Wednesday, August 29, 2007

First Day

Items of food consumed today:

1 and 1/2 chocolate chip cookies
1 bowl of blueberries
1 bowl of cherries
1 small 6 ounce mango smoothie

(Parents, don't freak out. I do plan on eating properly...stop rolling your eyes. See, now I know that the cafeteria closes at 3, which is when all my classes end, so I know that I have to make my lunch during breakfast and bring it along with me. Happily there was welcome food available- hence the cookies and smoothie- otherwise I don't know what I would have done...)

Things of interest:

I have currently learned that hanging up flyers takes a lot longer than I thought. See, it's very easy to tape up flyers, but it's so time consuming to walk from building to building and floor to floor and put them up. It took me about an hour and a half (with the various walks) just to do 215 Lex and most of Brookdale. How sad is that?! So all you flyer-hangers, good for you! People don't appreciate you enough.

My English teacher is a riot, namely because he's got the kind of voice that inflects words very easily and he makes all kinds of ridiculous jokes. Dana said it well; he's not pretentious at all. He suggests declaiming Beowulf on the subway (into your cell phone, as though you are having a conversation in old English.) You either think he's crazy or love him; I love him. I'm lucky enough to have read all the books on the syllabus, which is great because I need to devote my time to other classes, but I'm going to be highly entertained.

Rabbi Mordechai Cohen is as always, brilliant.

Rabbi Ephraim Kanarfogel assigns more work than Rabbi Mordechai Cohen (I didn't even know that was possible.) The fact is, I love what we learned today (I have about seven pages of notes from the one class!) and I'm going to love what we're reading; I think I'll read and inform you of the incredibly fascinating things I'm learning concurrently so that we'll both benefit.

My Hebrew class is interesting. I'm always frustrated in Hebrew, mainly because my comprehension level is extremely high, but my writing and speaking need lots of work. I think it's especially frustrating because I know what I want to say in English (actually, I know about five thousand different ways to express myself in English) and I can't even think of the bare minimum of words that will give the same meaning in Hebrew. Today I had to think how to phrase "achieve a dream" in Hebrew and came up with something like "l'hatzliach b'chalom" or whatnot and was just annoyed. Oh, and entertainingly, I think in biblical Hebrew, not modern, which means that I would do really well if I only had to write and speak in biblical Hebrew. Sigh. But the professor's really nice, so that's a good thing.

And now I actually have to go start my homework (which may entail wandering off to the library in order to photocopy copious amounts of material) so a shoutout to all my friends and I hope your first days were also great!

10 comments:

BrooklynWolf said...

Hey! Some of us are dieting here!! :)

The Wolf

Anonymous said...

Hey,
Try "lehasig chalom". It works better:) Good luck!

Anonymous said...

Your first day of school sounds great! Get some healthy dinner on your plate tonight.

An old friend.

Anonymous said...

How about taking a few minutes(between your classes) to go down to the cafeteria to buy lunch /so you can it when you can?
Just trying to be helpful.

Anonymous said...

Chana- how on earth do you do it??? I feel like I'm falling flat on my face, and my first full day of school hasn't even ended! Help!!

Anonymous said...

lehagshim chalom ...

Sarabeth said...

Out of sheer randomness, I had a small mango smoothie today too ! But it sounds like your first day was good, and that you're excited for all of your classes, which is always a plus. =]

Anonymous said...

I've never known anyone else to actually take proper and coherent notes in Rabbi Kanarfogel's class (don't get me wrong--I took him twice and really enjoyed, but I never quite learned how to write down whatt he said). You might be a first in that regard!

But dearie, you need to eat good meals. I wonder if your menu for the day had some role in causing the "exhausted" post above....

Erachet said...

I had a wild berry smoothie! Free cookies and smoothies FTW! =D

I had a great first day, too! Yay for first days!

Anonymous said...

I know! Hanging up flyers is time consuming!!! But when you walk aroudn on campus and see all those signs you put up...then its all worth it!