1am update

This will have to be shorthand because I am exhausted and need to have already gone to bed. I just received an email from the representative from MASA with whom I interviewed today, and I was accepted into the Leadership Building Program for the series of three seminars being held in Jerusalem! It means missing my Ulpan class Thursday which is sad, because I really enjoy learning Hebrew. But hopefully I will be able to catch up, and it's for a really great cause! There must be several of us going, because we are getting our own bus from Arad to Jerusalem. Although I'm not sure yet who else got in. There were only 45 spots open in the program for the close to 10,000 MASA participants currently studying in Israel. I feel honored! I'm also proud of myself for taking advantage of every single opportunity available to me even if it means pushing back seeing my extended family one more week. The seminars are spread out over several months, so it shouldn't create too many problems. I can't wait to meet the people from other programs who were accepted! I know... the excited me and the practical me are both thinking at once. That's how it goes at 1am.

I also forgot to mention in my last post just how supportive and nurturing everyone here is of all of us. The staff members are truly incredible, and they really do try to make our lives as easy as possible including every aspect of adapting to Israel and the culture. I should also mention that my parents' Russian wisdom on things like how to know which carrots are the sweetest has come quite in handy. (I hope that sentence makes sense. I'm far too tired to figure out why it sounds wrong to me at the moment.) In addition to translating I was particularly proud of myself this afternoon for picking up a book of Russian jokes and not only being able to read and understand but also reading the joke aloud to our new Russian babushka friend. I felt like I had passed some sort of test. I don't practice my reading very often except more and more here, and I'm thrilled each time when I can do it. Israel is proving to be an excellent environment for all of my language skills. Several people also speak Spanish, so even that is being put to some use. I find myself answering "si" instead of "ken" all the time.

One last thing I think my family especially will appreciate... I found out quite accidentally that two of the guys in the Art track are writers. One of them is actually a science fiction writer, and we've been talking a lot about my great grandfather, Vivian Itin, who was an author. I was surprised to learn how enthusiastic they are to find out more about him, and it has led me on a bit of a quest to find information in English about him on the internet. There isn't much, but they are desperate for me to translate some of what he wrote into English for them. I'm very uncertain as to whether I will have the time to pursue this new project here, but I'm starting to seriously consider its undertaking and wondering why I haven't before. So that's one of my big things this week.

Babushka- ya tebya nezabevayou!