I'm Here!

I arrived in Israel yesterday, Jan. 21, 2007, at 4:15pm local time(6:30 am Cali time). After a 10 hour, but very interesting plane ride, I was glad to see the ground. Before boarding the plane for Tel Aviv we had a three hour lay over in Newark, where we saw lots of local (I assume) jewish people, who joined us on our flight. When Kelly and I sat down on the plane a jewish women came and asked if we would switched seats with her and her husband since they were at the very back of the plane next to kitchen and the smells made her sick because she was pregnant. On their way up to our seats the couple had to remind the stewardess to send their kosher meals to their seats.

We flew for about 3 and 1/2 hours in the dark and then hit daylight, at which point all the Jewish men on the plane got up, put on their prayer stuff and went to the back of the plane(where we were sitting) to pray. All these men spoke perfect Hebrew, and prayed in Hebrew, but most of them were from the New York area, judging from their accents. It was really interesting to see all these men prayer and shake back and forth and chant, but very unfortunate when they are blocking the bathroom and you have to go.

We landed and got on the bus with pretty much no problems. It was a 30min ride to the Moshav (Christian community where we are staying). On this ride I saw my first kosher McDonalds (a 20 min walk from the Moshav) and an Elvis dinner. Even though I have not been here very long I feel like Israel is very Americanized.

It is now 5:30am and I am sitting on my bed thinking about how tired I will be at about lunch time today. I got a good 6 hours of sleep but woke up at 5am and felt like having dinnner. I hope this jet lag does not linger long.

I will write more later, and put some pictures up of my room and the Moshav. I have oreintation today at 8am, where they will show up around the campus and hopefully give us a class schedule.

That's all for now!

Corie