I promise to start talking about other things soon, but I can't believe it was a month ago today that my first class session was held at the ulpan. It's gone so quickly. I feel like I've come a long way, but in the grand scheme of things definitely not far enough.

Still, it's pretty gratifying to look back and see my progress. Just a month ago I knew six or seven words and had a shaky grasp on reading. Yesterday, we finished off the week by learning the roots of verbs and variations of the word "of." (And yes, it was explained entirely in Hebrew.) Even my notebook is 50-50 Hebrew-English. Here's a sample from early in the week. Granted, most of it is copied from the board, but there is a clear evolution away from English and toward Hebrew. Something must be getting through.



The other thing that's becoming clear is how few people are in my situation. And that's strange in itself. Pretty much all the foreigners I've met through the ulpan are here because their partner or a family member is Israeli. Most seem to be girlfriends, whose partner has lived with them for a long time in some other country and finally convinced them to move to Israel; others are making aliya by retiring to Israel. A friend and I joke that all the women at the ulpan are mailorder brides. Granted, it's partly a function the class I'm enrolled in (who else has the luxury to learn Hebrew all day?), but it's true even in Ben's class, where most students have jobs or have lived here for a year or longer.

In my class, only four students out of thirty-some don't have someone fluent in Hebrew living with them. Everyone (everyone!) looks at me wide-eyed and confused when I tell them Ben and I don't have any connection with the country outside of Ben's job. Then they all say, "Wow, it must be really hard for you then!" At least it explains why Hebrew class seems so difficult.

I have this sense about the country that it's like Florida, where tourists and retirees make up the majority of the non-native population. I mean, no one in Europe would ever be surprised when you say you're the wife of a post-doc, just living there for a while. Yet here, it seems to be understood that no one comes to Israel for anything other than family, retirement or tourism. It's really strange. (Anyone from TAF, feel free to chime in here:) Unfortunately I don't know enough about the political or historical reasons for it, or whether it's a fluke that the foreigners we've met fall into so few categories. My sense is that it's not.