Patterns

I read something interesting in the new National Geographic on the flight from Frankfurt which keeps popping back into my mind as I try to learn new Hebrew words.  Research shows that people who get more deep sleep (the kind when your body slows, you don't dream, and you're really hard to wake) are better at memorization.  Deep sleep is critical to survival, and it's the type of sleep I was found to be getting too little of in a sleep study.  Memorization has always been a particular challenge for me, so this was kind of eye opening.  On the positive side, people who spend a lot of time in REM sleep (this is the layer of sleep just below awake, when you dream but your muscles are paralyzed so you don't act out), are very good at recognizing patterns.  Well, this one also resonated with me.  Patterns come easily to me.  Making connections between things that don't normally go together is effortless.  I'm constantly doing it.  And I could write a library full of the dreams I've had.

As it relates to Israel, we were walking the other day with our relo specialist and she and Dan pointed out an ice cream shop in hebrew.  They then discussed how the word didn't sound anything like ice cream so they were trying to think of a way to help me remember it.  I said, "hey, it sounds like gelato."  They agreed.  I can't remember what the word was, but I can tell you, it does indeed sound similar to gelato but with an "a" at the end. 

So, I'm taking a poll via comment here - are you a memorizing deep sleeper or a REM pattern connector?