Travelblog 10/20/07

I flew out of Odessa, TX @ 1 pm on Tuesday the 16 of October. With brief stops in Houston and Newark I was on my way to the Holy Land at 11 pm that evening. 10 long hours later I landed at the Ben Gurion International airport in Tel Aviv and the adventures began!

Shira (a fellow classmate) and I somehow got connected with Soneta, an airport personnel, and she helped us get our luggage. That was somewhat of an ordeal as one of Shira’s didn’t show up. After she reported it we had to wait for 30 minutes to see if any other students showed up. Drew did and not much later we were off to get a taxi. Loaded, we headed east. Shira is from California and is 18 (about to be 19 in a week and a half) and Drew is also 18 and is from Oregon.

It was dark by the time we got on the road so you couldn’t see too much of the scenery. However, as we approached Tzuba the road became more winding and mountainous. When we got on the Kibbutz it began raining and we had no clue as to where to go. Drew ran to where we saw some people to ask and they directed him to the dining room as there were more people there who spoke English. We unloaded and made a dash for it. In the dining room we met a young woman, Lena, originally from the Ukraine who spoke English and informed us that the kibbutz director wasn’t there! She had his number and we were able to call and discovered that he wasn’t prepared for us yet and so we could not stay! Well I wasn’t expecting that as we had been told that those who had already scheduled flights for the original start date of the 18th could arrive as early as the 14th and have a place to stay until the class started on the 25th. Does that sound confusing? Apparently it was to all those involved in making our arrangements! But G-d provided the manager of the kibbutz hotel to be present during our surprising news and made some phone calls to the head honcho of the kibbutz movement, Sylvio, and arranged for one night’s stay at Hotel Tzuba. Afterwards we’d travel to Ramat Efal (near Tel Aviv) to stay at the headquarters of the Kibbutz Movement; hotel and travel expenses would be on the Kibbutz Movement’s shekel. During the hotel manager’s discussion with Sylvio another student walked into the dining hall to join our confused trio, Louis from Maryland. He had to find his own transportation to the kibbutz as no one was there to meet him at the airport – but he’s fairly familiar with Israel so it wasn’t too hard for him. So that’s how our happy quartet was formed.

Friday morning we went to Ramat Aviv to visit Shira’s grandparents and tour the town some. Her grandparents were very sweet even if we didn’t understand everything. Like any good grandmother she made sure we ate. The flowers are as beautiful as everyone’s been telling me. I’ve seen bushes of hibiscus and hydrangea and bougainvillea. Israelis seem to love flora too as their houses are surrounded in bushes or pots out on the balconies and in flowerbeds. It being Friday, we had to make sure and catch a bus before 3 pm when they stop running for Shabbat. Shira stayed with her family so Drew, Louis and I headed back; and I might add that we managed the buses just fine! However, we forgot to take into account that we needed to get food before the Super (grocery store) closed. [Say ‘Super’ with a Spanish-like accent and you get the idea]. Since we missed that we had pizza at a pizzeria before it closed and headed back to our lodgings. Thankfully, we had at least bought a little the night before so breakfast Shabbat morning we had (again) wheat bread with chocolate spread. If you’ve ever had Nutella, it’s similar but without the hazelnut.

My first Shabbat in Israel wasn’t quite what I was hoping as we weren’t anywhere near a synagogue and don’t know anyone or anywhere here. But nonetheless it was good.

We had a makeshift Hebrew class – I happened to bring some Hebrew stencils so I was able to use those to help introduce Drew to the Hebrew alef-bet. He was a good student as he has background in language plus the fact that we had nothing else to do to pass time! Louis helped out with the pronunciation of a few letters as he went to Hebrew school when he was younger and is more familiar with that than I am. We named the cats that frequent our dorms - Ari, Sara and David (can you tell we’ve been isolated a little too long?!).

I believe Monday we will be able to go back to Kibbutz Tzuba which will be nice as then we can tour Jerusalem hopefully before classes start on Thursday.