It's been a long day...

...full of long, boring lectures.  Scott and I went for a longer jog this morning--he's basically an olympic runner, there's no way his heart rate is much higher than 20 BPM.  We went around a good chunk of the area we've learned so far:

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Later we went down to the Ulpan and took our Hebrew placement exams.  I did a lot better than I thought I would--when I know the word, it's fairly easy to read.  However, I don't know how to spell anything, and I can't always conjugate correctly, so we'll see how it goes.

We listened to a lot of somewhat useless talks, but when we finally had a lunch break, Nathan, Cera, Scott and I got pretty lost on our way down to the beach--I mean, we knew where we were going, but the buses that came by never seemed to be heading to the beach.  And every time we would wait at a bus stop, someone would get bored and suggest that we just walk.  We finally got down to the beach and ate at a place called Tobego with Karin and Marissa.  Nathan and I split some hummus and t'china (which is disgusting, t'china is just like watered-down hummus.  If hummus could vomit, it would be t'china).  When I went to pay, I gave the woman 50 shekels for our 26 shekel meal, but I'm fairly certain she also charged me for Scott's meal.  She gave me back a couple of ten-shekel coins (which look a lot like Chuck E. Cheese game pieces) and then suddenly Scott was paid for as well.  He maintains that I somehow made money, but I'm pretty sure I got ripped off.  In any case, I didn't have enough time to figure out what was actually going on, because we were already late getting back to the Ulpan center to hear another of many boring lectures.  We went and tried to get on a bus that would take us to Kaf Tet Benovember street, near the entrance of the Ulpan, but as we got on (after waiting for 10 minutes), the driver told me the bus doesn't go by there.  We decided to go on anyway and the bus took us somewhere in the middle of nowhere.  As we were randomly wandering around we began to realize we were going to be very late, so we called some tzevet and they told us we should take a cab.  About 2 minutes later, though, we saw Kaf Tet Benovember street, and started running down it.  We only ended up being 15 minutes late, but I'm pretty sure it'll be the last time I take a bus I'm not familiar with on a weekday.  I'm excited to get lost in Bat Yam during the weekend, when I don't have places to go.

It was, lame as it sounds, our first crazy Year Course experience.

Tonight we're going with the Israeli scouts to some bars so they can formally introduce us to "nights out" (since we weren't supposed to leave the apartments last night).  It should be fun.  But I'm going to go nap and shower now, I smell terrible and am about to pass out.

Today has kind of been one of those perpetual headache days...