The WUJS routine

I have now been here at WUJS Arad a little over a week, and I'm just beginning to get clear on our general weekly "routine". Up till now it's been a little confusing because we had an "orientation" week, and then we began this week with Yom HaZikaron (memorial day) and Yom Ha'atzmaut (Israel Independence Day), so things have been a little frenetic. Today we spent most of the day at a Yom Ha'atzmaut BBQ in a local Arad park, chilling, eating, reading, and playing (or in my case learning to play) shesh besh.

But anyway here's a precis of a normal week: We have Hebrew Ulpan (Hebrew language classes) for 3 hours a day on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. On Tuesdays, we do a"study tour" - basically a field trip to learn about some topic by going to see it. Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays we also have seminars in three different streams: Judaism stuff on Mondays with Artie Fischer, Israeli society and culture stuff on Wednesdays with Steve Israel, and Middle East Politics stuff on Thursday with Neil Lazarus. On Sundays we also have special stuff according to which WUJS track we are on - e.g. Arts (AP), Land Language and Society (LLS), or Peace and Social Justice (PSJ) - I am PSJ. So there is also a whole series of trips and seminars related to that. Sundays and Mondays we have some sort of evening activity. Classes end 5.30pm on Thursday, and we have Friday and Saturday off as our weekend.

Busy Busy!!

It's great though, I am loving being a student again. Next week we also get to meet our "adopted families" - these are local families from Arad who we can go and visit, practice our Hebrew with, etc. I am not sure how much Hebrew I can learn in the 2.5 months I'm in Arad, but I really want to because I hate not being able to talk to Israelis in their own language!

As for other "routine" aspects of life, I haven't joined a gym yet but I think I probably will. The two gyms here are tiny, one is very expensive but has a pool, and the other is cheaper. I am missing Les Mills a lot, but in the meantime we have been doing a lot of walking, a bit of hiking. A couple of times I even got out of bed in the morning and went for a run. I kind of need to, as we seem to spend a lot of time eating here!