I knew it had been a long time since I last wrote, but I can't believe it's been more than a month now. So, obviously, time has flown by lately.
I solved the mystery of why the Baha'is have their own food centre. It's actually common sense. The Baha'i World Centre buys food in bulk, wholesale, and sells it at a center staffed by volunteers. Hence, it's a practical financial move. I'm making a couple of new friends, a brilliant (as in smart, not British slang for "cool", though they are both) British couple that collaborates with me to do the morning crossword, who go shopping for proper vegetables every Thursday morning (the vegetables at the Food Centre are usually two or three days old), and hope to join them one of these days.
I'm making other efforts to make my lifestyle more healthy. I've begun running again on weekends. For a while I was thinking about taking classes at a yoga studio in the Merkaz HaCarmel (this is a neighborhood near the top of the mountain that has a downtown feel - ironic, if you ask me, it's not "down" at all). I know yoga classes are expensive so I just wanted to get a start with an instructor to develop a home practice. But then I decided they would be too expensive, especially in light of my newfound tennis partner and connection to the tennis facilities in Haifa (for some reason the concept of a free public tennis court does not existing in Haifa - basketball courts, yes, "soccer courts", yes, but tennis courts, no). I like the idea of yoga because you can do it at home, even in a constrained space such as my cozy shoebox of a room, and God knows this city is 0% track and 100% obstacle course (for that reason, I think it would be a great place to try extreme running, which I'm fascinated by, but also terrified of, so forget that). Besides, it can work out every muscle in your body. So in consultation with the internet I am developing what I call youga (i.e., customized yoga) which is sort of a combination between yoga, calisthenics, gymnnastics, and doing whatever I want. As long as I can sweat I'm happy not paying $10 a day (!) to do more or less the same in a yoga studio. So there goes one possible opportunity to meet some more Israelis.
Speaking of tennis, I found a Russian partner, Oxana (also a Baha'i) and we have been playing for the last three weeks at a court owned by a Russian Jewish immigrant who doesn't speak English. So I've been trying to learn Hebrew for the past few months only to find that my first repeated encounter with a local would be much easier if I knew some Russian (of course! why didn't I think of that. Though this does not convince me to learn Russian, but to keep Oxana around). I love being back on the court and although tennis can be very expensive here, I've found some ways to make it cheap - Oxana provides balls, I found a reasonably good free racket in the clothing exchange and refreshed and gladdened its spirit with a new overgrip. Also, it may be possible to make arrangements for the use of the court to be free or cheap - I don't understand how because I don't understand Russian, but at least Oxana does.
I find myself to be doing a lot lately which is probably the main reason why I have not written in a long time, and why I am mildly sick for the first time in my 10 months here. I'm teaching an intermediate Spanish class and I really love it. My class dwindled to two or three people per class so I put out an open invitation for new students and received more than 10 responses. Some of them were from complete beginners or very rusty people so I had to redirect them. That left 6 prospective new students. Of them four showed up to the next class. So I think that makes a healthy size class. Something that is great about this group is that they love reading. I didn't want to impose my love of reading in Spanish on them, but as long as we are together in this, I've begun to have them read and discuss short stories every week. I'd like to introduce Spanish-language movies with English subtitles at some point, though I need to either gather the equipment first or find someone who already has all the equipment. Being a teacher, I'm learning, is challenging because you have a sense of what your students don't know by virtue of knowing, relatively speaking, a lot more than them. I end up feeling that every class was inadequate because we focused on reading but we didn't do much listening, or because we concentrated on conversation skills but didn't build much knowledge of proper grammar. I know that you can only do so much with one hour a week so part of facing the challenge of being a teacher, after, of course, teaching as best I can, is just being content with what little knowledge I find I can pass on in such a short time.
I'm also dealing with the dilemma of language overload because I studied Hebrew and Persian at the same time. I decided I had to focus on just one so I chose Persian because Hebrew will wear out its usefulness in not much time. But, I continue to study Hebrew in spite of myself because it really seems like the right thing to do to make the effort to learn the local language as far as I can if I'm as good as residing here. So I couldn't resist an invitation to Hebrew speaking Sunday lunches. My Persian class is ongoing and I will not give it up because it opens up the possibility of reading the Baha'i writings in their original Persian - although many of them are mixed with Arabic, to confound me thoroughly. Learning Persian also opens the possibility of reading some famous Baha'i poems (many of which are not translated yet because it is so hard to do well) and non-Baha'i Persian poems, which sounds fun because trying to read such works in translation only reminds me of what I'm missing. The fact is that I should probably be focused on building upon my investment in French. I get a little practice every week as I try to translate incoming French emails, with a success rate of 81% or so (80% seems like too low of an estimate). I'm open to suggestions as to how to deal with this dilemma.
This entry is already very long and I have not even described all I've been doing lately. So, speaking of writing, I will pick up next time I write where I left off by going into some of my latest collaborative doings that like my Spanish class make me feel like I'm contributing to life on this planet outside of my work. I'm going make sure to get enough rest to stave off anything worse than a mild virus, and my father may be proud to know that I plan to go running tomorrow as part of my efforts to feel better because I agree that it's probably counterproductive to lounge around when you're sick.
