I dreamed last night that my Biblical Hebrew textbook had arrived and that I was beginning to study. So I went to the PO box this morning, and lo and behold, there it was! The first few chapters are an overview of the alef-bet and pronunciation, so I'm starting with chapter four. I took a little coffee break this morning and worked my way through the chapter, which was also mostly review (familiar words) but it was good to push myself a little. It's rare that I have need to translate sentences from English to Hebrew or vice versa, even simple ones like "The king remembered" or "The young man guarded the house." It's ten years since my last Hebrew class, in fact my last foreign-language class of any stripe, and I can feel my brain creaking back into motion.

The book has thirty chapters, and the latter ones get into much trickier territory. It's exciting to open the book towards the end and see line after line of Hebrew text, waiting for me to unlock it. But first I'll have to master the grammar. I dimly remember that Hebrew verbs are complicated. The names of the seven binyanim (verb "houses" or structures) are familiar to me, but I don't remember how they work. Well, it'll come, in time. Now the challenge is putting the book away so I can actually do my work today...