Just kidding! There is no Halloween in this country. But we did enjoy seeing all our friends (and friends' children in costumes on the Facebook).
Yesterday afternoon Matt and I looked at each other and agreed: "we have nothing to write about this week." We are both in pretty regular routines these days - Matt at the university, Stef at Ulpan. We are continuing to arrange the house, finding places for all our things and even doing a little decorating.
The biggest news item in Israel right now, taking up page after page in the daily newspapers, is Sandy (as I'm sure is true for much of the world, and we send our thoughts and prayers to those of our friends reading this from the east coast). The second biggest item is the American elections, followed at a distant third by the Israeli elections which are coming up in a few months. I know this because, now that I'm in Ulpan, I read the Israeli paper every morning in class. Often the hardest thing to read in Hebrew are the words that are transliterated from the English. For the most part, Hebrew is an extremely phonetic language, not like English with silent K's and P's (knife? pneumonia? come on...) The tricky part of Hebrew, however, is the lack of written vowels, which means if you are not already familiar with the word or its structure - there is a lot of guessing that happens. Which leads us to the "Hebrew" word of the week: "פראנקנסטורם". Which for those who don't read Hebrew is "Frankenstorm". When this word appeared in the headline of yesterday's paper, it took my teacher a good three or four attempts at pronunciation until finally a few of us Americans in the class stepped in to help her out. It then took another few minutes to explain what the word meant. It seems to me that some things are better left untranslated...
The biggest news item in Israel right now, taking up page after page in the daily newspapers, is Sandy (as I'm sure is true for much of the world, and we send our thoughts and prayers to those of our friends reading this from the east coast). The second biggest item is the American elections, followed at a distant third by the Israeli elections which are coming up in a few months. I know this because, now that I'm in Ulpan, I read the Israeli paper every morning in class. Often the hardest thing to read in Hebrew are the words that are transliterated from the English. For the most part, Hebrew is an extremely phonetic language, not like English with silent K's and P's (knife? pneumonia? come on...) The tricky part of Hebrew, however, is the lack of written vowels, which means if you are not already familiar with the word or its structure - there is a lot of guessing that happens. Which leads us to the "Hebrew" word of the week: "פראנקנסטורם". Which for those who don't read Hebrew is "Frankenstorm". When this word appeared in the headline of yesterday's paper, it took my teacher a good three or four attempts at pronunciation until finally a few of us Americans in the class stepped in to help her out. It then took another few minutes to explain what the word meant. It seems to me that some things are better left untranslated...
For the first time since we made aliyah, we are eating Shabbat dinner at home. A full two months of citizenship and we've somehow managed to meet enough people that we've been invited out to every single Shabbat meal until now. We are actually very excited about our quiet Shabbat and are eagerly anticipating the first chicken cooked in our new kitchen.
Shabbat Shalom and have a great weekend,
Stef and Matt
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