my new hebrew teacher

the good news is that my 13 year old cousin is finally ushering me out of illiteracy. i can now read his first-grade notebook and he gives me words to write down. we were talking about the government the other day, so now i know how to say, read, and write "corruption" and "bribery." i can also say, "my vocabulary is small" without having to substitute the word vocabulary in english. it's not really at all humiliating to learn to read from someone who is less than half my age because he's such a good and patient teacher.
i'm also helping him with his english and finally breaking the secret of how israelis speak english freakishly well. they learn grammar better than we do! objectively speaking, he's also a bit of genius.
in other news, though i haven't found a job, i've discovered that i'll make a very good retiree. i've mastered the art of sitting around doing a lot of nothing with my grandmothers and enjoying myself immensely. i also get tired early and am suddenly sort of bad at parallel parking. it's the one-way streets!
i'm making contacts with organizations and despite my flirtation with being an old lady, am looking forward to making use of my degree in the service of peace. i also stumbled upon this ad by an israeli-american girl who is looking for work in the peace business. it's crazy how many things we have in common - she also did an m.a. in new york and my cousin was her professor in undergrad. so we're going to get together next week to brainstorm and try to help each other.
she may come to haifa to see co-existence at work. perhaps it's a tenuous co-existence, but nonetheless, i went for a run on the beach a few days ago and was so pleased to find all kinds of people enjoying themselves there with their families and friends. granted, everyone seemed to be keeping to themselves, but my optimistic self likes to think it's a start.