We had an open mic type thing this evening (that ended up running about three-and-a-half hours), in which anyone who wanted to could read something they'd written this year, in years past, or a passage they liked from a song, from a poem, from an article...
I'd planned to read a few excerpts from my one-again-off-again journal from this year, and also maybe a nice anecdote called "The Bank of Time" that we read to our girls last summer at camp. But then Ron got up, sat on The Couch, and read a speech he'd written when he was running from president of his chapter of the Tzofim (youth group).
It was then that I decided to read my Train Essay that I wrote for the CommonApp for college. AH! But it's in English, and I didn't want to read it in English because it would lose its meaning to them. But it was still Shabbat, so I couldn't sit in the room with a pen and paper translating it to Hebrew.
What to do? I brought it down (along with my compilation of APLang essays and blogs that I brought with to Israel), ran through it once in my head in Hebrew, waited 5 minutes to stop my hands from shaking, and when to sit on The Couch. I read my essay, translating it as I went. I didn't stumble, and I'm really glad I read it.
Afterwards, a few people came up to me and said it was one of the best things that was read during the Open Mic, and asked if they could read it. I said, "Only if you don't mind reading English." And they said "What? but you read it in Hebrew, give us a Hebrew copy!"... because they didn't realize I'd translated it on the spot.
It was really great, I was really happy with how it came out. And also, it means that my Hebrew really really really has improved, because I never would have been able to dot hat at the beginning of the year. (I just reread a letter I wrote in Hebrew more than a year ago, and couldn't help but laughing at all the ridiculous mistakes there were).
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