On The Game

Ever wonder how games like Twister or Monopoly get started? I know--I've been there.

Goofing off with friends

Mazel Tov. It means, basically, "congratulations" in Hebrew--but it has acquired a new meaning here at JUC. Mazel Tov is the name of the latest Big Thing here, a dice game that was made up in my very presence. Each player has four chances rolling five dice, aiming to roll 26, which is Mazel Tov. Rolling a five would be a Meshuga (Hebrew for "craziness"), and rolling higher than 26 is a zero. Each person in the game starts one round of four, so there are as many rounds as there are people. At some point in the four rolls, each player has to stick with one of the numbers he or she rolls, and then at the end of each round of four, the player with the highest score gets +1, while the player with the lowest score gets -1. Rolling a Mazel Tov is an automatic +2. This is a very simple game--a friend picked 26 randomly, we started rolling, making up rules as we went, and it is sticking. And tonight I made Mazel Tov history. That's right folks, I am the first, and currently only, person in the world to ever roll a Mazel Tov. It was a beautiful thing. Amazingly enough, I also rolled a 27 (another Mazel Tov first) in the very next round. So once we copyright the idea, I will probably become rich and famous very quickly, and you can all say you knew me when. Just to let you know.

On a completely different note, there are some seriously cool doings here in Jerusalem. Succot (the Feast of Tabernacles or Booths, where people build booths--a booth is a succah, plural succot--celebrating the finishing of the yearly cycle of reading of the Torah) is coming up really soon. Celebrations begin tomorrow night actually, and the entire thing lasts 8 days. It's very cool, I don't know if we're building a succah here but sleeping outside may be involved. I'm all for that, definitely. After Succot the Jews begin praying for rain; this is the end of the dry season. I'm hoping to see some of the festivities. There's a Jewish shopkeeper in the Old City who is this amazing resource. The main purpose of his shop is for people to come in and ask questions about Judaism; he does a lot of dialoguing between Jews and Christians. It's really really neat, he's an incredible man. We're going to visit him tomorow to find out exactly what is going on when.

On a Field Trip

I have a test tomorrow that I must study for, along with quite a bit of other homework that I should probably work on. It's so hard to come up with motivation here! But there is a time to work and a time to play, and this is probably the former. Nose to the grindstone and all...

Ciao!

On Nicknames and New Friends

Dog & Ruth (if you look real close)

I have a new friend! And by friend I mean pet. And by pet I mean fish! That's right, I went and bought a fish today!!! It's tiny, maybe an inch long, and silvery-white and really cute. I have him in this roundish bowl with blue rocks on the bottom, he's so pretty! His name is pronounced Dog--it's actually the Hebrew word for fish! Isn't that fun? So I took my Dog for a walk today, he came around campus and met some of my friends. He's quite sociable, in fact he might be lonely right now. Poor little Doggy.

The bells are ringing right now, and I love it! We are really close to Dormitian Abbey, a big church--I think the only thing between us and them is a Greek Orthodox mondo-complex; but they're right up the hill, so we always hear their bells ringing and it's so beautiful. Everything echoes here across the valley like no one's business. Last night I lay awake in my bed for like fifteen minutes listening to a dog bark, because its bark echoed so crazily--you could hear one big echo, really clearly, and maybe a smaller one from further down the valley sometimes. It was insane. But the bells are so cool, one of my favorite things about being here. I love listening to church bells ring! I don't have them quite figured out yet. Normally it rings the hour, like 8 rings for 8 am, and then ding for 8:15, 2 for 8:30, 3 for 8:45, and then it starts over again. But right now the bells have been ringing like crazy for literally 7 or 8 minutes, starting at like 5:45. Kind of random, if you ask me. Maybe there's a service now, or maybe someone just got married--probably not that, it's Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) and basically the entire city is shut down, it's kind of neat to see. The Muslim Quarter of the Old City is definitely up and running though; that's where Dog came from. The bells just stopped, I think they rang for 10 straight minutes. It was pretty cool.

I have a new nickname! I thought I would mention it, because this is a completely new one. I have friends at home who call me Ruthis and Ruthie, and I get both of those here, but I have a friend Micah who calls me Rudy! I decided I like it a lot, I don't know where he came up with it but it's fun because no one has ever called me that. Sometimes people call me Ruth with the Hebrew pronounciation, which is like Root except with a really gutteral R sound, I can't do it yet but I'm working on it!

The sun is almost completely set, it's hard to tell when exactly sunset is because of the hills, but the dogs are starting to bark--the really truly canine dogs, not the fishy Dog. I'm sitting in the library trying to do some homework, but sometimes I think simply sitting and listening is just as much of an education.

Shalom!

On High School and Hebrew

I am a high school algebra teacher.

