Learning Hebrew

I'll never forget my first day at Ulpan ("Hebrew School", literal meaning: workshop).  As my mother and I were approaching the main office, I noticed a group of about 40 or so people that looked to be around my age.  They were not Israeli or American, in fact, I had no clue where they were from, all I knew was that they were speaking some foreign language I had never heard before.

Well, after a brief meeting with the director of the Ulpan (we had met the previous week, and she told me to show up on this day to begin lessons), she introduced me to the guy in charge of the group of immigrants that I'd be joining for Hebrew lessons, his name was Alex.  My mom said goodbye to me, and I walked out of the office with Alex down to the classroom.  As we passed the group of young foreign people, they began to follow us, and I suddenly became really nervous.  I was certain that I'd be learning Hebrew with other English speakers, but it was suddenly blatantly obvious that that would not be the case.

Shortly thereafter, I discovered that the strange language they were all speaking was Russian.  I was the only native English speaker in the group, there was one other guy, Vladimir, who also spoke English fairly well.  Needless to say, we quickly became friends.

The first few weeks were sort of awkward.  I felt like a creature from the great beyond, or something.  I was constantly being watched and talked about, I wasn't Shelly, I was "The American Girl".  Some people were shy to approach me, others couldn't seem to get enough of trying to talk to me in their broken English, and others seemed to have no interest whatsoever.  Vladimir was constantly translating questions the others had for me, and then my answers back to them. 

Eventually, the awkwardness went away, and I started making friends with a few people.  Once we felt we had learned enough Hebrew to being talking with each other without Vladimir's help (about 3 months into the course, by this time I had been in Israel for 6 months), I started to feel a lot happier and more optimistic about life here.  Everyday after class, we'd sit together and start talking about anything and everything, we were constantly referring to our respective Hebrew dictionaries, but it was so much fun!  In the process, I learned to read and write in Russian, by the end of Ulpan (it was a 5 month program) not only was I and my circle of friends speaking Hebrew at a level far beyond than what was expected of immigrants being in Israel for only 8 months, I was also able to carry on a basic conversation in Russian :)