Improvements :)

Hello,

I thought I should take advantage of my last night of vacation to write on this blog (even though my book is looking rather tempting...)

All is well here. I'm definitely in a more frustrated stint with my Hebrew at the moment. Basically I am at a stage where I understand some, and my reading is getting faster and better, but if someone expects me to answer them, and actually conjugate something I'm like "Ummm, I'm good thanks?"

Something else really frustrating is when I see a word and ask what it means, and then after I look it up I realize I already know it. So embarrassing! I often wish that the first time I see a word it engraved itself in my mind. Wouldn't that be awesome? My head could be like a three-dimensional dictionary with words and images associated with them leaping off the walls and swimming in the brain matter...

But things improve, and time moves on. The months feel like weeks, and the people are like flies...just kidding, nobody is too annoying at present. ;)

Some improvements from a few months ago:

*I now mostly understand when a store clerk is asking if he/she can help me, so I  know how to answer him/her that I'm doing fine, thank you. This is opposed to not so long ago when I would enter a store and stare determinedly at my feet pretending I heard no one asking me anything.

*I'm not as afraid to be left in a parking lot or by a shop as I used to be, because by now in general I can gather when someone is addressing me, and vaguely filter all the dialogue around me for key words like "danger", "fire", etc. However, it is still terrifying to be in a mall with the knowledge that I might not actually know if an emergency was going on. Imagine: the speaker announcement would probably be in Hebrew, the signs would  be in Hebrew, the marked exits would be in Hebrew. I would have to rely on seeing throngs of people running to know if I was in danger. Quite a scary thought actually.

*I now recognize some of the words and sentences I learn in class on the street. But the sad reality is that people here, much like people in America, and probably most places in the world, don't all always speak correctly. This is on the one hand very devastating and difficult as a learner of the language, but on the other hand also rather funny. Many natives are very amused by my looks of deep concentration and then burst into giggles when I tell them my furrowed brow was because someone said "Chamesh Shekel" when it should have been "Chamisha shkalim." (In Hebrew there is gender and number for words, and those are different ways to say 5 units of Israeli currency. However, since the word for the currency is a male word, the numbers need to be male as well. And then there is also a rule for how to make it plural depending on if the amount ends in a 0 or not.)

Lastly I would like to share a funny insight my elder sister had and shared with me. Today we had to go to an office to get our university diplomas recognized and when we entered the building the guard asked us "where are you going?" in Hebrew. My sister always does all the talking (thank G-d!) and it took her a moment to conjure up the name of the office we were going to (in part, no doubt, because my father's handwriting on our page of directions was not the easiest to decipher). In the end the guard switched to English actually, but anyway, after this I was talking with my sister and we were discussing those moments in a foreign language where someone asks you a basic question like "where are you going?" and all the sudden it's like this big philosophical issue. Who am I? Where is my life going? Where Should I be? And it's very humerous because these are simple questions being asked, and yet when you have to think to answer (because you're sorting through language files in your brain) sometimes it feels like the questions are deeper.

Alright, time for me to stop boring the masses. I bid every reader, as always, good night, morning, or afternoon.

מה לעשות? בחיים שלי יש הרבה דרכים! כל יום אני שואלת עצמי "מה לעשות? מי אני?" עדיין אין תשובות...אבל זה החיים

Translation: What to do? My life has a lot of paths/ways! Every day I ask myself "What to do?" Who am I?" Still there is no answers...but this is life.

Yours etc,
Shira

The Language of Kindess

Hello,

This is just a quick post to share a cool experience I had today:

I was on my way to the bathroom in a community center and before I got there a women started speaking to me in very fast Hebrew. I was by myself, so clearly she was speaking to me and not someone else. I listened to her attentively, but at first thought she was asking me for charity because the first words I comprehended were חסד "act of kindness" and then she thrust her bag at me. A moment later I caught the word סידור "prayer book" and realized she was asking me to hold her bag while she used the bathroom so she wouldn't have to bring her prayer book in the bathroom with her. (Jewish people have laws regarding the proper treatment of prayer books, and one of them is that it is prohibited to bring them into bathrooms.) Anyway, I of course agreed to hold it for her, and she was very grateful. When she came out she said some nice things to me and I said לילה טוב "goodnight!"

