Work has been going well. I love being back in the classroom and having a job, even if it is only part time. I like being a stay at home mom, but I have discovered that I am not great with this age. Its fun to play with babies, but day after day of the same things without adult conversation got to my head. I feel like I am a better mother when I get to spend part of the day out of the house...

Ulpan has also been going well, and I can really feel my hebrew improving. My teacher wants me to go back to Ulpan Aleph and take their graduating test, that way if I want to go back to get my teaching degree here in Israel I will have proof that I took ulpan. apparently you can only get this proof from the first level, not the second. It involves an oral exam and a long (3 hours or something) written test. My teacher and I went over a higher level test and it wasnt horribly difficult, so I think I can do it. The problem is that it means I have to go back to level one- which meets every night for three hours.

On the home front- we got invited to our first non-family wedding here in Israel, which I feel is some sort of milestone. It means that people actually think of us as friends! Its a given of course that its a friend of my husbands... but still, I feel that its one more step towards being 'really' israeli.

I missed the bloggers night in Modiin this week, after catching a cold over the weekend and deciding that it wasnt worth driving an hour to work, an hour back home, then 45 mins each way to the event. I was upset about it too, because I really wanted to meet some of these people who I read about so often. Blogging is funny in that way- you create these connections with people that exist only online.. yet they have helped me so much in this aliyah process, from trying to figure out the israeli bureaucracy, to what kinds of foods to buy in the supermarket. Hopefully next time I will be able to meet up

Finally

One of my biggest problems in the 5 months since we made aliyah has been my lack of a schedule. Growing up I went straight from school to college to grad school to working... and always had a set daily schedule that I lived by. Making aliyah and doing the stay at home mom thing have completely messed me up, and I think thats part of the reason why I have been so grumpy. I thrive on schedules and I miss having one.

But it looks like things are finally shaping up. In two weeks I go back to work part time, teaching. Even though I have a long commute, I look forward to being back in the classroom. Teaching has always been my passion, and I have missed being away from it. It will also give me a couple days a week of "adult conversation" in english, which I have missed terribly. We will see how well I do with the long commute.

Also, through the random connections that is Israel, I have a meeting with Partners 2000 here in KG. P2K is a program run by the jewish agency which brings American post-college kids here to Israel for... a year? For part of that time they are placed in needy communities, including right here in KG. A daughter of a friend of mine was helping them out, but thought that I would also be interested in hosting home stays and the like. Im not really sure what they will ask of me, but I am excited at the opportunity, and to have more english speakers my age around.

There is also a bloggers meeting coming up, the first one I will be able to attend, at least hopefully. I am so curious to meet people in real life who I read all the time, and who have helped me prepare for the aliyah process without even knowing it.