Day 1-2

4/29/10

Tal Hotel
287 Hayarkon Street
Tel Aviv, Israel

Second night of my first international adventure on my own.

         I left with a group of 10 other people from my church, at 3:30 pm on Wednesday from our local airport and flew to Atlanta, GA. From Atlanta we left at 10:45 pm and had a 12 hour flight to Israel. I am so apprehensive about this trip. I feel like I am 10 years old again and Mom just dropped me off at Camp Iana for a week. I am the youngest one out of the group, but everyone is very nice.


       The last leg of our journey was long but not too bad. We flew Delta. The worst part was the Chasidic Jews. While we were waiting for our flight about 10 of the men lined up and started to sway forward and backward mumbling their prayers as they flipped through their Bibles. This part didn't bother me, but on the plane they were terrible. Most of them were single men traveling alone but a few had wives and children. They didn't look you in the eye, had tons of hat boxes taking up the compartment spaces and didn't seem to know how to act in public.
       Before and during the flight they kept going in and out of the compartments, I guess checking on their luggage. An American man who was sitting across the aisle from me, finally had enough when one of the Jewish men dropped a hat box on his head; he got up swearing and threatened the airline company that he was going to sue them if the flight-attendants didn't make them stay seated. It was so embarrassing.


       We arrived in Tel Aviv on 5:30 pm, Wednesday. Israel reminds me a lot of Italy. It has the same type of climate, but no humidity. The Hebrew language is so beautiful to listen too. The hotel is very nice. We are in room 708 on the 7th floor. The elevator is broken so we had to climb the seven floors.
      My roommate and I went for a walk off of the Mediterranean. There were many families out together, and a lot of people out running and exercising.

     I didn't realize how much I missed traveling abroad.

L.s.R