Preparing for the Month

I thought I’d update where I am, after my last post.  (That, and I figured I should start giving updates as we get closer.)  As of today, I’m 46 days out from my minimize-English month.

So obviously, I’m getting ready.

I do have some Israeli DVDs at home, a combination of familiar favorites (a couple of Disney movies and the first four Harry Potter movies) and less familiar fare (a few genuinely Israeli movies and an Israeli TV series).  So I’m covered in terms of what to watch, and yes, I do have a DVD player that can do the PAL->NTSC conversion.  Got that one covered a while ago, when I needed a region-free player for my import anime habit back in the day.  I’ve also found that “ערוץ 10” carries their broadcast online and can be seen in the US, so I’ll have some news I can watch .  (I might’ve spent more than a night or two now watching their morning show instead of going to bed at a reasonable hour.)

I’m waiting on the compete set of Harry Potter novels to arrive now from Tel Aviv.  Like my earlier theory on how to handle reading… it’s easier if I have material in front of me that I already understand the gist of.  I’ve done this before with other languages (and my wife’s frequently amused at the fact that I have four different copies of The Night Circus on my Nook)… but finding eBooks in Hebrew that’ll read on my device was more of an obstacle.  I’m not mucking around, so it’s easier to simply order the physical ones through eBay (it beat regular online stores for price, sorry) and that’ll fill the gap on the weekend that I’m in the air going to and from Phoenix.  (I am not expecting to get through all seven in July, and will be lucky if I’ve gotten through Philosopher’s Stone by the end of the month.)  Israel HaYom also has an online version of their daily Hebrew paper, so again, news.

The car is a problem, though.  I have a 15-20 minute commute each way to work and… we don’t have Hebrew radio stations here, nor do I want to ride in silence.  The same problem goes with my morning walk, which gets really dull in the pre-dawn darkness with no tunes.

Solution?  My eight-year-old iPod Touch is still working, and was easily converted over to run in Hebrew, and is now slowly being filled with Israeli pop from the last year or so.  It has bluetooth and everything, so I should be able to sync it to my headset while I’m out (and worst case, there are these things called headphones). My coworkers aren’t so thrilled with me shaking it behind my standing desk while I’m bouncing to “Mesibah BeHaifa” or “Kvish HaHof” but… I’m the manager, and they can deal. :p

And… I suppose I’ll just have to figure out which of my neighbors feel comfortable yammering with me in Hebrew, or call my mother or other family who speak it fluently, to get some actual speaking practice.