Shukran, תודה, Thank You

On Tuesday, I went to the gan as usual.  There was nothing particularly special that happened, except that one girl kept imitating every Hebrew thing I said, so I said the Hebrew words for "poop in my teeth."  She then proceeded to walk around for about 5 minutes saying this, and I felt a little bit bad afterwards but mostly amused.  Something I've decided about the gan is that, although the women who run it hit the kids to discipline them, I am going to keep the kids from hitting each other (and me, for that matter).  This is hard, though, because I don't think most of them understand what I'm saying--they speak very little, and those that do speak, speak Arabic (which I am learning a bit of from them, like shukran, which means thank you) and their tribal language.  Laura and I went to a brief lunch at "טעם של פעם", (the taste of a time) for some falafel before heading back to the gan.  When I got back to the apartment that afternoon, Scott and I went for a 5k.  It was pretty good--he and I have not been running together in a while, since he has the gym now, and I also shattered my previous 5k time.  We're doing a 10k race in Be'er Sheva in February that I think Scott can win, I'm going to shoot for something along the lines of 45 minutes (the fastest I've ever done it was an hour during the Nike night run).

Later that night, I went returned to 15 חן to teach English classes to kids--this was a nightmare, as the kid I was working with told me I was ugly and frustrating before we began.  In the end, she went to work with Marissa instead of me, and told me to get away from her.  Oh well.  Three adults showed up for the adult class, and I taught them some things about the past tense, use of the verb "to be" in the present tense, and the sounds of different English letters.  It was a bit hard, though, as two of them were on a fairly low level and the other one was significantly higher than the two.

Anywho, an hour or so after I ended this class I hosted "The Dating Game" at Ulpan, and it was a good deal of fun (I think, at least).  If you've ever seen a dating game show on MTV, it's pretty much like that.  Sam Rush showed up, which was a great surprise!  After this, Scott and I headed over to Chanya's to play some Euchre, and then went home to bed.

Today, Scott came with me for the first to volunteering.  Sam also joined us, and hanging out with the kids in the gan was good fun--we went to lunch at Petrozelia afterwards, where Ephy made our food and then ate with us before we went home.  Ulpan was good, we just worked out of the book, and my immigration class was canceled today so I went home early and went for a run.  Then I went to Ulpan to hear Rafi speak, which wasn't particularly interesting (it was also a speech I've heard before).  Then I hung out for a bit with Karin, Sam, Raina, and Cera, and returned to the apartment.  Simon, Nathan and I went on a short walk, and now I should go to bed, because we are hiking Masada early tomorrow morning.  I hope you are having a good week, and have an excellent weekend!