Last week before school starts

School starts next week, on Sunday September 1st.  We’ve had a bunch of meetings with the kids schools: to meet the counsellors, the ulpan directors, and the new immigrant coordinators.  Each of the kids has personal meetings this week with their individual class teachers as well.  

We’ve tried our best to decode the hebrew back-to-school list of supplies we need.  One weird thing we’ve discovered is that they don’t seem to have folders here.  They just don’t exist.  They have elastic bound things that fold over on three sides, and they use a lot of clear plastic “page protectors” that you can slide a paper or a few papers into.  But the normal folders, that our kids used to go through like water, a couple for each subject, just don’t exist here.  Also, interestingly, they don’t seem to have the three-ring binders that we’re used to using –  instead they have two-ring binders.  The regular spiral bound notebooks seem to be the same.  So we’ve been buying these items which to us seem a little “off,” or at least different from we’re used to in the US and we’re assuming we’re getting the right stuff after translating the list of supplies.  And we have asked a few people in the stores, so we’re pretty sure we have the right stuff, but I guess we’ll find out next week…

All the kids need school uniforms, which just means they need to buy T-shirts from one of a few local stores, and then the store will stamp the school logo onto the T shirt.  If you wear a jacket to school and take it off, fine – if you plan to wear it all day (like a hoodie or sweatshirt), it needs to have a school logo on it as well.  So we’ve got all them several different colours of shirts with their school logos.  The good news is that the shirts are pretty cheap, and it should make getting dressed in the morning easier!

Valerie and I start our Ulpan on Tuesday, September 3.  We have to be at ulpan at 8:00AM.  The boys school starts at 8:00AM.  The girls school starts at 8:00AM.  But I found out that the gates open at the boys school at 7:30AM.  So my plan for now is to get the boys there at 7:30, then drop off the girls at 7:45AM, which should allow us to get to ulpan by 8AM.  😐  I’ll let you know how it goes…..  Eventually they may be able to walk or bike to school.

In the meantime, in addition to learning Hebrew, I’ve been trying to teach myself to type in Hebrew.  I figure it’ll come in handy when I start working, for charting in Hebrew at the hospital.  I’m using a silicone keyboard cover that shows the keys on my laptop in Hebrew (and in English), and every time I get a letter in the mail or a letter emailed from the school, I type it over by hand into Google Translate.  That way I can figure out what its saying, learn a little bit of the hebrew as I go, and practice typing.