And here I thought my Hebrew was great. I mean, I took Ulpan for six months, I have been in this country for two and a half years and other than cursing and holding a good fight in Hebrew (there is nothing like sending someone off to hell in your native language-good thing the finger is universal), I can hold my own.
There was a time when I would go out with my friends and they would be speaking Hebrew and I would think to myself "wow, I understand everything" and then they would all laugh at something and I would think "maybe NOT everything". That's not the case anymore. I now laugh at their jokes!
I had a parent/teacher activity at my daughter's gan (kindergarten) the other day and once again, my self-confidence in my Hebrew abilities took a nose dive. The teacher had all the parents sit in a circle and started passing around a box of chocolates. In my book, anything that involves chocolate is a good thing. Little did I know my faith in chocolate would also be tested that day. The individually wrapped chocolates had each a Hebrew word written on the wrapper. Health, luck, success... we were instructed to each take a chocolate and use the word written on it to express that feeling to our kid in this year of gan and say why we had chosen that word. The box started making its way through the parents and by the time it got to me, only a handful of chocolates were left. I quickly scanned the box and guess what? no idea what the words in the chocolates that were left meant! all of a sudden, in a moment of panic the words "hatzlaha" jumped in front of my eyes! not my first choice of a wish to my daughter, but hey, between that and sigsug (?) I went for the safe bet.
"I want to wish my daughter lots of success in this year of gan. She has accomplished so much in this short 3 years of life. She has lived in two countries, learned three languages, been in two schools and I want to wish her lots and lot of success... and I chose "success" because it was the only word left that I understood" Thanks goodness for Israelis good sense of humor. They all burst out laughing.
