A New Week

Welcome back to my blog. I wanted to post again last week but I got busy and distracted. Sorry, again. I will bring us up to date from last Wednesday until today. Just going back to Tuesday briefly, the lecturer we were having on Wednesday and Thursday, Aliza, joined us in the apartment. She is from Jerusalem, so she had to stay the night Tuesday and Wednesday. Luckily we have the empty spare room.

Wednesday and Thursday Aliza taught us about mortars, plasters, and wall conservation. She told us about different types of mortars, what they are used for, and her preferences for how to restore and conserve a wall with mortar. We went on more walking tours of Akko looking at walls that had different stages of conservation. On Thursday we worked with actual mortars on a wall in the Conservation Center. We cleaned the wall, removed prior mortars, mixed new mortar and applied it to the wall. It was cool to work with mortars and to learn how to do repointing and mortar conservation. After working in the Center we went to the Tourist office to learn a little bit about their work in Old Akko. They are working with the local people to help them become self-sufficient and improve their situations. After the meeting we had another Hebrew lesson. I was given a few worksheets to fill out. They were easy, but it was a little more work than last time.

On Friday I went to Beit Shemesh to spend Shabbat with my family. I took the train to Tel Aviv where Uncle Steve picked me up after work. Shabbat was nice. Quiet and peaceful. All the cousins were there, as well as Tsachi's girlfriend and some of Noa's friends. Saturday before Mincha we went on a hike up to the monastery at Bet Gemal. The monastery and the surrounding land is owned by the Vatican, and there are the ruins of a 5th century church behind it with mosaics. After Shabbat was over I took the train back to Akko.

Today we had our weekly review in the morning, talking about what we had done over the past few weeks. We then drove to a place where we learned about woodworking. The two guys there run courses teaching woodworking, and they taught us some of the basics for how to use and shape wood for everyday use. They also talked a little about wood restoration and conservation. We then got a chance to each level a piece of wood with a wood plane. It was really nice to be doing hands-on work.

After the woodworking lesson was over we had another Hebrew lesson. I was reading stories out of a lesson book and answering the questions after. There was a little more that I didn't understand, but it was all vocabulary, while the book was focusing on grammar. I'm giving up hope of having a meaningful ulpan, and I may end up just reading the dictionary to learn the vocabulary.