The end of Ulpan, and 12 days til Home.

I haven't blogged in a while. But now I'm sitting in the laundry room in the dorms at Haifa University, waiting for my clothes to dry, with nothing to do but blog on this sluggish internet connection. Tomorrow is the end of the Ulpan, and I'm pretty excited about leaving. It'll be nice to get out of these dingy dorms, I am definitely more than ready to be done with school for the time being, and tomorrow I get to see Mom, who will be boarding a plane for Israel in a few hours! We'll spend 10 days with our family here, and then fly home together. I'm really looking forward to going home, and I hope it rains soon after I get there. There are so many things that I miss about home, and one of them is rain. In the summer, it never rains here. To a New Englander like me, its actually quite aggravating -- sometimes in the evening the wind will pick up and the sky will darken, and in Massachusetts that means rain, but here the rain just never comes. So it continues to always be hot and humid and disgustingly sticky. At least we get nice breezes here on top of the mountain.

I'm really glad that this whole experience has turned out well. I was kind of miserable at the beginning, but as time went on I got adjusted and made friends and started to appreciate how lucky I am to get to be in new places and experience new things. It's definitely hard being in a foreign country, and it's hard trying to learn a language. But it's really been worth it, because I've gained a new perspective on the world by being here. This is a pretty cheesy blog post. But I don't really have anything specific to say. I don't remember when it was that I last blogged... I think that since then I've toured around Jerusalem, gone to the archeology museum on campus, ridden a cable car up the mountain in Haifa, and discovered an excellent falafel place on campus. These are all things that I'd never be able to do at home, and it's really neat that I got this opportunity. But I'll be home in 12 days, and I couldn't be more excited -- everyone in the Valley, cross your fingers for me that we'll get some rain soon :)