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)