It's been a hard day's night...

So my wonderful, kind, very sweet (I mean it) french roomates are 18 years-old and are essentially away at colelge for the first time.

It was easy to forget that they are a LOT younger, because a) I don't understand them and b) they pretend to be classier because they are European. But there are some universal truths in this world, and I am here to point them out:

1) 18 year olds away from their parents for the first time get really nervous
2) These same 18 year-olds stay up all night long and smoke a lot of cigarettes and keep me awake and steel TVs at 3 in the morning and smoke hash out of a hookah outside
3) I am not 18 years old anymore, and right now it feels like there is a BIG difference between 18 and 22...

Anyhow, it's not a big deal to switch rooms, so I'll give it some time, figuring that they ARE really nice, and it IS a good way to learn more Hebrew.

In terms of the rest of life, everything is really good. I had a minor freak-out moment last night, and luckly at the same time Zohar called to check in on me; was very sweet, and really did make me feel better (no big deal moment---just first night jitters).

Anyhow, we had our test this morning (spoken test) and I was put in the highest of the three Hebrew levels, which suprised me. I think that the teacher who interviewed me really liked me AND what she said was that I could either be at the bottom of the highest level (there are people here who grew up fluent in Hebrew, but their grammer is bad...so i really will be at the bottom), but her logic was that being at the bottom of gimel was a good incentive to get better, whereas being at the top of bet was only going to give me a big head.

Anyhow, so that was good news, and then immediatly following that we all sat down in another room to find out where we would work. Two by two we went in....ok, actually, one by one, but I figured I needed at least ONE lame biblical joke.

Well, people were coming out saying, "They told me I was going to be at the zoo yesterday, but today they said I'll be doing laundry", or perhaps, "cleaning" or "kitchen work". Well, she called me in:


"So normally we don't have people work with the children, beacuse they have enough permanent staff there. But since you were a teacher (I maybe told them about that...), and since you switched rooms to BE with people who don't speak English, we are impressed so we will put you there. However, we are sorry, because instead of the normal 6-8 hours a day of work, it will only be 4-6, is this ok?"

Man o Man. It's a good day so far.