Only cold thing is the fridge

I have the privilege to jump in to an ulpan class here in Tivon, 5 minutes from home. The participants are mainly immigrant workers from the Philippines but also a few other people with different background. Only thing is that this group has been studying every Wednesday afternoon the whole spring semester, so my first lesson was not really basic level, but I just relaxed and went with the flow and since the teacher is a highly qualified Hebrew teacher I immediately felt the effectiveness in her methodology. I am in the state where I know quite many words and I start to know the alphabet, but since I have not had anyone to really practice with in Sweden, the flow with the language will first start from now. I could actually follow quite good when she taught by talking Hebrew constantly, but I have to practice the reading more and that is the real hard part. Hebrew is written only with consonants, just like Arabic, both being Semitic languages and that means more of a challenge. They have the niqqud system, which is dots and bars to annotate vowels after the consonants, but it takes a lot of practice to learn it... However, it is loads of fun and I am very motivated.

Tonight we went for my first aikido practice during summer season in Israel. I am sweating like a horse even when I practice in Sweden, so this was ridiculous, but I was surprised to discover that my shape was not as bad as I feared. I have not practised on a regular basis the last few months and it tends to make a huge difference, but I did well. Here it is no Sunday walk and every class ends with 10 minutes of jiu waza, which means free techniques, and we also change and do jiu waza with different partners. The two big fans are very nice right now, but in August they apparently feel like hot hair dryers blowing in your face. I guess my shape will be better than ever in a short while. Now I am laying naked by the window at 22.30 in the evening sipping an excellent local Belgian-type beer, with the mac on my lap blogging to you. Life is great!

Tomorrow I am going to the beach with Hadar... It is 24 degrees in the water already!