HU begins!

So, today was the first day of classes! It was weird to see how crowded Hebrew University was! I am so used to seeing it nearly empty during mini-mester, and now, it is really crowded! It’s almost like a whole new experience!

This morning, I got up and got on a coach bus that took all of the Nativers to HU and started my semester with Hebrew at 830 in the morning. I was nervous, because I expected a bunch of people who I didn’t know to be with me, but it turns out that it is only the 12 people who were in my Ulpan class from minimester! Yay! I was so happy because I feel comfortable around these Nativers and I get to keep my same “Bezugot” (Partner), Jordana, who is incredible and helps me out a lot! We have a new teacher, and I still haven’t decided how I feel about her. During Minimester, we were in Ulpan from 9 to 1:15, so when we were in class for an hour and a half today, it felt so short, which was a weird feeling, but hey, i'm not complaining!

After Hebrew, we had a short half hour orientation with the director of the Roethberg International School at HU, which was really boring, since we’ve already had a Nativ orientation about the same thing. So I kinda just tuned out, and talked with friends!

After Orientation, I went to my Battle of the Bible (BOTB) class. The teacher is a guy in his mid 30s-ish, and he’s really cool and interesting! The class is a mixture of Nativers and other HU students, so I got to meet new people! The class was interesting-ish. We learned about the roots of the Jewish and Christian Bible, so I was intriguing, but a little dry. Also, since he is in the Army reserve (like all citizens are until the age of 35), he will be missing the last two classes. Nice!

I then had a 2-hour break, where I went to the library to start on some BOTB homework, which I got a lot of work done. I sat with Razie and we got really frustrated by a person who was chewing his gum really loudly. It was really distracting and obnoxious.

After Razie and I left “Gum-chewer”, I went to my Holocaust class. It was really interesting, thanks in large part due to the professor! He graduated from Yeshiva University High School in Rochester, Graduated from Harvard, and now is not only a professor at Hebrew University, but also is a director of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum here in Israel. Needless to say, he is incredibly interesting to listen to and really shows that he has a vast amount of knowledge on the subject! Today we learned about the Nazi’s policies that lead up to the beginning of the extermination. It really is a new perspective for me to learn about, so it is interesting!

And that’s my day at HU!

I’ll update you soon!

Peace!