The first week....(Part 1)

So Just for those of you who weren't sure of my exact schedule for the past week, This is a short sum up of what happened. Last Sunday i was planning on flying to NY, to spend a couple of days with Farra, before my big trip to the holy land. It turned out that there was bad weather in NY and so my flight was cancelled, so i was told the next flight i could have gotten on was the next night, (which would have been the night before my Israel flight). So instead of getting only a discounted hotel room for the night, i decided that it would be better to take a bus and get to NY and sleep on a bus at the same time. So that's what i did. I took a 15 hour bus ride from Charlotte, North Carolina to New York City. Finally Monday at around 2 or 3pm, i got to New York, and Farra and Michael picked me up from Port Authority, we went to lunch at Aroma in Soho, and then walked around and found me some new Oakley Sunglasses that might be useful in my upcoming journey. Anyways, it was a really fun day, i saw Farra's apartment, relaxed, hung out, basically spent some quality time. Then in preparation for my trip, we went out for sushi (of course) and we walked around touring the Columbia campus for a bit. Then the morning came, and we drove to JFK international airport where the people from Nefesh B'Nefesh were ready for me. At the short ceremony before our flight, the people in charge of the flight explained to us, that they have brought some 16,000 people from the US, Canada, and England to Israel in the past 8 or 10 years. They also explained that there were some 250 people on our flight, 43 of which were going to serve in the IDF. We also had on board one 96 year old woman, and one 4 month old baby boy who were making aliyah with us.

The flight was about 10 hours, passed pretty quick although during the flight it felt like days, especially with the meaning of what the flight meant. My friend Debby, and many of the people in my group were on my flight were there too. It was also really cool, there was a system on the plane, that allowed us individually watch movies, and TV shows, and even play games with other people on the plane. Anyways, we finally got to Israel at 7am, and there was a big welcoming, with catered food, and drinks, and Molly and Harry were there to welcome me, which was really nice, because i had no idea that they would be there. They had this little ceremony thing, at which people were dancing, there was a live feed online of it, and after waiting for an hour or so, the foreign minister of Israel, Tzipi Livni arrived with some other dignitaries, including Danny Ayalon and others.

My first and only free day after getting to Israel i spend with my friend Lee, and the first thing we did was go to Petach Tikva where my host family from two years ago lives, and ate lunch at their place. I also got a chance to see many of their family members, and also rested a little. (since i didn't sleep more than a couple of hours on the plane) Then we dropped Harry off, and went back to Lees house, where i rested and we had dinner. We had originally planned to go out to Tel Aviv, and see all of my friends who were in town, but in the end my jet lag got the best of me, and i slept. We also had worked on my speech that i was to make at the opening ceremony my whole program.

The next morning eventually arrived, and we went to breakfast with my parents, Yael, Bar, and Bar's Parents, Ze'ev and Miri. It was really nice, but i wasn't very hungry from all the excitement of the past day, and because of my nervousness about making the speech. Finally we got to the ceremony and i saw many friends, Nina (who made me a delicious cake by the way), Elad, Dede, Asi, Molly, all of the people in the program, and all of the staff. So i made the big speech, and i was obviously very nervous, it was in front of a thousand people, it was in a second language, and i was still jet lagged. Whether it was good or not, i did it, and the ceremony ended, i said goodbye to my parents and everyone who came to visit, and we got on the bus and drove to our kibbutz in the north.