If you think that's a joke, it's not. Here's the story: My roommate Janell and I are volunteering at the Jerusalem School in Beth Jala, near Bethlehem, on Tuesday mornings. We get picked up by JUC's director's uncle, who happens to be the principal at this school--at 6:15 AM. Yikes! This past Tuesday was our first time volunteering. Once we made it to school, the first thing this principal asked us was, Are either of you any good at math? We just lost our high school math teacher, would either of you be able to teach some math classes? I looked at the Algebra I book and thought it looked manageable, so I said I would do it. An hour later I taught fourteen 9th-graders how to add positive and negative integers. I think they may have found a permanent replacement, so I don't think I'll be filling in there any more--good thing! I know I wasn't teaching mathematical heresy, but I also know that teaching high schoolers is just about the last thing in the world I want to do! Teaching is definitely not my thing. Something else to chalk up to experience, I guess... The rest of the morning we spent painting stars with kindergarteners, which was much less stressful. Volunteering there will be interesting, I think.

Many thanks to my dad for putting up the pictures! You would think some of his computer-savvy-ness would have been genetically transferred to me... but no.


The only other thing I wanted to say is that I think Hebrew is my new favorite thing ever. I'm taking modern and biblical Hebrew at the same time, which is such a great combination, I think. I'm doing a lot-lot-lot of reading the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible/Old Testament), and at the same time I'm learning to say both really useful things like "What's up?" and completely ridiculous things like "I want grapefruit." It's really helpful to be experiencing Hebrew as a living language, even though beginning any language is sometimes very humbling, as we sit and read "Paula is from Poland. She speaks Polish." See Spot. See Spot run.... that's where we're at. And it is good. Every once in a while I can understand a few words someone says, or read something on a sign. Today I heard the word "please" and read the word "juice"--a pretty successful day I guess! I was out with my roommate Janell. I was her moral support; she was getting her nose pierced! I thought about getting mine pierced too, but only for about a second and a half. Not quite me, I think.

It's dinnertime here, so I will sign off for now!

Lehithraoth! (That's Hebrew for "See you later!"-- pronounced lay-heet-rah-oat)

On changes and cool things

On the threshing floor in Bethlehem

Sorry it's been a while since I updated my blog! It's been a crazy week or so... some big changes are going on! So I guess now is as good a time as any to let y'all know about the biggest change: I have decided to stay here for the entire year! I can't even begin to explain how excited I am about this, it is such an incredible opportunity. All of my classes are so relevant to my major, and some really great classes are offered in the spring, and I just don't think that three months is long enough to really understand the land the way I want to. So there you have it! I will most likely not be coming home for Christmas, and since we have like seven weeks off between semesters, I will be here then for 8 months instead of 3. Have I mentioned how excited I am about this? Details are falling into place with Northwestern; the biggest hurdle I have to jump is reapplying for financial aid. I'm going to fax the forms to them this afternoon, and hopefully the reevaluation will work out all right. I was planning on being in band and going on band tour after commencement, so I had to work that out with Monte, my band director. I'm still not sure how much of a refund I will get, but he's totally supportive of my decision to stay, which was so encouraging. Most of the friends that I've told so far have said things like "I thought this would happen" or "I'm not surprised at all!" I have gotten several warnings to avoid coming home with an Israeli husband--both from people back home and from fellow students here! Don't worry--I have gotten the odd "I like your smile--are you looking for rich husband?" comment, but I'm not really here for my MRS degree. Most of the other changes that have been going on have to do with my schedule--dropping classes, adding other classes--most of which would probably not be very interesting to anyone except me. I did add Modern Hebrew when I decided to stay--I think that taking modern and biblical Hebrew at the same time is an amazing combination. I'm excited to see how much I learn.

As for cool things--I think yesterday I did probably the coolest thing I've ever done. We went to the Yehoudia Nature Preserve, which is basically a big national park about 2 1/2 hours north of Jerusalem (we passed Jericho

and lots of other exciting places!). We went on this amazing hike--through the ruins of this stone village (maybe Byzantine? I can't remember...), basically straight down into a wadi (river valley--very deep!), then along the wadi and straight back up and out. It maybe doesn't sound so exciting, but just wait until I post pictures! It was ridiculously beautiful, and such an exciting hike! I ended up in a group of 4 with my friend Sarah and two guys, Murray and John, and we were trucking! I've never gone downhill so fast in my life. Those guys are machines. But it was so fun! There were places, I think four different places, where we had to climb down a cliff, one time on a long metal ladder and the other times on metal handles drilled into the rock, right into the water and swim a hundred feet or so to the other side. Hiking dripping wet is quite an experience, let me tell you! I managed to keep my camera dry in a Ziploc in the top pocket of my backpack, which I floated in front of me and pushed along. I also kept my shoes dry until the very last swim. The four of us stopped for lunch at a waterfall, and then Sarah and Murray went back to a shortcut to the end, but John and I went the rest of the way around the trail. That part was definitely not used as often as the first part of the trail! We lost the trail a few times, but managed to pick it up again and made it back in plenty of time. John is a second-year MA student here, so he was able to point out all sorts of cool thing we could see from the top that I haven't learned about yet. I really have to get pictures up soon... I'll try to figure that out tonight and see how it goes.

