Chris' Ramblings

It feels as though I have been in Israel for so much longer than five piddling days. The history of this country is overwhelming when measured against the picayune history of America.
My odyssey to Israel began last Tuesday. I awoke at 4:00 AM after only few brief hours of sleep to catch a plane from Nashville to Baltimore to New York. I arrived at Long Island airport (since it was cheaper to fly into Islip), and rode the train from Long Island to JFK. On the train ride I sat next to a Brooklyn native and former NYU grad who was working on a Doctorate in Literature. We talked literature and religion the whole ride into JFK, after saying goodbye to my new best friend. I found the el al ticket counter and killed time for the next several hours.
Eventually Randy arrived, and we were able to check in, well almost. For those of you who have not yet traveled to Israel, you need to understand that the Israelis invented security. After a brief conversation with the first El Al representative (every passenger of El Al, the airline, is interviewed), the Director of El Al security greeted me and proceeded to interrogate me. Then I was put on a list of people to be specially checked by El Al security (which according to them is completely random). But—as luck would have it—Randy was also on the list. We eventually made it through, and began an interminable plane ride.
We arrived in Tel Aviv the next day, and boarded a bus to Hebrew University. I will never forget my first view of Israel; a country that possesses a mystic beauty all its own. The Jews are truly an amazing people; typical Americans would never have been industrious enough to turn a desert into a garden, but somehow the Jews managed to accomplish just that. We arrived at Hebrew U in the afternoon registered into the dorms and moved in. In the evening Randy and I went for a walk; which through a miscalculation (truly the map was wrong) in geography put us on the east side of Mount Scopus, and into the desert, nothing more than a veritable waste land. In order to get back to campus before nightfall we cut cross country (not recommended), and eventually found our way back.
The following Thursday was also registration. Randy and I were told at that registration that our class did not begin until the following Sunday. While we were being told this our class was in progress. At an afternoon 'Intro to Hebrew U' session we met up with Nat and Taylor who asked why we hadn't been in class all day. We spent the rest of the night playing catch-up.
A few observations about Arabic: First, it is an extremely logical and rich language, a descendent of the Nabatean Aramaic, rendering it very musical in nature. Second, it does not resemble English in the least. For instance: nominal phrases, which can form nominal sentences, do not require a verb. English is built upon the subject-predicate dichotomy, which requires a verb in order to have a complete sentence; this is not true for Arabic. Another key difference is that Arabic lacks and present tense to be verbs, they simply don't exist. Astonishing! This class changes my linguistic paradigm about every five minutes. All this makes Arabic an extremely difficult language to learn; not to mention the pace that the professor is moving through the material (Were already in chapter four, and our first exam is tomorrow morning). Thank you for all the prayers. Until next time.