Start of semester the second

It's amazing how quickly time flies when you don't have to spend four hours a day in a freezing ulpan classroom. Therefore, almost before I realized that our break had even started it was over, and this morning I found myself once again arguing with our resident Brit over how long to keep the heater on in our kitah.

Amusingly enough, we had two "reorinentation" meetings today. The first one was specifically for ulpan, in which we were told in very specific terms that tardiness and stuff like that would no longer be tolerated. After we broke up into our classes, our teacher, of course, told us that no such thing would be happening. Just as I suspected! Class was ok. We learned a few new words and constructed sentences. We went over past and future tenses of one category of verbs, and then learned the noun version of the same verbs. A highly educational experience for kitah bet, all in all.

Our second orientation was more useful, in that we basically just talked about scheduling and stuff like that. Tonight, we have our official party to open our second semester.

The weather here is weird. It rained most of the day yesterday once again, and I stick to my opinion that the Negev is turning into a rain forest. The wind here is crazy. My power flickered on and off most of the night, and the windows were seriously rattling. We had a few days of warmth, but it's now cold again. Someone told me that Arad sometimes has a false spring. Just when you think the weather is going to stay nice, it gets cold again. That kind of sounds like Milwaukee, doesn't it?