you're a big girl now

Too much has happened in the last few days for me to wait to post, even though my thoughts on blogging are still up in the air. Mostly, we have to journal for one of my Hebrew teachers, Sharon, twice a week and I don't really know what to write so I decided I would just translate what I wrote here, because that's apparently things I would want to say in English which means they're things I may want to say in Hebrew so maybe I should practice.

Well Sunday we had our first day of ulpan, which is intensive Hebrew. There are five of us in the advanced class, which is actually pretty much just level bet but we try. The first day was a little bit overwhelming, and we mostly discussed everything that happened in the year 1909, particularly the founding of Kibbutz Daganya, the first kibbutz in Israel. We also talked about everything there is to know about kibbutzim, and my first night of homework was to write a paper (in Hebrew) about the similarities and differences between my life growing up in San Diego and kibbutz life. My Hebrew is a litte rusty, but I had only a few errors and got a "tov m'od!" (very good!) and a smiley face, so we're off to a good start. Also that first day we had a lot of trouble with the words for laundry, laundromat, to do laundry, washing machine, etc, which are all incredibly similar, and Yifat, one of our teachers, was basically just laughing hysterically at how much we couldn't get it. The ulpan is great, but it's completely in Hebrew, no English allowed - even if we don't understand a word, it's explained to us using other Hebrew words. They also don't really talk slower for us, so it's tricky to keep up, but definitely doable, which is good because I was a little concerned.

Yesterday, Monday, we had our first morning of volunteering. The way it works is that Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays (well Fridays until noon only) we have ulpan all day, with grammar/literature with Yifat in the morning and practical/conversational with Sharon in the afternoon. Mondays and Wednesdays, though, we volunteer in various locations on the kibbutz in the mornings. So my job is working in the refet, the cow barn, with the parot, the cows. There is one other girl, Susy from Puerto Rico, on my program that also works there with me, and we had quite the experience.

First we showed up bright and early, and they made us take off our shoes and gave us these huge muck boots that were at least four sizes too big, so we clomped around trying to find the man we were supposed to be working with. The first thing he did was hand us buckets and sponges and told us to wash a wall in the milking aisle (we found out that cows aren't milked by hand anymore, but rather they're put on a conveyor belt type of thing and attached to a machine that milks them) that looked like it hadn't been washed in years. It was hard because the cows kept coming up to us and mooing, but they did play some excellent American pop music. After an hour of that, we learned how to bathe cows, and how that works is that you put them all into a huge pen and turn on fire sprinklers and fans so that all the water gets flown around and gets on all the cows. Then we sat inside taking a break with the rosh refet, head of the dairy barn, and talked to him about the economies, defense budgets, and government subsidies of both Israel and the United States - what a stretch for the Hebrew! After that they handed us a piece of paper with four numbers on it (the cows are all branded with numbers), pointed to a huge pasture of literally hundreds of cows, and told us to get those four and move them to a pasture across the way. The man who was working with us had this wicked grin on his face, and we soon found out why. We had to walk into the middle of all the cows, who kept moooving and mooing all over the place, to find each of the cows. This was tricky because cows pretty much all look the same, and they don't know when you're trying to find a single one. It's one thing to do this on horseback, but much more intimidating from foot! When we would finally find one that we needed, we had to get its attention and shoo it into the holding pen, without letting the other cows get in too. This took forever, and a lot of, "go cow go, no not you cow, the other cow!"s and waving arms around and clomp-running on our huge boots, dodging cow pies, dogs, and other cows. The man just laughed and laughed. Finally we separated our cows, and had to herd them across a street, up a hill, and into the other barn thing. Susy lost one of her cows and had to run all around that part of the kibbutz trying to get it to go back with the others! The man just laughed and laughed. Finally it was finished, and then they let us go bottle feed a cow that had been born just two hours earlier! We found out that cows get separated from there mothers after only an hour, the cows on this kibbutz are only used for dairy, and that baby cows are very very cute. The ulpan yesterday afternoon was also hilarious, as we spent a good two hours discussing in detail everything you would or wouldn't do, say, go, ask, wear, or anything else if you were on a date with Tom Cruise. Apparently Yifat has a huge "fetish" as she calls it. I also learned the word for "being up in someone's grill" which is mitlavesh.

