Greetings from Jerusalem!
I am finally here, and it is a huge bag of mixed emotions.
Excited, because I’m here. Sad, because I am away from all my family, old
friends, and professors. Excited, because I get to meet new people. Sad,
because I’m so unfamiliar with everything.
I guess I can begin with the flights to Israel. Not too many
problems. We go to New York City (JFK) and we chilled there for about 3-4
hours, but we got to run into other Rothberg students while we were there, so
that was a plus. The security for El Al was something I had never experienced
before. I got asked a TON of questions and they even asked some more than once
(they want to make sure that you aren’t lying. My name got put on a list, for
extra screening, but so did about 6 other people (we aren’t positive why, but
we have a hunch).
We then had to go through security, which was not a big
deal. We finally had some downtime, so we got to meet more of the students that
would be on the flight. Then we got pulled over for the extra screening, which
had some benefits, but also some drawbacks. Once we got pulled over for
screening, we couldn’t do anything. We had to sit in the same spot until
someone came to get us. So that means no bathroom, no getting a snack for the
plane, etc. Then we went into this little room where they asked us more
questions and swabbed our shoes and all that fun stuff. Even though I was being
screened, I knew that this airline cared about the safety of everyone on it. I
also was the second person on the plane. Since we couldn’t do anything because
of the screening we had to get on the plane as soon as we were done. That was a
nice benefit to that whole scenario.
The plane ride was long (11 hours), for which I couldn’t
solidly sleep. So that kind of sucked. Like most long flights, it was crazy dry
and I was taking in water at every opportunity that I could get. It was cool to
see the different forms of Judaism just on one flight, and how the fact that we
were on a plane didn’t deter them from practicing their morning prayer. At
around the 9-hour mark everyone was putting on their prayer shawls and they
would position themselves away from people towards the wall of plane. It was
interesting, because I had never seen that on a plane before. They also didn’t
care if we were up and out of our seats. Even the pilots were out and about
talking to people all over the plane. I also had the best kosher meals ever, so
that was cool too.
Once we got to Tel Aviv I was thankful that my bag had made
it, and then we got on a bus for Jerusalem. We finally got to our dorms at
about 2:15ish, and we had about an hour to unpack, wash-up, anything we wanted
to do before our orientation. The orientation was a gigantic blur. Most of us
had been awake for about 36 hours now, so we were pretty much brain dead. I had
a splitting headache (not sure if it was from lack of sleep or lack of
caffeine). Then at about 6pm we had to go shopping, to get things for our rooms
and apartment. We all had to frantically find our roommates, which we had only
seen for about half an hour and go shopping for the apartment. That was hard.
We were ridiculously tired, and most of had not eaten since the plane since
there was no food in the apartment when we got there. I pretty much just left
my shopping to the essentials, and it was still a lot of money. Jerusalem is
crazy expensive on some things, but not all things.
The expenses will still take some getting used too. When I
went to Greece I had less money, since the Euro is stronger than the dollar.
Here in Jerusalem, the dollar is stronger than the new shekel (roughly 3:1). It
requires some math to exactly figure out what I am actually spending on goods.
Naturally, when I am looking at getting a smoothie (since my headache was so
bad I didn’t dare stomach food) and it says that it is 20 (of course after it
says “NIS” to indicate that this is the New Shekel) but it is hard not to
associate that 20 with “dollars” in your head. Still though, that small
smoothie (12 oz) was still about 7 dollars, but we had no food in our
apartments, and most of hadn’t eaten in a long time. Most of us caved.
Upon getting back to the apartment at about 9:35ish I
proceeded to unpack everything I had purchased and then made my bed (fleece
bedding - all the softness) and passed out. Thankfully, staying up for about 36
hours helped me adjust to the time change quite easily (8 hours). I woke up about
11 hours later, so yeah, I needed some shuteye.
We start classes today for the Winter Ulpan, which is
essentially a J-term course. It is a month long intensive course, and for us
that course is Modern Hebrew. I had to drop off forms, pick up books, figure
out my phone and mail, and other stuff, so it may be another long day. So I am
off.
Peace and Plane Rides
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