One other thing from the hike! I had this major window into the masculine mind opened for a split second, it was just the strangest thing ever. At our first swim, Murray tried to throw his boots across to the rocks on the other side, and missed completely. Once we got our shoes back on and were headed on the way, John comforted Murray by saying, "If you were Batman, you would have been able to do it." I was truly amazed. I have never been in any situation where something like that would be even close to crossing my mind, much less to actually being spoken. Maybe being one of three girls has something to do with it...


Well folks, I have two tests today, one in an hour and one in three hours--and I haven't really started studying for either of them yet! One is just a quiz that I'm not too worried about, but the other one is an actual exam. I'm still not really worried about it at all--my GPA doesn't transfer! :) It's super nice, but it sure doesn't do much for my motivation! But I suppose I will go hit the books now. I'll have pictures up soon, I promise!

Shalom!

On the Dead Sea and the Black Eyed Peas

Sometimes life is just random... and this is one of those times.

A group of friends and I went to the Dead Sea on Friday. We rented a car in order to go to Tel Aviv on Saturday (since it's Shabbat, the car rental places

aren't open that day, so we got the car Friday morning) and decided after lunch to drive down to the Dead Sea. It's about an hour, an hour and a half--so five of us from Northwestern piled into this tiny little rental car and took off! I wish I could have driven--you only have to be 21 to rent a car here! But alas, I have not even reached that important milestone. Anyway, the Dead Sea was so fun! I still have to figure out how to upload pictures onto this site, but someday they will come! Floating in the water is just the strangest feeling. I couldn't help but giggle a lot. We also dug out some of the clay-mud stuff and smeared it all over ourselves :) . Definitely a fun fun fun impulse trip. We all had just a blast.

In other random news, the JUC campus overlooks the Hinnom Valley, right on top of a pretty large outdoor stadium where they have concerts--like right now. There's a Black Eyed Peas concert going on as I type, and we can hear everything. It's very distracting, but so fun! What a random place to "go" to a Black Eyed Peas concert! Of course I really need to get some reading done, and that's not happening so much, but whatever. This concert is definitely a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing. Just like everything else we do here, I guess.

I am continuing to love it here! We walked all over Jerusalem today, looking at important biblical sites. For example, we walked through Hezekiah's tunnel, water and all (2 Kings 20:20). We also went to the City of David (what Jerusalem was in the time of King David), climbed around some first-century tombs, and visited the pools of Bethesda and Siloam. We went lots of other places too, but I don't have time to list them all! I really should get some work done... good luck Ruth!

On phones and such

Hello friends and family!

This will be a quick post because I am super tired, but I just wanted to check in. I am almost through with my first week of classes here, and am loving every minute. I had one supernaturally boring class, which I dropped to take another much more interesting one, and am auditing an archaeology course tomorrow! I think coursewise this will be a good semester. Already I am loving walking around Jerusalem. One of my roommates and I went into the Old City tonight with her boyfriend--it's so fun to just wander around the city. I've never been in a walled city, at least not that I remember. Even the little bit I've seen so far has taught me a lot. There's so much to experience here--this city has really seen it all. There are so many layers of everything, three months here will just barely scratch the surface. A friend here teaches Saturday school at a church near Tel Aviv, so my roommate, her boyfriend and I might rent a car with him this weekend and spend the afternoon at the beach! Apparently it's not too expensive, and we want to get out and see some new places. There are quite a few students here who are in their second year, sometimes third, so they are able to point out some good spots--like the best pizza in the Old City, or the street vendors who are familiar with JUC students and give discounts, or the moneychangers who won't cheat you, or the storekeepers who don't have everything but who know all the other merchants and will make sure you get what you need. It's getting cooler here--we're heading toward the end of the dry season, so in a month or so we should be getting some rain. That will be an interesting experience--the buildings here are stone, and even now I'm cold at night. I'm in the dining room right now, and some guys a table over have a game playing (I don't even know what sport's season it is!) so I think I'll check it out! Love to everyone at home!

Oh! I almost forgot--I got a new phone number that should work if y'all want to call me for any reason. The number is 054-4905265.

Shalom!