Who Hates Hebrew? I do, I do!

So here is my dilemma. Hebrew. I hate it. Yes, I said HATE it. I hate the way it sounds. I hate that it's read backwards. I hate that they took out all the damn vowels just to make it that much harder to learn. And I hate studying it. And yet, I continue to take the free lessons out of a sense of obligation. Most everyone else I know has stopped even trying to learn. The only person I know that has made a real and serious effort to learn is my friend Daneka. And she has many more reasons to learn than I do. Namely that her husband is Israeli and that they are living here indefinitely. So she went to the Ulpan and pretty much learned basic conversational modern Hebrew in just about six months. She's a rockstar.

Now the trouble is that I feel like I should try harder to learn Hebrew. So I faithfully meet with my tutor once a week (I gracefully declined to meet up more than that) and for an hour and a half I fumble my way through reading, writing and speaking Hebrew. Then I close my book and don't touch it until the day before my next lesson. Or sometimes the day of. My book sits there on the dining table all week long. Staring at me. Taunting me. Making me feel bad. "Come study" it says. "Don't you want to be able to communicate out on the streets of Tel Aviv?" "Don't you want to be able to stop asking for an English menu?" (oh, but that really would be nice) "What else have you got to do anyway?" And that's the thing, although I have the time to invest in learning Hebrew I can think of a zillion other things I would rather do. Read a good book. (I'm currently engrossed in The Red Tent.) Work out. (If working out tops studying Hebrew, then you know I really don't want to do it!) Cook. Bake. Knit. Clean. Nap. Call a friend and meet up for coffee. Waste time on the Internet. Work on my CEU's for my laboratory certification. (Which I am currently working on BTW, lest I be forced to become a part of the working class when we return home.) Paint my toenails. Scrub the shower with a toothbrush. Watch the paint dry. You name it, I would probably rather be doing it.

So why do I feel like I have this obligation to learn it? Because I can think of a ton of reasons not to invest my time into learning Hebrew. Like the fact that we've been here almost 10 months and I have gotten by just fine without it. Or the fact that once we leave here, everything I will have learned will be essentially useless. Hardly anybody speaks Hebrew outside of Israel. I'm never going to use it again. I feel like I should be doing something more useful. Like brushing up on my German. Or learning Spanish. But yet, I continue to feel that I should give it a better try and invest more time in it. So every week I say the same thing to myself. "Okay, this week I am going to study a little everyday." (yes, I can hear you laughing!) And every week the days pass until it's the day before my lesson and I sit down and frantically do my homework. And you can bet on the fact that I do the bare minimum and not an ounce (excuse me, I mean 28.35 grams) more than is required of me. I am essentially, a slacker. And I know it.

So I really don't know what I am going to do. Every week I think about quitting but I just haven't been able to bring myself to do it......yet. (I almost quit once, when an Israeli even told me that learning Hebrew was a waste of time!) But since I essentially fired my first tutor who was absolutely worthless and then had the company find me a new one, I really feel kind of bad about giving up now. Especially since I actually really like her. I don't even dread seeing her like I dreaded seeing the last one. I just dread the work. Because I am so not interested. But until I can decide one way or the other, and either quit or buckle down, I will just stick to my once a week lessons and my half-assed attempt at my homework, all in the name of pure guilt.

So to divert me from my homework tomorrow, I am having the girls over to bake Christmas cookies! I'm hoping it will make me feel a little more in the Christmas spirit. It's not that I am a scrooge, it's just that we are in Israel and there is absolutely nothing around to remind you of Christmas time. No fake Santas at the mall. No 24 hours of Christmas carols on the radio. No streets lined with pretty sparkly lights. No eggnog. (Now that, is a sin.) And while this may sound like heaven to some, to me it's seriously depressing. I'm seriously considering buying a plant from IKEA and stringing the clear lights we have around it. Sad but true. I guess I'll just have to start enjoying some of those Chanukkah doughnuts that I have been eyeing in the bakeries lately instead. Nothing like a sugary fattening pastry to snap me out of a little funk.