Monthly Lang. Journal 4

I moved on to questions and words that I would be able to use in conversation commonly at the final stretch of my learning. We also touched on more cultural parts of Israel than before because I became curious with my Cultural Presentation coming up. The questions that I learned would ideally help me in real world situations in basic communication when I do end up visiting Israel which is great because it is always great to see real world applicability to what I learn. I find that seeing this real-world connection further motivates me so I was very enticed to learn a lot of questions that I could use. We learned words like ma which means what and Apho which means where. To do so I would read these questions in sentences which really helped me learn in real time. We then tried to piece these questions together with common objects. These included basic words like Talmid or student or Yelda which means girl for example. This was the first time I was using real conversation back and forth with my instructor which was awesome to see because I could feel my progression throughout the course. Like I had mentioned prior, we started to delve more into the cultural aspect of Hebrew, more specifically pertaining to Israel. I was very curious about the IDF because I had always heard about it growing up and really wanted to learn about how the fact that most individuals are conscripted into the army affected the overall culture in Israel. My instructor informed me on how this system does affect the culture in Israel and what his experience was like. He also shared cool anecdotes about the military specifically which were fascinating to me because I have always been intrigued by history since I was young. We also got into how many of the holidays celebrated by Jews all over the world are so much more emphasized in Israel. This was of course not unobvious when you consider that Israel is the Jewish homeland and is home to the most Jewish people per country only behind the US. The story that stuck out to me most is how Passover is a hectic, awesome holiday in Israel. The way he described it reminds me of 4th of July in the US with people celebrating all over in different cities. It really seems like one big communal holiday which would be cool to be a part of one day. I also took note of an interesting cultural observation from discussions like these. Religion is much more emphasized in Israel because so many people are Jewish. I thoroughly enjoyed this part of the course because I think there is no better way to learn about culture than to discuss with someone who has lived in a particular culture. Overall, I was ecstatic to where I have gotten to thus far. The whole learning experience and especially my awesome instructor has really motivated me to want to keep on learning Hebrew and has further sparked my interest with Israel as a whole.

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