I'm doneeeeeeee!

Hey all!

Just realised that I completely forgot to blog last week. Oopsie daiseis =P

Anyway, I'm completely done with my course! Like completely! Like fully! Like yeah! Haha we just had our final exam this morning, welcomed in the Shabbat as per normal, and now I'm at the airport chilling forrrrrrr another 10 more hours now! =P And I'm hungry and there's almost nothing open due to it being Shabbat (was prepared for every Shabbat except this one =P=P). There's a couple of other guys with me, so it's not too bad, but still gonna be a bit of a wait. Not to mention the next 5 hour wait I'll have in Istanbul, possibly without internet connection =P. So might as well do this now haha. You can totally expect a not-so-long post here =P=P.

So yeah I'm done with the Genesis course! I'll probably back up a little more to describe the entire course in a moment, but just at this point =P. It's kinda mixed feelings at this point haha. First off, I am VERY glad to be heading back, and there's so much stuff back home that I'm missing HEAPS (and no, the top one isn't gaming, or even my instruments =P=P). I'm also glad it's over just because around the end, we could just feel the long-term fatigue setting in from doing an intensive course for a full 6 weeks. But at the same time, I'm kinda sad to leave behind what was an AWESOME experience, just when I was getting to a stage where I could really start feeling the language. But undoubtedly, it HAS been an awesome time over here, and it's certainly been my best birthday present ever from my parents (along with being the most expensive >_>) and I think it'll be for a while. There's just so much I've gotten out of it that I literally couldn't have gotten anywhere else in the world, and I trust that God will continue to build it up in me, even though I'm not immersing myself into the language intensively anymore.

So what can I officially do now that I've finished this 6 weeks? I can read the entire book of Jonah, the first 3 chapters of Genesis, and the 10 commandments in biblical Hebrew with pretty good understanding. We've also done Psalm 8, but... it's still gonna take me a while to get a grasp of the vocabulary and the sentence structures. But we officially did look at it and read it! =P But apart from that (oh and Jonah 2 is a lil weird too) I can actually read all those with pretty good understanding. And really now the main thing I have to work on is just the vocabulary. As just about every one of you probably knows, my memory... is not the best in the world =P. But yeah that's the thing I struggled with a lot in the course (just about every error I made in the final exam was a vocab issue =P). And I can essentially read out any part of the old testament (that's in Hebrew, anyway =P). Might not necessarily know what it means, but I can do it =P. But even so, I'm realising that I recognise a lot of words just when reading a few 'random' texts out of the Torah. And that....... yeah it's a little cool =P. Like OHMYGOODNESSIACTUALLYUNDERSTANDWHAT'SGOINGON kinda cool =P. Just a little =P.

Haha so now that I've finished the course, I'm gonna try and look back and trace my progress. Cos let me tell you, even into the 3rd week or so, I'd NEVER have imagined that I'm where I am now. Some of this will be repetition of previous stuff but hey. I have time. I need to kill time. Deal with it =P.

Week 1:
This was all about getting used to hearing the language. Essentially, they commanded us to get up, and we got up. They commanded us to jump, and we jumped. They commanded us to fly, and we flew. They commanded us to hit the other teacher with a sword, and we did that willingly =P. In this way we built up a basic vocabulary and just began to get an ear for how Hebrew words sounded. Around the end they also started introducing the present and past tense (again, all just by listening to commands and listening to what they said while we were performing the commands). At this stage, we also started learning the alphabet. We were essentially saying nothing this entire week. The only real time we got to speak was right at the end, when we (the students) got to give the teachers commands, and they had to do it. Ahhhh that was good fun =P.

Week 2
Here we started reading the book of Jonah. Very very slowly - around 1-2 verses at a time. Even then, it was incredible - I could already understand most of the stuff right from the start! I was totally not expecting that to happen so soon. We also did some basic verb things (like tenses and that kinda thing) and it quickly moved to more complex verb things. New vocabulary was learned by the same method as before - acted out by the teachers and sometimes commanding us to do the same action. And while we continued to build a foundation of vocabulary and grammar, we just continued to read through the book of Jonah.

Week 3
More of the same, more of the same. Except the sheer amount of vocabulary we learnt went up, and we needed to learn it faster. We had started reading around 1-2 verses a day, and by this week we were reading like 6-7 verses a day. We didn't do a huge lot of acting out past just acting out a new word for the purposes of... well, learning the new word =P. I believe at this point we started learning the different categories of verbs (the verb patterns), but I can't quite remember if that was in week 3 or 4. I think we did have the weekend to work on that. But by this point, we had pretty much already covered most of the verb 'theory' just by using a whole lot of verbs that we'd learned beforehand.

