Ok, so I’ve seen famous people before in the States. Like the time Boy George pushed me in a dance club in Chicago. He was a guest DJ in the club that night which was my reason for going to the club in the first place. I was standing next to the bar (which is where I usually anchor myself in a club) with a drink in hand when a “guy” in a huge purple hat barrels into me. My initial reaction was irritation having someone run into me and nearly spill my drink until I realized who it was. Needless to say, I was star struck.

A few nights ago, I went on my usual nightly run on the beach in Tel Aviv. I was walking past a group of restaurants on Gordon Beach during my pre-run warm up. Just as I was about to start running I noticed someone walking on my right that looked VERY familiar. He reminded me of someone I had seen in the movies before but, for the life of me, I couldn’t place his name. For a split second I thought about going up to him but I didn’t want to be that person who says, “Aren’t you what’s-his-name from so-and-so?”. And anyway, I couldn’t believe that I was seeing a famous American in Israel, of all places. So I went on my way and didn’t have a second thought about it.

Of course now I’m kicking myself…..

This is who I saw:

Rob Schneider in Israel (with Ido Mosseri)

Popularity: 29% [?]

I’ve had a strange relationship with foreign languages. In high school, I enrolled in Spanish classes. It’s a standard choice for most college bound high school students in America. Others chose French or German or Italian. I chose Spanish.

Oh how I hated it.

In retrospect, I’m certain my distaste for the Spanish language was because of Mr. Di’Bernardo. I imagined that he came directly from Spain to Naperville, Illinois only to torture me with Spanish grammar. Needless to say, I didn’t even make it half a year before dropping out. I reasoned that I could always take a language in college.

By the time my Sophomore year of college rolled around, I was in dire need of language credit to graduate. My Spanish romance was long dead and I thought I would give German a chance. Viel Glueck! I can honestly say that I enjoyed it more than Spanish and finished one year of Deutsch without incident. Then the Army called….

Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 and I was swept away from finishing my final year of the college language requirement. Turkey closed their borders and my unit was released to continue our lives. Unfortunately, I was too late to start the German studies program again and today have as much knowledge of German as I have of Spanish.

After returning from my deployment, I registered for an advanced language track in Thai since my time at the university was quickly expiring. I zipped through the one year course and was graciously allowed to graduate. Today my Thai skills barely allow me to count past ten.

I’ve always been attracted to languages but none that I’ve studied have ever given me much excitement of understanding them. By that I mean since starting Hebrew in May, I’ve begun to feel a sense of clarity. The language went from being a backwards pile of gibberish to a puzzle I’ve finally started to put together. Simply being able to read in Hebrew (regardless of how poor I do it) gives me an indescribable thrill.

I entered Ulpan Gordon barely knowing the first five letters of the aleph-bet. I was absolutely clueless about grammar. I didn’t even know that every noun AND verb are gendered in Hebrew. Regardless of it’s incredible complexity, this language is actually making sense to me (Or as much sense as a student of only two months can make of it).

I won’t pretend to be an expert. My Hebrew conversational skills are still non-existent and I have only 20 verbs (give or take) in my arsenal but it’s thrilling all the same. Everything in the city is starting to make a little bit more sense as the street and shop signs are all of a sudden materializing into words I can read and sometimes understand. While most people speak far too quickly for me to comprehend, I can start to decipher a word here and there.

When I look back at the long and strange journey I’ve had with foreign languages, it’s surprising that Hebrew is the one that’s finding a home in head. European languages should be far easier to acquire when considering we share similar alphabets and pronunciations but Hebrew has turned out to be far more fascinating.

Or maybe I’m just a glutten for punishment.

Popularity: 36% [?]

I’m having trouble posting videos for everyone. I’ve discovered it has something to do with this particular theme’s coding. Seeing as how I’m a little impatient these days when it comes to CSS code (I’ve got better things to do than spend the next two days hacking away at it), I may find an alternative visual theme to present my material.
** See edit below.

I know, I know. I’ve changed the aesthetics of my site at least five times since I started blogging in 2005 (yes, it’s been that long since I started posting updates…. first on Myspace and then here.) Needless to say, you should be used to the constant transformation that is americanbabble.com.

I’ll also update my publishing platform to Wordpress 2.5 in the next 24 hours which may or may not crash the site for a bit. This may be the one time that I’m grateful for the vast time difference between Israel and the U.S. If I do everything correctly, you’ll still be sleeping by the time I get things running smooth again (assuming you’re reading this from America, of course).

** EDIT at 6:45 am CST: I’ve successfully updated to a theme that supports videos. (See the post below.) Yay! Enjoy.

Popularity: 73% [?]