time, flying

Kloster Kappel, as viewed from a morning walk on a day before things got grey and foggy.

Friday was the last day of Hebrew Week, which turned out, not surprisingly, to be an intellectually stimulating if perhaps irrelevant break from real life. Kloster Kappel is a beautifully outfitted restored-monastery-turned-retreat-location with distant views of, somehow, *all* the Swiss mountains. The group of people who want to take a week out of their lives to study Hebrew is kinda my crowd. Which is to say that I met some nice people, but also that mealtimes ranged from slightly to painfully awkward...for lunch each day one could choose meat, veggie, or fish and I suspect if "sack lunch on a quiet park bench" had also been an option, I would have been far from the only one to take advantage of it. But forced socializing aside, it was nice not to cook, and it was nice to have someone else plan my days. There was a full schedule: a 3-hour class session every morning, then an hour and a half of sit-down lunch, then an afternoon lecture, another 1.5 hours of class, another long meal, and finally an evening lecture or event. The alternating classes and lectures gave the week some variety - and particularly for those of us just starting the language, a welcome relief from the flashbacks to kindergarten.

After a week I can reliably recognize maybe half of the Hebrew alphabet, and with some luck and a cheat sheet I can slowly sound out words. Oh, and print the Hebrew version of my first name - Shoshana - which makes me happy. It may well be entirely coincidental that I ended up with a very Jewish name (Bloch, in Switzerland, is famously and almost exclusively Jewish), but I like the idea that there might be some connection there.

And now that I'm home? If I do nothing I'll have lost even this very modest progress by next week - next month at the very latest. Maybe that's okay. I'll pick it up again if and when I study theology. But at least in theory I'd like to continue learning...just a few minutes a day?

Ha. If I had a list of all the things I'd like to do for a few minutes a day. Oh wait, I do, 'cause I made myself a checklist. Meditate. Practice French with Christopher. Read. Take my vitamins. Exercise. Get my steps in. To which we could add: Cook dinner. Lift weights. Write. Practice singing. Work on deep cleaning. Commune with nature. What happened to the budget project, again? And now, Hebrew. Why not also Latin and Greek? 

Back at home, the micro-habits feel like they are getting out of hand.