Learning Hebrew with an Old Brain

I'm sure you've heard it's easier for kids to learn languages. It's certainly not completely easy for them, as you've noticed in Miriam and Rebekah's postings. But it's much harder for Jay and me. Most people here speak English quite fluently, so we don't even try to muddle through with amusing sign language and acting out. I kind of miss that, actually. Please and thank you are a good start, but I came knowing those. After almost 3 weeks here, I've learned at least 4 ways to say ok/good/great/wonderful (and none to say bad, how cool is that?) and I'm eager to know more.

Yesterday Jay and I went to check out a Hebrew class that's offered at the University here in town. The Ben Gurion University of the Negev has a small campus here, including the Desert Research Institute, which comprises the National Solar Energy Center, Man in the Desert (architecture) and four other departments. Students come from all over the world and classes are taught in English. We both wish we'd known about this when we were looking at grad schools!

The Hebrew class meets just 2 hours/week, and though I'll probably do ulpan--25 hours/week immersion--I wanted to check it out because it's right in our town. There were students from the Ukraine, Holland, China, and Columbia, as well as the US. Turned out that although it was billed as a beginning class, it was actually the second semester of a beginning class. Since we can already read, we decided to stay and try it. The teacher spent the first half of class getting the names of the new students. She was especially puzzled by a woman with a name that sounds Latin and Japanese but who is a Jewish American. That task behind us, the teacher passed out some phrases for us to learn. Unfortunately for me, they were written in script. It's like trying to read cursive if you've only learned block printing or typeface. Rebekah and Miriam had taught themselves and tried to teach me, but I hadn't made time to practice. (What's the one that looks like a 2, or a 3, or a backwards N?) I tried to fake it...until the teacher came over and turned the page right-side up! Busted! Very embarrassing.

That got me to thinking how this trip, for me, is so much about letting go: letting go of my work identity, figuring out who I am when I'm not playing that role. More generally, it's about leaving behind, temporarily, my life that is so full and rich and comfortable. Not always easy, certainly, due in large part to my propensity to take on too much and be too busy, but comfortable in that the patterns are familiar. This six months is about daring to try new things, things I'm not good at and may never be good at, and having that be ok. Once I silence that pesky inner critic, it's much more than ok. It's quite freeing to try things I've never done before, reveling in the newness, asking for help, not even expecting to be competent, let alone proficient.