School, Ulpan, and Chugim

School, Ulpan, and Chugim

Its midway through our second week of school and ulpan.  The kids are already starting to get used to school.  In that they don’t complain quite as much about being bored all day not understanding anything.  But they are enjoying their ulpan hours during school, and they are allowed to bring an English book to school to read during those hours that they don’t understand and can’t follow what’s going on in class.  Sounds weird, right?  The school schedule is a bit different than in the US because they don’t end at the same time every day; they end a different times each day.  And because all our kids are now in different classes, that means we potentially have four different pick-up times.  And the different times each day are not – as you might think – the same each week.  No, it changes every week.  So every week we get texted or emailed the schedule for that class.  Times four.  A bit confusing but we’re getting used to it.

They also use the text messaging app WhatsApp here to communicate a lot.  And there are WhatsApp groups for everything.  So for example, we are on the WhatsApp parents group-chat for each of our kids classes. So we get lots of messages from parents asking, “so and so forgot his homework, does anyone have it that can send me a pic?”  or “does anyone remember what time pick-up is today,” or “does anyone know what pages they were supposed to do in math tonight,” and so on.  It is actually pretty convenient as a way for the parents to stay involved and aware of what’s going on.  And copy-pasting the longer messages directly into Google Translate works well most of the time, too…..

We’re also trying to get the kids registered for various “chugim” or extracurricular activities that the city runs.  They run the gamut from various art media (painting, woodworking, modelling, computers, etc) to sports, to dance, yoga, etc.  There is a cost but its not very much.  They also are at all different times from the late afternoon through the evening.  So the schedule for four kids can get pretty confusing.  Thankfully, because everything is pretty close together they should be able to walk to and from some of the activities.

Our ulpan is progressing well.  I have my first “quiz” next week.  I feel like a kid again sitting in class, etc.  But its fun to learn the language even though its hard to say if I’ve made any progress yet.  (Its only been a week and a half)  We’ve met some nice people.  Only a couple of other Americans but  we’ve meet some very nice French people, another doctor from Belgium, a nice couple from Colombia and one from Brazil as well.  Also several people from South Africa, one from Australia, and a lot of people from Russia.  Its so interesting to be standing around during the breaks in the middle of ulpan hanging out with all these different people, most of whom you never would have thought to be friends with in your “normal” life back in America, but here you are, all Jews in the Land of Israel, all trying to make it work somehow together.  Weird, but cool.