Hebrew progress

Gali is picking up Hebrew way faster than I ever imagined. She's a memorizer and has always amazed us with the vocabulary words she throws into her normal conversations. Now Hebrew is her focus and her favorite thing to do with Rich now is to sit with a picture Hebrew dictionary for kids and quiz him on the words. What's impressive is that she remembers them all... The next day, she'll open to the page they did the day before and rattle off (in Hebrew) exactly what they had talked about.

We asked Gali if she talks Hebrew to her classmates.
"Not really. I just say 'Ani midaberet Anglit'." ("I speak English")
(HOW does she know how to say this?! She must have heard us saying it...a lot :)
So we asked her "What do you say when someone says something that you don't understand?"
"Nothing. I just walk away."

I have actually seen her do this, too. A kid ran up to her while she was riding her scooter and asked in Hebrew if he could have a turn. Gali obviously didn't know what he was saying, but she did this amazingly Israeli thing of dismissively shrugging her shoulders and mumbling something in the other direction. What she mumbled was something that sounded like Hebrew but were just made-up words. How smart is SHE?! The kid looked confused and it gave Gali just enough time to scoot away as fast as her little legs could take her!

Amitai is taking a little more time with the Hebrew. He has other interests for now (mostly climbing, jumping and running), but I'm hoping some Hebrew will slip through every once in a while. Yesterday he declared "I know Hebrew, Imma! Achat, Shtayim, Shalosh, Arrbarrrr!" ("one two three four"-but he has his own version of "four".) I think he learns best by doing. Last week he wrote his name beautifully after I showed him how only twice. But if I ask him to identify any of the letters he just wrote, there's a good chance he'll tell me "X and P".

Rich is a Hebrew guru. He has gotten so many compliments on his Hebrew by Israeli's that you'd think he'd be pretty proud of himself. But somehow it doesn't sink in and he's always saying how he wishes his Hebrew was better. Mine could use a lot of work, on the other hand. Ask me to read a poem and write a page about it, and it's done, no problem. Ask me to talk to the kids' teachers or the bus driver or the phone company and I'm a mess. I need Ulpan pretty badly. I haven't started yet because I wanted to get the kids settled in their schools and find daycare for Hila before I run to Yerushalim every day. The kids get out of gan at 1:20 and Ulpan is over at 1:30. So I would have to leave over an hour early to be back to pick them up on time. We'll see how it works out.


And what would a blog about Israel be without a little talk about lice?
Well, here it is...
Unfortunately, Hila and I have experienced the "real" Israel...we are now officially genuine Israeli's. Last week we had lice. Funny how it works: my two little gan-goers are completely lice-free and us two home-bodies end up with it. Have no idea where we got it. Apparently, we were clueless about proper hair hygiene here. Nope-- showers and shampoo every day don't cut it. Friends were aghast that we weren't combing through every one's hair with a lice comb at least once a day and then spraying with Rosemary extract. How do I miss these announcements? Well, thank G-d I think it's gone (olive oil seemed to do the trick), and we're now all the wiser. We now religiously put that rosemary stuff on and about 45 minutes a night is dedicated to "comb-outs" and lice checks. And we now seem to be (and by 'we', I mean 'me')a little less intimidated by the little buggers.