Since Jordan, life has hit a little bit of a lull. The rest of my break was pretty boring, as I spent majority of my time getting work done blogging, reading for class, and working on my thesis proposal for INTS back at DU. Of course I still had some fun, hanging out at the pool with Nisha and Nate, throwing together a super impromptu Shabbat dinner with Nisha and Doug (never, EVER listen to Lady. Or watch her music videos. Trust me on this one), going to the Kibbutz to see family and celebrate Kibbutz Hatzerim's 66th birthday. It was a pretty nice change from the physicality of Jordan but now that I've really caught the hiking bug I want to do it all the time!
Also this week, classes started fo realz. Before Sukkot break we had a few days of class but since we had about a two week break after them, they didn't really count. Now I have officially been to at least one session of each class and I'm pretty excited for this semester. I'm taking pretty diverse classes, one on the controversial topics in Israeli history (immigration, etc.), one on violence in mass media, one on terrorism and guerrilla warfare, and one on the creation of a collective memory within Israel, and of course Hebrew (with only 2 other people, it's a little intense). So far none of my classes seem like they will be boring, or more of a burden than I feel they are worth (aka not a lot of work). As the semester goes on I'll have more to do, but all the work should be pretty fun and interesting.
One of the best things about the "study" part of study abroad is the size of the classes. I've gotten pretty used to having small classes in Denver, with only about 20 other people. But since there's only about 30 people total int he program, our classes have at most 10 people and it's AWESOME. There is so much freedom for discussion instead of just lectures, and the classes feel so personal. For example in my terrorism class, our professor loves to address the one Czech guy in the class whenever he mentions Eastern Europe and always looks at the two French girls when talking about anything even remotely related to France. In my violence class we're watching specific movies but we're also able to suggest our own and bring up topics that are interesting to us rather than just what Kobi planned for the class.
I've got some pretty exciting things coming up, hiking day trip tomorrow (hopefully), birthday cruise to Cyprus in a week, the amazing Katrina coming to visit for a weekend, and then who knows what adventures will come my way! Can't wait to share them with y'all :)
It's funny you mention the class sizes because my Israeli Foreign Policy class in Jerusalem was the biggest class of my entire college career! (And it was only 70ish people--my state school friends were shocked)
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