With the rain, Israel feels like a reality

The rainy season is officially upon Tel Aviv. It came so suddenly. One day we were suntanning on our balcony in 82 degree weather, and literally 3 days later it was cold, dark, and pouring rain. It suddenly didn't feel like Israel anymore. With the rain and gloomy atmosphere, it feels like a totally different place.
What's funny is that every Israeli knows that the rain will come eventually, around this time of year. And yet, it seems that everyone waits until the first torrential downpour before rushing in the masses to buy umbrellas and rain boots. You can picture a madhouse, to say the least! I wasn't prepared for the rain either because I never check the weather forecast here. For the past 6 months the forecast has literally been the same every day -- "hot and sunny." "hot and sunny." But now we have entered the time of year I have come to think of as: "check the forecast" season :-)

Like the rain, Hebrew is permeating my brain. I'm trying to swallow so much Hebrew each day - between my classroom hours, homework, and social immersion - that I even dream about Hebrew grammar. I guess that would make my teacher proud. It never ceases to amaze me what learning a language so intensively like this does to the brain. I am losing English words. I dream in an elaborate conglomeration of Hebrew and English. I find myself speaking English incorrectly at times, with the same intonations that Israelis speak it. While I still feel a natural need to turn to English in most serious situations, at the same time I feel certain Hebrew phrases express my feelings the best. I understand TV in Hebrew ten times better when there are Hebrew subtitles than when there aren't. There are times I have exciting accomplishments, like going to see a movie in Hebrew and understanding half of it, or watching children's TV shows with the girl I babysit for and I understand nearly everything. But then, after feeling like I've come so far, my boyfriend will say one simple sentence to me and I don't understand him at all. That's the ultimate in frustrating. So it's hard to guage what level I'm at -- I just feel like I'm in a brain overload most of the time!

My fellow olim chadashim (new immigrants) in my ulpan class and I are getting closer after all these long mornings together, day after day. I don't know if my teacher planned this on purpose, but this week we started learning all the words for feelings. She was smart to wait until we were really comfortable with one another before doing the exercise that we did. As with all new material, we practice the vocabulary by using examples from our lives (our teacher is opposed to hypothetical examples because they don't 'stick to the brain' as well - and she's right). anyway, it was a small class that day, and we went around sharing sentences using the feelings "frustrated" or "scared" or "disappointed", etc. I don't know if it was the sound of the rain or the small class atmosphere that day, but whatever it was, people started sharing personal things and really opening up. There is one woman in particular, a 42-year-old immigrant from Russia, who came here with her 18-year-old daughter to be with an Israeli man. Things didn't go exactly as planned and they broke up. Now she is trying to make ends meet by cleaning buildings all night, and struggling to build a social life on her own. She shared with us how depressed and hopeless she feels, and I could see by our teacher's reaction that she's not only an experienced Hebrew teacher after working with olim chadashim for several decades, but also an experienced therapist. There were tears in my class that day, and it became clear to all of us that we're not just struggling to master this language together, but we're all sharing a simliar struggle outside the classroom as well.

I left class feeling my heart open. I went to a yoga class and poured all my effort and energy into the postures. I sweated as if it was the rain drenching me. During the rest period at the end, our instructor turned off the lights and placed scented eye bags over our eyelids, and we relaxed into the ground, soothed by the gentle rhythm of the rain on the ceiling. I felt a glimmer of realization that this is it - at the end of the day, it's just our heavy bones that are left on the ground, in the darkness and the silence and the rain - and our souls are so much more than that. God gave us the power to create anything that we want, to become anything we want to be. That is why the world is full of so many wonderful and so many horrible things - he wants us to see our endless potential. And by not letting us know what happens after we die, he gives us the only true motivation possible to strive for the absolute best. There is reason why we don't know what will happen. How else can we appreciate life?
I invited my Russian ulpan friend to come to a yoga class with me next week. I hope it will be a positive experience for her. We all need to be reminded of how precious life is, and how much infinite power rests between our simple bones. Israel can be a struggle, and Israel can be wonderful. We have to seize her with a determined smile.