood up and cheered for him, as well. I don't know what it is about that, but there's something to it that just says cool to me.
When we finished the class we were given free time until 2:00, when we were told to meet in our on-campus classroom. The plan was to make little gift baggies, of candies and stickers and such, to give to kids at a nearby hospital. We set up two production lines, and filled a plastic bag with two chewy taffy candies, one lollipop, two sucking candies, an eraser, two crayons, and a sheet of stickers. The end of the line tied the bags and placed them into bigger bags. Once we had finished, we made something around 150 bags and we walked for fifteen minutes around the corner and to the hospital. We met with a girl, who seemed to be a volunteer, and she brought us up to a floor with sick children. It was interesting that we could so easily just walk up the stairs and into the kids' rooms, because in an American children's hospital there's nowhere near a chance for that to be possible. We really just picked a random room, asked a parent or the child if we could enter, gave the kid the goody bag, said "Refuah Shelemah V'Shana Tova," and left the room. Some parents or patients definitely gave more conversation than others, but we didn't do very much. Not to say that what we did do wasn't rewarding, appreciated by both parties, and extremely worthwhile, but instead to say that the positive impact that we made was achieved with very little effort. In other words: it's an easy way to make kids and families very happy, so take advantage if you have the opportunity to do such a thing.
After we had spent about an hour and a half at the hospital we started our walk back to campus. We had a bag of extra chewy taffy candies, so my madricha Shev gave a bunch of us three or four of them and prompted us to give them to strangers before we got back to our apartments. The first four were super easy for me because there were four girls walking behind us so I just had to offer the candies to them. But then we continued the game, so after taking more I started to come up with more creative ways of giving them out. My friends and I talked about throwing them into moving cars' windows, but that wasn't really such a good idea. I took the liberty of knocking on the window a parked car with a man sitting inside of it, and when he lowered the window I asked if he wanted the candy and he took it. Some of my friends gave them to pedestrians, or people in stopped cars because of the traffic, or the guards at the entrance to the Hospital... It was fun. We didn't realize until we were basically back on campus that what we were doing was actually extremely strange behavior. We, as strangers, were offering what every child is told not to accept. Funny.
We made it back to the apartments and little over an hour of down time before we met to go to our program director Meir's house for a BBQ. His family lives in a beautiful top-floor apartment, with an accessible roof which has SO much space and the most gorgeous view of Ramat Gan. We set up tables and chairs, and enjoyed the sunset as we snacked on chips and Israeli salad while Meir was bbq'ing the food. When it was done, the food was super delicious!! Salami, hot dogs, kabobs, chicken steak, hamburgers, these other spicy things... Soooo good. It was quite refreshing to have a simple bbq like that, because it's definitely been too long. We all had a great time just hanging out and enjoying the food, so that was really nice. After dinner we were invited to stay and watch NFL Live via a projector in their living room. It was super nice of them to have us hang in their house, and we watched many hours of football. I must say that football is most definitely nowhere near my favorite sport, and in fact I dislike it very much, but I still managed to enjoy it. I guessed I focused on the fact that I was just hanging out with everyone, and let's be real-- I always appreciate good athleticism.
We walked back from his house, which took about twenty-five minutes, and on the way back I became inspired. I decided that despite the fact that it was around midnight, I would spend some time working out when I got back. So I did. It felt totally and completely rejuvenating to get some serious sweat dripping for the first time in way too long. And, after my nice workout I got to Skype with both sets of first cousins!! So amazing to see all of their cute faces in real-time. I really miss all of them.
Lila Tov to all!
By the way, I wrote this post last night but as I was completing the very last four words my computer freaked out and wouldn't turn back on. So I decided to just post it when it wasn't 2 am anymore.
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