A change of season

So according to Israelis, autumn has officially descended upon us. The only difference I can detect is my morning shower no longer has immediate hot water (the water here gets heated by the sun, so when the weather cools, it's not as naturally hot. But the evening showers are as hot as ever!) I will grant however there is a detectable cool breeze in the evenings. And we're not all drenched in sweat in the outdoor clubs at night. So I guess that qualifies as fall, even though my definition of fall doesn't typically include 82-degree temperatures like we had today!
In more exciting news, I bought my first book in Hebrew. It's one of a series called "gesher l'ivrit" which means "bridge to hebrew", so they are like dummied-down versions of real hebrew books, with larger font, vowels, and translations of the hard words at the bottom of each page (translated into English and Russian). But nonetheless it's a BOOK, and i'm so excited every day that I sit down and read it. It's a really good feeling. Some friends in the ulpan and I are starting a casual book club where we're each reading a different 'gesher' book and then going to pass them around. We're all really excited that we've reached this level.
I've learned some interesting things about the way the brain works when learning a new language. For example, I understand almost twice as much when my eyes are closed than when they are open. That may sound weird, but I guess it makes sense when you think about how with my eyes closed I'm not distracted by visuals and more focused in on the actual sounds of the words. Also when I watch TV with subtitles, Hebrew subtitles, I understand twice as much than when I watch TV without them. It's also amazing how as soon as I've learned a new word, I start hearing that word all the time, even though it felt like I never heard that word before. Every day I notice new things about Hebrew or English or about the way the brain works.
Back to the book now!