Friday, March 26, 2004

Lots going on

It's been a busy couple of days. As far as school is concerned: I have only to write the conclusion (arguably, for me, the hardest part) and my Ancient Near East paper will be complete. I finally finished the outline for my Jewish Classical Texts paper. I got a 43% on my first Hebrew test, which was much higher than anticipated, owing to the fact that I am a year's worth of Hebrew behind (not to worry--last semester I failed the first four tests until I caught up). Arabic has come to a standstill; my capacity has been reached. I absolutely love my seminar courses, and finally my brain feels thick again.

Other stuff: On Thursday, I went to Yad Vashem (literally: a memorial and a name), the Holocaust Memorial. We spent two and a half hours wandering through the history museums, the separate memorials, the hall of names, etc, and it was quite difficult. None of this is new to me, but it's fresh and raw every time I have to face that time in history. I'm sure you've heard about the eerie children's memorial, but nothing compares to walking through that dark hallway, where mirrors have been set up behind eternally lit candles giving the affect of infinite points of light in a pitch black room, where two voices slowly read off the names and ages of the Holocaust's one and a half million child victims. It was quite an intense visit, and left me pretty incapacitated for the rest of the day.

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