Thursday, July 07, 2011

Briefly

1. I think that the Egged bus driver training school is actually housed in the Department of Secrets at the Ministry of Magic. Because there's no other explanation for the behavior of the #13 today: right at the end of the route in Katamon, it went down a one-lane road with cars parked on both sides, on the sidewalk, at angles, doing deliveries etc. There was, looking down the road we were about to descend, clearly not enough room for a bus or even a car to pass through the aisle that was left. A Vespa, maybe. A bus? No way. This did not, however, deter the driver of my bus in any way, and I looked out my window in stupefaction at the cars/trucks/delivery vans that were passing within millimeters of my window and in some cases seeming to bend out of the way altogether.

The bus I was riding was not, for the record, purple, and the driver did not have pimples or, to my knowledge, answer to the name of Stan. Still. Suspicious.

2. For the first time ever, yesterday Barak curled up on the couch with a Hebrew book with only a few pictures. And started reading it. As in, reading the words. I was blown away enough by this; but then today, when his friend David was here, I saw him (Barak, not David) sitting on the couch reading a Baba comic book out loud to him.

Baba? Baba is written without nikkud. No vowels. I... the mind reels. Two months ago he still didn't understand anything Rav Eli was saying. Now he's coming home telling me the entire story he heard in class, he knows what they're doing the next day in camp, and he is READING INDEPENDENTLY IN UNVOWELIZED HEBREW.

*thud*

3. And now, a cliffhanger, for the few readers who don't already know this:

The day before yesterday I went to lie down for a few minutes between my ulpan and Mr. Bigfoot's ulpan. I heard the phone ring. I ignored it. Fortunately Mr. Bigfoot didn't. Half a minute later, I heard him yelling, "Imma, get up! You have to get up right now!" That was pretty effective, and I vaulted out of bed to see which child was covered in blood. Instead, it was Mr. Bigfoot holding the phone out to me and looking horrified. "It's a woman speaking Hebrew and she's saying that she found Barak on the bus by himself. They're at the mall."

TUNE IN NEXT TIME FOR THE EXCITING CONCLUSION.

6 comments:

AidelMaidel said...

NO FAIR! You CAN NOT leave me hanging like that.

CyndyC said...

I can hardly bear the suspense!!

Charlotte said...

Ooh, you're evil, my friend. Finish the story!

Anonymous said...

Merciful heavens, don't leave us hanging! Did Barak at least get to buy something cool at the mall? BTW: Stan wasn't the driver.

Deborah said...

One can tell you write for a living. :)

I love the bus squeezing paragraph.

And it is incredibly wonderful that B is reading Hebrew.

Safranit (Safra-knit) said...

Darn, i read the posts in the wrong order...

Just a note about reading with/without nikud. An Israeli well educated friend of mine said that you should have the kids read with vowels as long as possible, because it will help them for the bagruyot in the future...sounded logical to me.

But still, mazal tov on the reading!