In the two weeks since I’ve last written, I’ve been learning Hebrew. At this point, I think the goals in my previous post are reasonable – I can achieve tourist level in the month I have left. However, I am doubtful that I can progress much beyond that, because of a lack of time.
I can ask simple questions (like what time is dinner?) and understand simple responses (7). I’m still at the point where any response I’m not expecting will throw me off, and I’ll have to ask them to speak slower, or revert to English. On Saturday night I went to a language meet-up hosted by Fluent TLV at the Abraham Hostel downtown. By the end of the night, I was able to have a 3 to 4 response exchange about where I’m from, how long I’m in Israel, and what I’m doing here.
Biking in the Golan Heights
I use whatever Hebrew words I know given the chance (I once asked for mushroom on a salad just because I was proud to have known the word for mushroom – pi-tri-yot). People on the program have also commented on my progress, saying I must be good at languages.