I just wanted to share that because I thought it was so cool that I got to help a woman, and all in Hebrew! :)

היום למדתי שאפשר לעזור לאנשים אפילו שאני לא מדברת עברית כל כך טוב. השפה של חסד יש לה מילים אחרות.
Translation: Today I learned that it is possible to help people even if my Hebrew is not so good. The language of kindness has different words.

Yours etc,
Shira

On Many Things, An all Around Update

Salutations!

I am in a decidedly better mood since last time I posted. As usual life trudges on, and days pass by in a windy blur, like the feeling you get when you look out an open window in a speeding car. It's cold on the mountain where I live, but it's sunny nearly every single day. The sun in the midst of winter really sheds a warm glow on the days, and makes it hard to stay depressed or sad. 

I have realized that despite how hard I study Hebrew, and how diligently I learn words, often when a real person actually speaks to me in Hebrew I freeze. It's like all those verbs I learned to conjugate and all those nouns I recognize flee my brain like a cat flees from a bath. I often experience this sort of surreal time-frozen moment where it actually feels like the words and concepts egress from my skull and I am like an empty bow that just moments ago was filled with popcorn. That's actually a great comparison--popcorn. :)

Anyway...I realized this was becoming a problem. If a person was addressing my sister and I was nearby I would understand everything, but the moment they turned to me and asked a simple question I knew zero Hebrew. So I decided this needed to change. And basically my sister and I decided what I needed to do was to pretend people were not talking to me and just answer as if they were talking with the person next to me. So far this has been working rather delightfully. While in the center of the country this past week I definitely informed a fellow customer at an alcohol shop that I was buying vodka not wine, and that it was delicious. I also told a woman seeking directions that I didn't know where the place she was looking for was located. I would say that is progress! Even if I am still scared to take out the recycling... 

The recycling, what an ordeal. I know one day I will laugh at how I had an irrational and hilarious fear of deposing of the despicable mass of used plastics and cardboards. I will double over in hysterics as I recall nostalgically my insistence that I never take it out alone, and my bone-deep worry that if I should happen to meet another human being whilst doing my humanitarian service--*gasp*-- I may actually have to utter a word or two and answer a question. However, it is still a rather odious ordeal for me at present. It's such a normal task, and yet I have this indecent and embarrassing anxiety of meeting people by the bins and having to share conversation. I am laughing and smiling as I write this because even now I can enjoy the ridiculousness of it all! 

I also wanted to let the readers know that in the past couple of weeks I had the pleasure of meeting a very nice member of my Shevet, who I must say was one of the first people I have met on the beloved mountain who spoke to me in such a normal and kind manner, I actually felt like a human being again. I found myself slightly in shock at the normalcy of the meeting. At first I kept gushing to myself at how I had met one of the nicest people ever...until I realized actually they were just treating me like a normal person would. That really caused me to think quite a bit, and really contemplate the way I have come to the point where I am now. I mean for me to feel that just because an individual took the time to ask me some basic questions, and possessed the patience to let me answer slowly, that they are somehow this above and beyond individual is a bit absurd. Just the barest thread of real compassion, and even just the fleeting look of understanding I saw in their eyes--wow, how my expectations have changed. 

I want to clarify that I like many of the individuals in my Shevet and know that as my Hebrew gets better my friendship and feelings of camaraderie will only progress. But for now, often I feel kind of cast aside by peers, sort of like a wallflower. I don't take it personally at all, I understand that language is a barrier and a very real one. But I just wanted to share the moment of..I guess "wonder" is a good word. The moment of wonder I experienced when I felt real understanding and compassion from a person so unlike myself, from such a different background, and yet who could really relate to me.

