This summer, I'll be doing my study abroad in Israel from June 24th to August 1st. Or, at least, I plan to. Not everything's in order yet, but there's no reason I should be denied from the program. They have all my forms, so I'm just waiting to hear back and to buy my plane ticket.
My placement test was quite literally a blank form. I guessed at two questions before calling it quits.
I don't speak Hebrew. At all. Yet. That's the point, though. I'm going to go, immerse myself, and pick up as much as I can. I'm excited to finally be learning a language I can speak to other living people. I just completed two years of study in Ancient Greek, which, while I can speak to a degree, is a dead language, and "I sacrificed 5 goats to the Gods," is a less than useful sentence.
As of now, I know three letters--gimel, bet, and dalet. And I know one phrase--the title of this blog. Ba'aretz, a phrase which, I gather, means "in the land," a term used to mean in Israel. And thus, my blog title! To chronicle my adventures ba'aretz.
I'm going to Amsterdam in about a week. It will be my first time ever out of the country and second time flying, so I'm grateful for the experience before I pack up for the Holy Land. In the mean time, my Dad got me a guide book for my birthday, and I plan to devour it.
I'm going with two other Wellesley students, Jordan and Katie, thanks to a beautifully generous grant from Wellesley's Hebrew department, for which I am exceptionally grateful. It's allowed me to study abroad at all.
There's still a lot left to arrange, but now that my semester is over, I can totally focus on getting there, and I'm starting to get very excited.
