I Made It! 2/12/2010

I Made it to Israel!

I got absolutely no sleep last night but had a really good time anyway. Before boarding the plane while waiting at gate A19, I was asked by a young guy if I knew him or had met him before. I hadn’t; but we still had a lot of fun talking and getting to know one another. His name is Ian, he’s 19, Jewish, from Maryland, and loves Owl City, wrestles, is into music production, has a younger brother, and loves Israel. The seat to his left was vacant so after a while I moved to where he was sitting and had someone to talk to the whole time, which was awesome because it was a LONG flight. Before I moved I had been seated in between to really nice older women. But they were really talkative (in a didn’t-know-when-to-stop kind of way) and I didn’t regret switching seats. After two hours of de-icing the plane, we took off for Tel Aviv.

Dinner was nasty! I had chicken, or what was supposed to be chicken, with a barbeque gelatin sauce smothered all over the place. Luckily Ian had Trader Joe’s beef jerky and we both ate that instead. He taught me some interesting info about tweaking music and creating songs and showed me the different programs he uses. After that we watched Step Brothers. Haha … Weird movie. We each tried to get some sleep but we were both so uncomfortable it was really challenging. The woman next to Ian was sleeping the entire trip and was spread out over the two seats to his right. Because of the way that she was laying, it was really hard for him not to knock into her. So most of the time he ended up squished next to or into me. We talked about school, friends, drinking, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, why we love Israel, parents, being alone in another country, and other things. He really reminded me of Evan in the sense that he seemed to know a lot of information on almost any subject. He works as a volunteer EMS at his fire station and was really good at describing injuries and effective medical responses he uses on the way to the hospital in the ambulance.

Overall, it was a relatively was a smooth flight with the best landing I’ve ever experienced. I arrived in Tel Aviv around 5PM. My bags took a long time to be processed from runway to conveyer belt, so Ian and I ended up waiting around for a while. After grabbing our bags, I expected we needed to go through customs. But apparently, at random times Israeli security decides not to check people, and fortunately for us, we arrived at one of those lax times. Ian’s Israeli friends drove he and I into Jerusalem. It was a lot of fun just getting to listen to Hebrew naturally by people my age. It took us about 40 mins to get from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It might sound unsafe to go into the capital with 3 strangers, but I felt confident that everything would be ok. The people of Israel, both Arab and Jew, are very welcoming and outgoing.

After being dropped of at Ian’s friends’ house, we walked to a main street and loaded my bags unto a taxi. I realized then that I had lost the paper my address and emergency contact information for Living Bread. I guess when I was in the house I put it down and forgot it when we left. Regardless, I got a taxi and found where I was going. He spoke little English, but wanted to know if I had a boyfriend. I said no, and he promptly, and repeatedly, asked me why. I said I was focusing on schoolwork and my job right now and that seemed good enough for him! Once I reached 12 Nur Ad-din Street, the ministry house was totally dark and visibly empty. Only then did I feel a bit nervous and slightly -panicked because I was in the predominantly Arab Quarter of Jerusalem (aka East Jerusalem) and no one was really around. But on the adjacent side of Living Bread’s house was a very warm Arab family. I was able to get help from them and call home and call Tristan with their help. While I was waiting for Tristan to get me, I sat and talked with Gabi, Ramses, Eve, Salmon, and Maahh(???). They fed me tea, cookies, and a Banana as we discussed Arab words, Obama, and the economic turn of events in America. Apparently, the whole world is feeling this economic crunch, including Israel.

All in all - AWESOME day and I would totally do it over if I was able =)