This week has made me happy to be a stay at home mom. Baby has decided that sleeping through the night is no longer fun, and has been waking up every hour. We are attempting to move her into sleeping in her own crib at night, which hasnt helped the situation... but when she wakes up in the middle of the night in our bed she just wants to play! Suffice it to say it has been a long couple nights with not much end in sight...
I headed back to Ulpan this week, after an almost three week break. My hebrew understanding and speaking are getting a ton better, but I am still no good at proper grammar, especially when asked out of context. I still use hebrew (or my tortured form of it) about 40% of my daily life, so I am trying... but it still so much easier to fall back into english when I dont know how to say something! This is especially problematic with my husband or his english speaking brother or cousin... because I know I use them as a crutch. Part of me thinks "Ive only been here 5 months, I deserve the break", but the other part of me knows that if I REALLY want to learn the language properly than I am going to have to give in and speak hebrew all the time.
We have been 'learning' about Tu Bshvat in class, and discussing the fruits native to israel and the roots behind the holiday. Its always interesting to discuss religion with my russian classmates, who have very strong opinions about religion (both good and bad). It always amazes me how strongly zionistic my class is... Today they were discussing how their parents always talked about eretz Israel and dreamed about it and passed the beauty on to them.
I was talking to one of my classmates about when she made aliyah, 25 years ago. She said that she grew up thinking that the streets of Israel were really filled with milk and honey... and then she came here to KG to streets filled with trash and people who didnt bathe and left the house a mess. She said she cried for weeks... her dream of Israel had been ruined. When I asked her what she though now, she said that it was a mixture... things have by far gotten better here, and she has gotten used to the fact that Israel is in fact a country that people live in... not just a land in her parents dreams. I think that many immigrants to the US in the early 1900s must have felt the same way when realizing that the streets of America aren't really paved with gold. It was an eye opening conversation... and I am thankful for everything we have
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That post covers so much.
I don't know if it'll help, but with our third, I used to hear every sound and keep waking up for her, but when we put her in another room and closed the door, nobody heard her and we all slept. Of course she was the third and slept with her two sisters, so if she had really cried they would have called us/me.
This may seem strange, but I never heard anything really about Israel as a place to live or visit when I was growing up. My aunt paid a visit, but she was a spinster and did travel to other places. I was vaguely aware that an uncle had been here during the war of Independence, but he never spoke of it.
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