B'reishit (In the beginning..)

Shalom!

I have arrived! The plane ride was long but thankfully i had a 6 hour benadryl induced nap and some episodes of entourage to pass the time. When we arrived, we got onto buses that took us to Ramat Aviv which is where the university is located and we got our dorm assignments. thankfully, the dorms are brand new -never been lived in! This was amazing news because i had heard awfulawful things about the dorms which hadnt be redone for centuries!
I am living with Emma - who is also a junior at tufts (we requested to live together). We've been prepping and getting so excited/anxious to get here so its sooo amazing its finally happening. So our bedroom has two beds, desks, and closets. We then share a bathroom and kitchen with two other girls. Everything is totally new so no complaints minus a somewhat tiny bathroom.
Yesterday (tuesday) after unpacking, we napped for a while and then walked to Emma's cousins' house who live less than 10 minutes away. They have the cutest babies so we played with them- they were very helpful for advancing our hebrew since we are almost on the same level as 4 years in that subject. There were three boys dressed as spiderman, superman, and a ninja turtle so mostly we learned things having to do with killing things with swords and pirates. We had a delicious israeli dinner of salad and omelete and then headed back to campus.
We went out to the "namal" (the port) -I'm unclear about what is down there cause it was really dark but the clubs were alot of fun and very crowded. our makeshift hebrew failed us as we tried to find a club that was called lehman brothers...but it was a fun night and we ended up at a very crowded club so i'm assuming its "the place to be".
This morning we had an orientation meeting for the whole group which is about 170 students. We then took hebrew placement exams so that they can place us into appropriate levels of ulpan which begins on sunday- ulpan is an intensive hebrew course that we will be taking sunday-thursday from 830-130 for the next four weeks - I'm really excited to learn some hebrew and hopefully be able to talk to people more easily - most everyone speaks English but there are many people who dont and many people who find it quite challenging so i'd really like to work on my hebrew.

sooooo so far so good!! so excited to be here- I'm also trying to meet up with the israelis we met on our birthright trip and hoping they can show us what israelis all about!
also- there is a girl on the program who i went to bi-cultural with! She recognized and she said she remembered i had a dog named tax and a missing toenail! amazing memory!
xoxo