The end of my first week!

Tuesday, the middle of the week in Israel is like one of my best days.  In the morning I had my Gemara Bekiut class which is the class I missed on Sunday.  In this class we are going to learn an entire Masechet of Gemara.  The masechet that we're learning is Masechet Megillah.  We learn about a page a day which is so much more than I ever learned in Flatbush.  It's really hard to keep up but I like the challenge.   Next I'm taking Drama in Tanakh.  Basically, we learn drama techniques and apply them to the bible.  Since it was our first day, it was a little slow because we did a lot of intro stuff but out teacher was telling us that it gets much better.  What we started out doing was practicing story telling and we're going to develop it more next week.  Then we had lunch and I didn't sleep because tuesdays we only have 45 minutes for lunch.  All afternoon I have volunteering but it's not starting until after the holidays because that's when all the organizations start their programs.  So we just looked at and talked about all of our options. After dinner, we had some time in the bet midrash so I reviewed what we learned in our gemara class.  At about 10:00 I met up with a bunch of people.  I saw Helene and Sara Lis who go to MMY and I saw Hannah, Noga, and Brenda from Nishmat.  I took Hannah and Noga to get milkshakes and then we went to the square to hang out.  At around 12, I took Brenda, Noga, and Hannah to check out my dorm.  We hung out for a little bit longer but then they had to go back to school and I went to sleep.
Wednesday morning is the same as sunday morning.  I have Gemara Bekiut and Machshava.  My first class after lunch was Yearly Calendar but the teacher didn't come so we had an interesting lesson on the ethics of telling lies/ white lies.  Next I had class called Derech Hashem.  This is basically about the ways of god.  I'm not exactly sure of anything else about it because the first day was mostly an intro.  My last class of the day was called Tehillim of the Siddur.  We're learning about all the pesukim in the Shirei Shel Yom/ Psalms of the Day that are said at the end of prayer.  This class is taught by the same teacher who teaches Contemporary Halacha who is such an amazing teacher.  It doesn't really matter what topic this rabbi teaches, he always makes the class so interesting.  Basically, we break down and analyze the text of every pasuk/ verse.  In our first class we worked on the first two verses.  We had pizza for dinner and then we had an activity.  20 girls went to five different houses of people that work in our school.  I went to our 'house mother's' house which was about a five minute walk away.  We ate cake, we talked, and hung out.  I got back to my dorm at around nine, while the rest of my roommates got back at around eleven because some of the other houses were over a half hour away.  During that time I re-organized all of my shelves and then got an early night's sleep.  It was a little bit of a sad night for my room because one of my roommates had to go home.  The room seems quieter now with her gone.
Thursday mornings are the same as monday mornings.  We had torah Bekiut in the morning.  We were learning the first six chapters getting ready for the test on them as our teacher went around singing, "Thursday is the best day because it is test day!" In the last half hour of the class we took the test.  I'm a little embarrassed because I only got 7/15 right.  I mean I also got some half points here and there and we didn't count the extra credit but it's still pretty sad.  I'm gonna have to try a lot harder for next week.  Then we had Chumash Beiyun.  Not surprisingly, a few people already dropped the class.  Then we had lunch.  After lunch I had Medical Ethics which was really cool.  We were discussing the definition of life.  Dr. Fruchter would be proud to know that I remembered from freshmen year that 'life is the absence of death.' Then I had Hilchot Kashrut, the laws of keeping kosher.  Last I had Hilchot Brachot, the laws of blessings.  The hi-light of my night was meeting one of the Israeli girls, Ranana.  I finally had my first conversation completely in hebrew which was so exciting for me!  She said that I actually had pretty good hebrew!
Anyway, that was my first week of learning.  It's 11:30 now and I'm pretty exhausted so I'm gonna stop typing for now and go to sleep.  Shalom V'lehitraot!