יש לי היום מצוין yesh li ha yom metzuyan

today is the end. in 3 hours i am taking my final exam. im not freaking out about it at all. no matter what i get, i get a certificate that says ho many hours i did. and i should either get a kita bet or kita gimmel score. definately not an alef score. in a bit i will study up until the test, and it will be great.

Tuesday was my last day of working with the kindergarden. Karen, the head woman who organizes the schedule and stuff came by my class, Gan Oren, to give me a present (chocolate) very nice. There was a birthday that day too. (Hen)חן turned 5. the way they do birthdays is really cute. they put a little paper star medalion under one of 5 plates (because he is 5) and then play music and he dances around the plates. when the music stops he looks under on of the plates, and goes again and again until he finds the medalion. his family comes to be with him too, even his grandma (cause they all live on yagur) then he and some other kids hide under blankets and someone in his family taps a head and asks if it is Hen, and the kid makes an animal sound, and the family member says if it is or isnt Hen, then continues until they find Hen. Then he gets a card from everyone in the class, and they all give him a hug, sing happy birthday (the hebrew version of course) and sit down to have cake. first they get bamba and chocolate. bamba is what all israeli kids grow up on. it looks like cheese puffs, but isnt quite. then they sing this little rhyme that goes something like 'today is your birthday and you get chocolate cake. how does it taste? YUM!' and he sticks his finger in and licks it. then they cut it up and give it to all the kids.

after that, i had to leave! i was sent to another gan- they were 2 years old. i was kinda pissed that they moved me on my last day, but the kids were soooo cute it was okay. and as soon as i got there, we went on a tiul ( a walk) to the kolbo (convenience store) and hung out there on the grass. on of the kids, Ila, LOVED me. she kept holding my hand and grinning at me, and later when we went back to the gan, she ran and jumped on my lap. i played trot trot to boston with her and she couldnt stop laughing. it was realy cute. they had lunch about 1/2 hour earlier than gan oren does, so i wasnt really hungry yet, but the teachers like forced food on me. after lunch, they said i could go back to gan oren, so i did, and guess what. it was lunch time! so i sat and had lunch with the kids, and then i left, and went to the heder ochel to have lunch with my friends. (by have lunch, i mean i sat and talked with them while they ate)

on tuesday night, we had an end of the ulpan party at a nice restaurant in Tichon, the town about 15 minutes east of yagur. it was nice. everyone came and we had food, and each class did a little performance. my class sang backstreet boys You Are My Fire and threw in a few hebrew words every now and then. kita gimmel gave everyone in the ulpan awards. they did really stupid awards, and i got 'most likely to not pass through the security at the airport' cause i have so many piercings. ha. ha. not that funny. then they gave us little packets with a cd full of photos of our time here, ulpan yagur t-shirts, and a little paper that says stuff from ari and our teachers. you know when you are in kindergarden and your teacher writes your personality report on your report card? like, 'ella is very social and likes to play with all the other children. she especially likes to play with blocks.' stuff like that. thats sort of what this was. my teacher, Batia said i was brilliant (woot woot) and the ulpan director Ari said i was awesome too. pretty cool.

yesterday was wednesday, and i got up early (7:30) to go to Gan Oren, to say goodbye to them. it was kinda sad cause it was just a regular day for them, they said goodbye and the teachers made me a card and gave me more chocolate and hugged me goodbye, but they have 2 ulpans per year, so im not that special. and i just started working there as well. but it was nice to say goodbye. then i went to my teacher Batia's appartment, where she had made breakfast for our class. it was awesome. she has a really nice apartment. we had salad, and toasted pita, and some other food that i dont know what it is but was really good, and cake, and all this stuff. we played games and said goodbye. it was nice.