First day of class

Today was the first day of class and also the 17th of Tammuz. So, the schedule was a bit unusual. We started with some orientation and introductions. After that we went to ouur first classes. Mine is the Ulpan. I was placed in level three which is actually the fourth level as there is an aleph and an aleph plus --it's Isreal, everything is just a little more complicated. My Ulpan teacher is very good. There are 16 students in the class many said they thought they were in too high a level but our teacher said that we will only learn if it is a little difficult. Today we practice conversations and learned about noun-adjective agreement.
After Ulpan, we all went to the Beis Medrash for a shiur by Rabbi Goldfarb on fasting. He quoted a number of sources and discussed minor and major fasts and their meanings for modern Jews. He is a good teacher and I hope he takes the opportunity to teach us often.
We then had mincha which included a very beautiful chanting of the hatarah for fast days.
My next class was on midrash. Rabbi Mordechai Silverman discussed a midrash about Rabbi Akiba which among other things may have been written to convince wives to let their hisbands go off and study while they stay home and raise the children.
My last class of te day proved far more interesting than I imagined, Sally Klein-Katz on Teaching Israel. This class explores people's relationships with Israel and how we can best draw them closer.
On the way home, I managed to recruit the help of Sharon Astor to gang up on the ATM machine and as we had it outnumbered, I finally won.