Week 4
So at this point, we had three days left and the whole of chapter 2 and 4 to cover before the review and exam. And so I was like 'yeah right, as if we can finish this on time' =P. Well, apparently we could, simply by doing half of chapter 4 per day and running through the entire chapter 2 as a class together. Yes, it was intense, but we did it! =P Considering we went from 1-2 verses a day to half a chapter a day... yeah that's a fair amount of progress =P. And there was even more vocabulary to learn - quite a lot in fact. We also tied up all the stuff about grammar and verbs which we'd learnt so far. And we reviewed the entire Jonah for the exam, and... we sat the exam! Haha I did a LOT better than I expected (my paper was littered with annotations saying stuff like 'I have no idea what this actually is, but it sounds like it should be that....' =P. Hahaha good fun.

Okay running out of time, I'll finish this up later =P

Kets!

Heyo alls!

I are done with Jonah study!! =D=D AND I passed the exam that we did yesterday! Even though I was uber confused for a lot of it. Like when he was going through the solutions, I was consistently going like 'Uhmm. Right. Yes. I knew that that thing was the third person masculine singular in the past. Totally.' But hey! =P I can now read Jonah in Hebrew with relatively good understanding (esp the first chapter, and most of chapter 3 =P. Chapter 2's just weird. Well, at my level anyway =P) So now amazingly, I have a weekend without any homework or review to do! Which I suddenly realised yesterday means I actually have the chance to move around =P. So tomorrow I may head down to Jerusalem, wander around a bit, grab a Hebrew bible, all that kinda good jazz. And then onwards to Genesis!

But yeah. Umm. Suddenly I'm at a loss as to what to say haha. I've already said stuff like 'it's sunny outside!' =P. Umm. Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmm. This is weird. I'm writing a short post. This is....... weiiiirrrrdddddddd.......

Okay cya guys then! ^_^ Sg peeps in abt 2 weeks, perth peeps in abt 3 weeks ^_^.
God bless!
Ernest (Nehemiah)

I HAS INTERNET!!!!!

After going essentially an entire week without much internet, I finally have some! So gonna quickly blog while it's still up =P.

Classes are still intense! We're 3/4 of the way through the Jonah course now, and we're slightly past half way through the book. The pace of reading is definitely picking up though. Even though I think I'm probably behind a lot of the other ppl doing the course, I'm quite amazed at how much I'm learning. We've essentially memorised the shma (Deut 6:4-9? I think?) and I'm quite shocked that when I'm reciting it, I can actually figure out what it's talking about without trying to have to search for an english meaning.

Actually I'm finding the biggest problem I have atm is getting a grasp of all their grammar stuff. Like they'd go "So yes, this form is applicable to every pronoun!" And I"m like... uhmmm what's a pronoun? And they'd string a sentence that included 'infinitive', 'imperative', I dunno what else... you get the idea =P. So it's hard for me to grasp what they're saying about grammar if I've got to wikipedia 'adjective' every other page... and my internet has been down =P. So yeah =P.

Other than that, recognising the words and their patterns is starting to become a lil more natural, but there's definately still a long way to go. I also need to start being able to figure out what it's saying from what I'm reading. Like if I hear a word, I can generally figure out what it's talking about, but if I'm reading it out, I generally read so slowly that I don't pick up what that word is. But slowly! I'll get there! =P I'll definetely be looking for ways to continue reading after this course is done though. Like at first I thought this would only be for Jonah, but it turns out we can actually understand quite a bit of narrative as well. Like on the bus our teacher was reading from Kings about Elijah and the prophets of Baal, and we could pretty much understand the whole thing! So yeah, really exciting stuff ^_^

The bus! Yeah we had a two day field trip out around the Galilee area from wed-thurs, just to get a feel of the country. I'd been touring around there before, so it wasn't a HUGE deal for me, but it was still nice to be out around the area. The sea of galilee just like before was amaaaaaazzzzinnngggggg - watching the sunrise over it in the morning from Beit Bracha (the place where we stayed) was incredible. Wish we coulda stayed there another day or so, but alas =P. So we kept moving around the place, went to this university at the top of Mount Carmel for a free museum trip (I couldn't get a good shot of the HUGEEEEEE building sticking out the top of the mountain! >_<), and we also went to Gath Hepher, which in the words of who we affectionally call (literal translation:) teacher big again, was an 'unexciting yet exotic place'. I'll be impressed if you know what that is - I certainly had no idea and didn't even realise this was in the Bible! (yes, it is in the Bible =P). I'll put pictures up on fb at some point =P. Once I get down to it =P.

So yeah! Other than that, I've been in the room, studying and trying to get internet up =P. Oh at one point I really needed to take a break, so I tried playing around with some vocals stuff. Trying to do some sorta-harmonies stuff that I don't -think- is... according to 'harmony theory' or whatever, but it's something I've always had in mind, so I thought why not try it on this incredibly dodgy lappy mic hey =P. Lemme know what you guys think! Don't mind the beatboxing, I needed a beat and was like yeah why not hey =P. Actually I can just get rid of that portion! Okay now you don't need to endure the terrible beatboxing =P. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15874504/Come%20Thou%20Fount%20beatless.mp3


Will blog again hopefully next week! Ttyl! ^_^
God bless,
Ernest (Nehemiah)