Random People At Ulpan Gordon

I sat next to a student from Japan today. I always find myself relatively close to him in class, but we never sat next to each other, elbow to elbow, until today.

We were given a handout of questions written in Hebrew and were instructed to ask and answer the questions with each other. (What is your name? Where are you from? etc…) I admitted to him that I was still a very poor reader of Hebrew. He admitted the same.

For the past few weeks, I found myself drawn to him in class… observing him… watching who he talked to and how quickly he was learning compared to others.

I like how his name sounds: “Mee-Chee”. It’s a name that sounds nice when spoken with the many accents within my class. My name in Hebrew sounds like a stumble or stabbing motion: Jami. Maybe it’s because the English “J” doesn’t exist in Hebrew. In Hebrew, my name is blatantly foreigner. It’s the prosthetic leg of names. In Israel, it will never be mistaken for anything but imported.

He has a thick Japanese accent but knows English. During class, the teacher often looks to him when the other Japanese student in class asks a question. He translates the English instructions of Hebrew into Japanese for her. When I glance down at his notes, he is writing Hebrew with Japanese notes after the instructor explains it in English. I can only imagine the hurricane of languages inside his brain.

We both laughed at how poor we could read Hebrew to each other. By the way he carried himself in class, I thought he was at a far higher level than I was. But in fact, we were at an equal level. Apparently, my image of him was solely based on the confidence he exhumed without having to speak a word. I suspect confidence gives the appearance of knowledge sometimes.

After finishing our Hebrew sentences, we struck a conversation about where we are from, what we do, etc…. He’s living in a hostel in Tel Aviv right now. He met an Israeli in Germany who invited him to come live here for a while. In July, he’ll leave Israel to teach Japanese in the Czech Republic. Previously, he studied in Michigan and was excited to hear I was from the Chicagoland area. He spent a weekend in Chicago and enjoyed the city tremendously. He studied and traveled for eight years in Europe and the United States before deciding to go back to Japan last year. After ten months of working in Japan, he found that he couldn’t assimilate back to their work-a-holic culture and left again.

He didn’t look to be any older than 30. All I kept thinking to myself was, “This is exactly what our youth is for.” And I felt relatively normal at that moment and less guilty for doing what I wanted to do.

Before the class was over, he gave me a little box of cereal. It was given to him at a gym here in Tel Aviv as a promotion. I found it strange he was staying at a hostel and also has a gym membership. Apparently, the showers at a gym are much more appealing than those at a hostel. Without knowledge of hostel showers, I couldn’t do anything but agree. Thus ends my random interaction.

<strong>UPDATE: </strong>

November 26th, 2008

<a href=”http://ulpangordon.com/”><img class=”alignnone size-full wp-image-976″ title=”ulpangordon-logo” src=”http://americanbabble.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/ulpangordon-logo.jpg” alt=”" width=”180″ height=”142″ /></a>

I’ve started a new website dedicated only to Ulpan Gordon in Tel Aviv, Israel!  If you’re looking for more information or want to share info about Ulpan Gordon, visit the site <a href=”http://ulpangordon.com/” target=”_blank”>here</a>.

Popularity: 20% [?]

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