Meet the Guys Pt. 2

Clowns, Clowns with guns.

So I kept a really simple journal over these past two weeks. I thought it would be a good idea, with just some simple notes on each day I could better recount stuff when I had time to write it down. And it’s not that it was a bad idea, I just found that what came out was kind of dry. The things I ended up remembering the best were the people, not what happened. I didn’t really need to take notes on the friends I made to remember them.

The best times were the down times, the Hebrew lessons in between the real lessons, the joking around, the cigarette breaks. (Sorry Mom, I didn’t smoke all that much, just when it was offered, it was kind of a camaraderie thing.) For those guys a break really isn’t a break without a cigarette. Even when it’s pouring rain, 10 minutes with a cigarette under a shitty open tent with a bunch of guys, commiserating, sharing pictures of current and ex girlfriends, telling dirty stories- saying anything really is what I’ll remember best.

Hebrew Jitters

Although It’s been getting better I’ve been having a really hard time learning Hebrew. The thing is I really want to become not only competent but fluent at it and I’m hitting a lot of roadblocks, mostly self imposed.

I’ve had a lot of problems with reading, it’s a fairly difficult language. There are no vowels in the common written language, they are removed after about the first grade level, and you are expected to infer them from context and word recognition. There’s also a much larger vocabulary in the written language, which I suppose is par for the course in languages. I’ve been working on it quite a bit, and like I said earlier it’s gotten a lot better. For the job I want I need to be able to translate. I’m getting there and getting over the lack of Vocabulary. I’ve had the translation test and I think it went alright, managed to get through the whole thing.