The Olympics in Hebrew

From time to time this past week, we did a fair amount of Olympics watching. The commentary is all in Hebrew, but it's generally not too hard to figure out what's happening, at least in general. The on-screen words (telling what the event is, the order in which runners finished, etc.) are in English. I do pick up some of the Hebrew, and I've learned a few new words, too, such as מקצה (miktzeh), which means "heat" (as in the 1st and 2nd heats of the 100 m dash) and משוכה (m'suchah), which means "hurdle". Really useful vocabulary, huh? :-) They have a relatively small set of 5-second commercials that they play in varying order, one right after the other, during short breaks. Since I keep seeing the same ones over and over and over (and most of them also include the written version of some of what they say), I've been able to decipher quite a bit of the Hebrew. The strangest one, I think, is the Office Depot slogan, which translates to "There are no surprises at the check-out." Seems like a pretty low standard to me! "What? You mean I'll actually pay the amount written on the box? Stunning!"

There have been a lot of exciting, interesting, and even emotional moments, too. The gymnastics have always been among my favorites. Some of the things that those gymnasts do just seem like impossible violations of the rules of physics and of the way the human body works, but there they are, anyway! And, of course, they have unbelievably muscular bodies! :-)

One of the runners caught our eye even before he became very famous. What we noticed first was his cool gold shoes! Before we could catch his name, we just referred to him as "Mr. Gold Shoes", but we finally learned that his name was Usain Bolt, and, of course, the rest is history. In case you haven't been following the Olympics, he won gold medals in both the 100 m and 200 m dashes, also setting new world records in both! Besides that, he and his team (from Jamaica, or, as the Hebrew announcers pronounce it "Jaw Mica") took the gold for the 4x100 m relay, where they also set a new record! We didn't actually see the relay, but we DID see his other 2 big wins, and both were really impressive. It's hard to believe how fast he can go!

The other thing that has been interesting for us is watching the Israeli athletes. American and Russian and British and Jamaican athletes are nearly everywhere, but there aren't that many Israelis, so we really notice when we do see one. Besides that, of course, the local TV naturally makes sure to show all of them and also includes quite a few of the others competing with them. So, we've seen synchronized swimmers, wind-surfers (where our guy won the bronze!), kayakers (where our guy won the 1st 2 heats in which we saw him but didn't managed to win any medal in the end), and some in events whose names I don't even know! For example, there's a women's gymnastic event where they do routines with a rope (like a jump-rope) and a hula-hoop (I'm not making this up!). The routines were amazing to watch, but probably one of the reasons that they showed so much of them was that there were 2 Israeli competitors! Cool!