Last night one of my friend's uncle also came to visit with his friend, and they took a small group of us to the South African pub, which was amazing. They bought us sodas and then the couple who owns the restaurant kept bringing us out tons of South African appetizers (which ended up being our dinner) - we had roasted leeks, these spicy squash things, amazing bread with some sort of fruity dip, a lentil and couscous mixture, spicy french fries, and they were so sweet and friendly. They told us to come back with everyone on Thursday night and they'd cook us all dinner on the house, as "their tikun olam, since our group is called Tikun Olam." We're very excited!

This morning's ulpan was really frustrating, because we were studing the Hebrew equivalent of Shakesperean poetry, and none of the words were anything that anybody would ever use in real life, so nobody had a clue what was going on. She spent a really long time on it, and then we read a biographical essay of the life of Rachel Bluwstein, a Russian poet who moved to Israel at the age of 19, wrote lots of poems and songs, had a huge part in the kibbutz movement in the early 1900s, and then passed away of tuberculosis. Well we divided up the essay so we could each translate a portion of it and then give a summary to the rest of the group. My section was of course the most irrelevant to her life - it was about a piano that was brought to her from some guy in Russia but they took it to the wrong place and then had to use camels to transport it from Tsfat to somewhere else, and it was hard for them to get there because there were lots of kids who had never seen such a large piano before and they chased them the entire way. Huh? I missed one word though somewhere in the beginning and thought briefly that the camels had taken away Rachel's sister. Yifat laughed a lot at me, which is apparently the theme of my stay here in Israel so far.

This afternoon though, conversational was lots of fun. We learned lots of slang, and talked about our favorite books and movies at one point, and had to describe in detail. The thing is that the book that I'm reading right now is "This Book Will Save Your Life" which, by the way, I highly recommend, but it's a little tricky to explain. But I love it so much and I was so excited they were just laughing at me as I was telling them about the man who was really rich but had no life, and then one day a hole appeared in his backyard and a horse fell in it, so he had to run to his neighbor's house who was a famous actor, and they got his stunt man and helicopter and a harness to air lift the horse out of the hole, but then his house falls in the hole and he has to rebuild his life and become a new person, essentially. Difficult and hilarious enough to explain in English, imagine Hebrew. Then one of the other guys said his favorite movie was Superbad, but he couldn't explain it, so I had to. Sharon thoroughly enjoyed my explanation of McLovin, nerdy high school boys trying to get laid, corrupt policemen, and lots of people who were high, which by the way in Hebrew is mastul.

Everything on the kibbutz is slow, but I'm getting used to it. We eat a cold breakfast every morning, lunch in the chadar ohel, the kibbutz dining room, and then cook dinner. We have a nice table on the lawn/picnic area outside of our rooms, or the "American Ghetto" as we call it. Everyone is taking turns cooking their specialties for the rest of the group with one or two helpers, and we go to the kibbutz store, the Kol Bo everyday to get fresh veggies and ingredients. People have been cooking things like homemade sauces, pumpkins, and lots of side dishes. Tonight Susy is cooking a Puerto Rican dish that smells really good. The only real problem we've had is that we found really cheap beer at the Kol Bo, like 50 cents worth, which we thought was wheat beer, but it turned out to be some non-alcoholic beverage for old people that tasted nothing like beer! There are also lots and lots of cats that howl at each other a lot, and dogs that follow you everywhere you go. We haven't really gotten a chance to interact with many of the kibbutzniks other than our volunteer supervisors, since we're in ulpan most of the day, but the woman that serves the food in the chadar ohel knows that I like only rice with the salads and cole slaws, but she always makes me eat more by tossing on my plate whatever veggie option she cooked too. The bathroom situation isn't getting any better, but as we've gotten to sleep more it's gotten funnier rather than irritating. This afternoon I went with two friends to the outdoor gym and then we swam laps - well, that's kind of a loose way of putting it. We zig-zagged across the pool, stopping after each lap to laugh and talk, but it was fun and refreshing nonetheless.

Dinner time. I'll leave you with a list of Hebrew words that I think might be helpful in your life. Some are review:

to wash clothes in a lake - m'chavsim b'kinneret
be in someone's grill - mitlavesh
I have no idea - ain li musag
someone who is high - mastul
fake ID - maz'yif ID

Peace, love, and cows.