Day 16

Again it was a struggle getting up this morning. I think I have decided I’m always so tired because I don’t sleep well at night. I wake up to everything. Like when Whitney from across the room moves or at four in the morning to the call to prayer. Today has been pretty easy. Again nothing exciting. I’m getting pretty bummed out that I haven’t been able to go to the Old City since last week. Like right now for example all of my friends are in the Old City, but I’m just waiting for my Hebrew class to start. Oh and I forgot to mention that I have Hebrew three times a week and Arabic only has it once or twice. OT in the morning like always, then Ludlow. I think Ludlow’s class is interesting because we are actually learning the History. It’s much better than Basir Bashir’s class. Matty was sitting next to me in class and was sleeping almost the entire time, which of course made me tired. Class was only an hour but we had to stay an extra hour for another orientation. It wasn’t too bad, because we talked about our field trip to Turkey! We are flying up to Turkey in four days and are staying for the week. We won’t have any classes and we get to visit a lot of Greek Ruins. I’m uber excited, except for the fact that we are going to be spending a lot of time on the bus. Because we will be going all throughout Turkey. We went over basic rules, it’s pretty much the same rules that we have here. Just more strict. We have a 10:30 curfew and are required to have a boy with us at all times. It is going to be a really fun trip. But I don’t think I’ll have access to a computer while I am there so I’ll catch up the blog when I get back. After the meeting it was time for lunch, we had Falafels! I love Falafels. They are so scrumptious. I had Hebrew, like usual, after lunch. I took my flash cards that I had labored on the night before, but I don't really know any of my letters. So it was pretty much an epic fail in class. I was supposed to be able to translate words out of another student's book, but let's just say that it was a bit of a struggle. In Hebrew we each letter has two forms a block letter and a script letter. And then every letter has a vowel hooked onto it. So we all sound like two year olds trying to sound out each word. After Hebrew my class got to go on a tour under the center, but I bailed on it. Melissa and I wanted to walk up to Hebrew University to use their internet instead. But we had to find a third person, cause of the rule of three thing, no one wanted to come. Luckily we kinda tricked one girl to walk up with us, she thought we were going down to the Old City. But nope. The University is literally right across the street from us, but we have to walk to the other side of campus to even get in. And we have to go through security checkpoints, it reminded me of an airport. Once we finally got in we were able to get to the library. We have internet here at the center, but there are a lot of restrictions. So Hebrew U allows us to upload pictures, use facebook, and skype. All things we cannot do here (although I still upload pictures anyways). We walked back just in time for dinner and then we had another forum. All of our speakers at the forum talk about politics. They are either pro Palestine or pro Isreal. The man who spoke was far more interesting than the guy who came last week. But I still haven't kept up to date with the politics, so I didn't always know what he was talking about. But it was still interesting and Melissa explained a lot to me. She is a Middle Eastern Studies Minor, thus she has taken multiple classes on the subject. After the forum I was supposed to play night games, but bailed. Mainly because the kid in charge is just too intense for me and the fact that he is not a fan of me. He isn't a fan of me because he was trying to boss me around the other day, but I wasn't having any of it. He's not in charge of me. So I went to my room instead and got ready for bed. Then had a conference call with the Rents. I fell asleep only moments after I hung up. I was going to try to stay up late enough to talk to Hannah, but obviously that didn't happen.