Today, I officially start learning Hebrew...and we'll see how much I've learned by the end of my time in Israel. My friend Sherry from Oregon ordered some Hebrew textbooks and had Amazon ship it to Haifa. Daniel picked it up from the post office. There're three books in all, emphasizing different aspects of the language. I've started on the thinnest one, which emphasizes how to read the aleph bet. Since I don't know a lot of only-Hebrew-speaking people here, I'm going to tackle my illiteracy first of all so that maybe I'll be able to start learning vocabulary (finally!) from being able to decipher, say, my grocery bill receipt.
Having something very practical and useful to do, to learn, that's apart from the mundane tasks of housekeeping and child-caring is....really, really nice. It makes me feel almost like my own person again. Or a fragment of my own person.
I managed to do two lessons from the 10-lesson textbook during Declan's nap time just now. Most likely, when the new baby comes, it'll be an intense couple of months or first year of not having even this pocket of time to myself, but at least I won't be pregnant anymore. The going away of pregnancy hormones that bump up my suicidal streak would be ample compensation for lost studying time. Meanwhile, let me seize the moment now.
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