Git a Kuk!

Sarah and I have titled our movie after our favorite Berl Kutlerman catch-phrase. If I am a good videographer, we will have a fascinating montage by the end of our time here.

I spent my afternoon in some sort of press conference about a new book called L'Chaim Birobidzhan. Said press conference/panel discussion/something or other was entirely in Russian, although I'm sure it was fascinating. It is classic Berl to have us all show up for something without bothering to tell us that we won't understand it.

The level 3 ("advanced") Yiddish class is up to something like 12 people, of 12 utterly unrelated levels. I am the only person in the class who knows German, and everyone else knows at least some Hebrew (including people who know Hebrew much better than Yiddish), and this means that Hebrew is no longer just stealing my lunch money, but now it is also waiting outside in the school yard to beat me up on the way home. The fact that my teacher knows German and only as much Hebrew as Yiddish has taught him is a deliciously ironic reversal I am sure to face for the rest of my American (non-German) Yiddish education, but I'm not quite excited about appreciating said reversal when it totally ruins my opportunity for the perfect Yiddish class. New plan: take myself off to Trier and learn Yiddish for real, with actual linguists who are doing actual research that interests me. Preferably this coming spring, but that's something to negotiate with Hampshire.

In other news, we went to Khabarovsk yesterday, and it was a very interesting but poorly planned trip. Example: Berl forgot to schedule meals. We left at 6 in the morning and returned at 8 in the evening. After much whining, we got him to give us 20 minutes to grab hot dogs (I pity my vegetarian friends- Debi is pretty much living off chips at this point, and sometimes I have to stop her before she accidently eats bacon flavor). We also met some old Jews at a synagogue, and some young Jews at a preschool, and had a lovely "Git a Kuk" tour of Russian architecture.

Today is aBad Day because it started badly, but I promise you should not worry about me. Tomorrow shall be better. It is a funny story, though, so I shall share: last night, we got a call from someone who was like "we will pick you up for class at 9:15 tomorrow." So I set my alarm for 8:45, woke up, knocked on Sarah's door to let her know to get up, and decided to lay back down for 10 minutes because I was very very sleepy. At 8:48, someone banged very very loudly on my door and shouted something in Russian, then went around banging on all the other doors. Upon opening our doors, myself and my neighbors encountered one of the Dorm Mothers saying "mashine mashine" and making driving motions, and we gathered that the car was here for us, and wanted to leave. Half an hour early. Chaya figured this made no sense, and went down to find out what was going on. The driver was Russian, no one spoke any not-Russian, and so Chaya wrote 9:15 on a piece of paper, which the driver crossed out and wrote 9. So we determined that we had to get ready very very quickly, and I went to brush my teeth while the dorm mother lady continued to point at her watch and shout things in Russian at me. We did leave at 9, and got to school far too early (class starts at 9:30 Jewish Time, which is like 9:45. We were there at like 9:15. Not cool.) and I have been really off-center all day because of it. Grrr.