OK...this is pure practice! But knowing my luck with IT it will end up on the Blog forever and I won't know how to delete or change it..."ma la'asot" (Hebrew for c'est la vie, what to do etc..etc...).

OK, well what to say? Help? Anyone got any ideas? Nope, me neither so I am gonna be really dull and simply explain what I have done so far today. It is 2:45pm in Israel.

On weekdays I get up around 7:30am (note: weekdays in Israel includes Sunday, a fact I still struggle to come to terms with...no time for hangovers, roast dinners or afternoon snoozes). This morning I was awake before Jo-Eva (my 2 yr old daughter for those who don't know) which might have meant I had time for a luxorious shower but sadly I forgot to put the boiler on the night before and therefore had to dance and maneouvre around a gushing stream of ice cold water. 30 secs later I was out. Brrrrrrrr!

Today my wife (from here on in known as Mrs X....sorry, Keren) started work at 9am so she took Jo-Eva to the nursery around the corner and I proceeded straight to the Ulpan (Hebrew Language School) where I study from 8am until 1pm. There are many many things I could blurt out about the Ulpan but I am going to stick to my plan of just describing things as they happen each day. So, in the class today was (in no particular order) Tania (Ukraine), Lena (Uzbekistan), Svetlana and her husband Mihail (Ukraine), Iliya and his wife Galeena (Ukraine), Annia (Russia), Ludmila (Russia), Jenia (Russia), Auxanna (Ukraine), Isra (Palestinian Territories...more on that later...there's an even thornier issue that come up this morning which I want to talk about in this entry), Ricardo (Brazil), Andrew (that's me, England) and Anabel (Germany).

So first issue in the class this morning was the fact that tomorrow is Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Ulpan will be having a ceremony. There is a tradition of lighting candles in remembrance and Irit (my teacher) went around the class asking if one of the Ukranians would light a candle in the ceremony to remember the Ukrainian Jews who were killed, if one of the Russians would light a candle to remember all the Russian soldiers and likewise if I would light a candle for the British soldiers who were killed. But what I was more conscious of as Irit is explaining about various national Holocaust events in Israel is that I am sat next to a German. Hmmmh. Bit wierd. Irit took this matter head on. She did her best to make Anabel feel good (I should mention Anabel is only 25 and is about as far from a Nazi as you could get), but it was made clear that there would be no lighting candles for German's who lost their lives in the 2nd World War. While no blame was mentioned Irit enquired what German kids are taught about the Holocaust in school and implored Anabel never to forget what the German's did...but in a nice way!

I chatted with Anabel during the break about this and she said she thinks she will give the ceremony a miss tomorrow as she would feel a bit self-conscious as the only German in attendance. But she also said she hasn't encountered any anomosity against her in Israel because she is German and that the only negative comments she has heard have come from her friends and family in Germany who suggested "you can't go to Israel, they must really hate us over there". I fear if German's adopted the approach of only going to countries where they are popular as a race...well, ummm, errrr, Lufthansa might struggle to make a profit!

Anyways, I ducked out of the Ulpan early today because, very exciting, I was expecting a call from a lady from the BBC! I sent in an article about life in Tel Aviv as I live less than 1km from the recent suicide bomb and she emailed to ask if she could interview for a piece on the BBC News website. While waiting for her call I did a bit of googling on her...the results were fascinating! She has 2 news reports which you can watch online via the BBC website, one about the former President of Peru who is in fact a Japanese citizen and is wanted in Peru for human rights abuses but the Japanese won't deport him; and the other, and this is wierd, was a report about some Beluga Whales in an aquarium who have been taught how to blow the underwater equivalent of smoke rings using scuba divers air tanks. This woman is clearly well qualified to interview me I thought!

About an hour ago Miss BBC emailed me to say she is suddenly really busy and could she call to interview me tomorrow instead, but in the meantime could I send her some pictures of Schunat Hatikva (my local 'hood). I was a little disappointed especially as, with my big mouth, I had told lots of people about the interview and will now have to spend tonight and tomorrow saying "nah, she was too busy today"...oh well. Every cloud has a silver lining and on this occasion you are reading the silver lining, in the absence of a BBC interview I decided to investigate blogging...and you have just read my first attempt. Email me with any thoughts, comments or questions. I'm off to collect Jo-Eva from the nursery now. Bom Shankar. Shalom. Andrew