Real Life, Day 1

Today is the first day of HUC orientation, which means that this was the first - but not the last - day we had to get up at 7:30. Ugh. And to make it worse, I barely slept last night. It felt like I'd had too much caffeine, but I hadn't had any at all. Weird. Oh well, hopefully tonight I'll sleep. I just feel bad because I kept Josh up too. Well, let's hope I can still think by the time I go to my ulpan class tonight. Yeah, it started on Monday. I should be in aleph plus (between aleph and bet), but there weren't enough students for an aleph plus class. So they gave me a choice between retaking aleph and jumping up to bet. I just couldn't bear learning the alphabet again, so I took bet. It's hard, but not impossible. I feel like I did the first few weeks in my advanced French class in Strasbourg. I'm behind (I don't know past tense), but I'm not the bottom of the class, and I know I can pick up languages pretty well. So it's going to be a tough few weeks, but that's a good thing. I'd rather be challenged than bored, especially because I'm not doing much else this summer. 

So this morning (actual morning, for once) I went to the shuk. Today I made it through the whole trip without anyone realizing I wasn't Israeli and flipping into English. Given, all I was saying was "how much?" "thank you," "please," and "excuse me." But hey, it's a start. It also means I was understanding the grocers when they told me prices. The shuk is great for learning numbers. Anyway, I also took a bunch of pictures. People looked at me funny though. Oh well, I guess that always happens to photographers. But here are some pics: 

These are the distinctive spice sacks. Though I can't yet buy them because they're all labelled in Hebrew. I'm working up to it.

The fish market, where I don't shop because I don't know how to gut and cook a whole fish. I love this picture because of the guys' faces. The one on the right is giving me "sexy eyes." It just cracks me up that I caught him on camera flirting with me from behind a smelly fish counter. 

And here is a close-up of the yummiest thing in the world: rugelach! 

And this is just cool. Check out the hanging grapes. 

Ok, now that I've reported on my day so far, I have to do my obligatory musing on something irrelevant. And today it's superheroes, or more precisely super-heroines. Why is it that the men get the aggressive powers and the women get the defensive ones? I mean, men get to have super strength and fire and cool stuff like that, and women get to be mind-readers and invisible and shape-shifters and stuff. I mean, look at X-Men. Wolverine has the badass claws and Cyclops gets to shoot fire out of his eyes and Magneto can shoot bullets with his mind. Then look at the women. Rogue's power is totally derivative, Mystique can change her appearance, and Storm is totally helpless unless she's outside. And in The Incredibles (which is really just an amalgam of a bunch of different superhero shows) the male-female division in the family is pretty obvious. Mr. Incredible is strong, Dash is fast, and Jack-Jack has the whole demon baby thing going on. And the women? Elastigirl's power is literally being flexible, and Violet can be invisible or make force fields - totally defensive powers. Now how is that fair? 

~Mirah