Out with Ulpan & Nachlaot ... And into Pardes & Katamon

After spending our weekend moving and cleaning, we are now living in our new apartment in the neighborhood of Katamon!! Needlesstosay, the apartment was not in great shape when we arrived - mostly due to the last tenant leaving a ton of his stuff (supposedly to come back and get later) and all of his food. So, we relocated his belongings to the balcony at the landlord's request (he was also annoyed that the past tenant left it all!) and as the rain isn't supposed to begin in Jerusalem until mid to late October, his stuff should be fine outside. And we emptied the entire kitchen of all old food, washed everything, and have began to re-stock it with some new dishes and to "kasher" the rest by putting the pots and stuff in super hot water. So, we are starting to feel like we actually live there, and we hope to cook our first meal there tonight. So far we are only set-up to have "milk" meals as investing in 2 sets of everything at this point seemed a bit overwhelming - we figured it was better to get it into shape for milk meals so that we can feel comfortable having people over. One of our main goals this year is to try to decide whether we want to try to keep a kosher home when we return, so we will start slowly and see how it goes :)

Our new address is as follows:

Puchtel
13 Bilu Street
Jerusalem, ISRAEL 93221

We don't yet have internet or a phone line set up - we are working on it and will let you know once we do. One other thing is that unfortunately our camera broke, so we are in the process of trying to acquire an international warranty card from Pentax in the US and then we will get it to a shop in Jerusalem that supposedly will ship it to the Pentax service center in Tel Aviv ... oh the joys of working with a global economy! Anyway, we'll keep you posted on the progress, but for now we hope our stories can do justice to our experience without the videos and pics.

More important, today was our first day at Pardes - and I can already report that it was about 1000 times better than our experience at ulpan. Most of the morning was filled with orientation type activities - learning about the school, introductions, etc. - there are well over 100 students here (not all of whom will be staying for the full year, but we think most are). And we met many nice people from all over the world - most are from the U.S., but many from Canada, Australia, England and other parts of Europe. I would say that off-hand probably about half are recent college graduates who are taking a year off before they attend graduate school or start working. But there are also some like us who left jobs in order to come here for a year - it was reassuring to know that others felt it important enough to "take a break" from the working world to come to Pardes.

Max and I also found out that much to our surprise, we were both placed in the "Bet" level (or second level - bet is the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet). As we both felt that the 3 page placement exam that we had to take last week was way over our heads, we are certainly relieved and excited that we don't have to start totally at the beginning in the first level. The class level dictates our morning schedule from 8:30 to 11:45. We will have Chumash/Torah class 3 mornings a week with the 14 others in Bet level and we will have Misneh/Talmud class 2 mornings a week with the same group. Then from 12-1, and again from 2:30-5, we get to pick 4 different elective classes - one for each time slot for Sun and Tues and one for each time on Mon and Wed - we are limited a bit by which classes we can take since we are considered "introductory level," but there are still many choices! Today we got our first taste of the afternoon class - I picked a Modern Jewish Thought class that is focusing on learning about various Jewish philosophers from the 19th and 20th centuries, and Max picked an Introduction to Midrash/Agaddah class (rabbinic commentary). There are other choices for the other dates and times such as Interpersonal Relationships, Biblical Hebrew Grammar, Halacha (Jewish Law), Women & Mitzvot and many others. It will be fun this week to decide on all of these classes!

So that's about it for now ... we will try to get our internet and phone up and running soon! Miss you all :)