Quote of the day: "And this? This is Staten Island. It's made entirely of garbage. Don't go there."

Our poor, patient ulpan teacher. A couple of weeks ago we were assigned to write an essay about our favorite city, why it's so great, and our favorite spot there. I chose my hometown, not necessarily because it's my favorite city, but because I knew everyone would write about big, famous cities and I wanted keep myself amused and be a little different. Most essays were pretty bland ("My favorite city is Tel Aviv, because it's beautiful and I love the beaches," etc.). We don't really know enough words to tackle ideas much more complex than that. And no one really has the time or motivation to do anything over the top; everyone just wants to get their homework done fast.

When our redlined essays were handed back to us, our teacher asked a few students to recite what they wrote from memory in a few days' time. I assumed she was asking only the authors of the best essays until, over the course of the week, she made her way through most of the rest of the class. She scheduled me and a couple of guys I sit near, Avi and Benny, to recite ours yesterday. (She called us "the three musketeers" &mdash we all sit in the back row, have typically short American attention spans and constantly crack jokes to keep ourselves amused. Not that our teacher doesn't frequently make jokes herself, but we, um, like to keep our own running commentary. Oh, and have I mentioned what a small world this is? Avi just left his job in Wixom (near Detroit), and went to Carnegie Mellon at the same time as Ben; Benny just graduated from Binghamton. So crazy).

Anyway, I was nervous about what I had to say, until Benny called me and told me what he was going to do for his. His favorite city is New York (no big surprise; he grew up in Westchester), and decided that rather than reciting his essay (which he basically whipped up during class, a day late), he would do a whole presentation about what to do when you come to New York, complete with map and little icons.


Here is Benny at the board and our teacher, in the striped shirt, scratching her head wondering what he is up to.


He starts off: "We're here..."

It was hilarious. All of us familiar with the City were rolling on the floor, laughing at all of Benny's snide comments. But our poor teacher. I swear &mdash she is the most patient person on the planet to put up with all the shennanigans and cheeky responses she gets from us kids.