The last thing (I daresay I have droned on an awful lot) I want to say is that I came up with another clear way to express some of my feelings on the matter of speaking specifically in Hebrew and the accompanying challenges: It is hard to feel fully expressed when I have the thoughts of a twenty year old, but the vocabulary and word structure and usage of a 5 year old. It just doesn't work out. The ideas I have are too complex or multifaceted for the level of language I possess currently. And it actually is making me feel better to have that worked out in words, because then I know that soon that will change. :)

Well, goodnight, or good morning as it may be. I hope you enjoyed this post. A very talented, hilarious, kind, generous, brilliant, loving, hardworking, and all around amazing individual has suggested that I close my blog posts with a bit of Hebrew, so my readers can sort of learn along with me, and a get a more hands-on feeling for my learning. So here goes:

היום היה נחמד אבל מחר יהיה יותר טוב! 

Yours etc,

Shira

On radio broadcasts, fences, and being too wordy: a rather depressing piece of journal

Hello,

Life is interesting. Today was definitely one of those days where:

a) I was in utter despair and realized I will never be fluent in Hebrew or understand anything and will forever feel like a difficult 2 year old who struggles with communication.

b) I laughed at a joke thinking it was about how to "find" someone, only to have it pointed out to me that it was actually about how someone was "dressed."

c) I nearly asked for a "train" on my hot chocolate instead of "whip cream" (but actually my sister ordered so that didn't happen).

d) I couldn't for the life of me get out a question in clear enough Hebrew for my teacher to understand, so all day others had to ask for me very basic questions. :(

e) I realized my closest friend for the next twenty years will probably be a dictionary.

But I know that all of this will pass. And one day, I will laugh and tell people "Pshhh, learning Hebrew is easy. It just takes a few months..."

But what if I don't?

Sometimes I worry I will never be fluent. I worry that I will never be as comfortable here as I was where I used to live. I miss being confidant. I miss walking with a purpose. I miss looking people in the eye because I felt able to be friendly. I miss making jokes. I miss understanding jokes, and laughing for the actual punch-line. I miss reading a meme without using google translate. I miss walking into a bookstore and smiling in wonder instead of entering and quivering in fright, or even worse, turning directly around and walking out because after just one look inside I feel utterly despondant.

"The day will come" they say....

Yeah, people always say that. "Shira, you're too dramatic," They say that too. Maybe I am, but the feelings are real to me. And no, I didn't think about most of these things when I lived in America, I never contemplated ordering coffee, or how I liked to smile at people when they passed, or how much I loved to read memes, I just existed in a state of understanding most of went one around me. But now, I actually do think about these things. It's like here is Shira, but but between her soul and the rest of the world there is this glass wall. But it is a one-sided glass wall. I can see out, but people here can't see in. And the worst part is, sometimes the glass on my side gets clouded, and then no one can see. But you know what? The old me was a radio broadcast. I used to send out pieces of me to many people, share with them thoughts and comments, laugh...at the correct part of the joke...

"Maybe you will be different here Shira, let go of the old you..."

Okay, easier said than done. People tell me I need to do that, to not be attached to an idea of how I was in English, or in America. But wow, it's hard to create a new you. And really, HOW ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO MAKE A NEW YOU WHEN YOU DONT EVEN HAVE THE WORDS FOR IT???

"Life isn't just about words Shira..."

True. But words describe feelings, and in a way feelings are limited by the words that can articulate and express them. It's kind of like a fence, but a fence that has to contain a cloud, or fog. A feeling has so many aspects to it: chemical components, psychological components, etc, And so we try to take this ethereal mass, this glob of past experiences, chemical reactions being felt right now, and more, and we try to express it with words. The fence tries to do its job, but it's not really ever going to be able to do it fully. And then when you are learning a new language, the fence is all broken. Forget it...

I wanted to write about a more posative expereince that happened last week, but this isn't the post for it. Sorry.

"You write too long Shira, why can't you be more concise?"

Yes I do. I write long, and I'm wordy, and verbose, long-winded, and I never shut up. That's how I write, that's how I think. If it's too much for you, then don't read. Read something I write in Hebrew, I'm super concise there.

Yours etc,
Shira