We're here!

WARNING: THIS POST HAS THE POTENTIAL TO BE VERY LONG. DO NOT CONTINUE READING UNLESS YOU ARE PREPARED TO DEDICATE THE TIME NECESSARY TO FULLY DIGEST THIS ENTRY.

Holy shit. That's all I can come up with to describe the past 24 hours. I'll attempt an explanation:

Yesterday, Gillian and I woke up at 5am in order to make an 8:30am flight from London Heathrow. Several hours later we landed at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, Israel. After a pleasant flight and lots of laughs from watching Wedding Crashers we got off the airplane and shlepped down to passport control whereupon Gillian realized she had forgotten her cell phone on the plane prompting me to run (yes, i ran) back to the gate and find a security person to help me find the phone. In the end, the phone beat us through customs and was waiting at the Lost & Found station in the baggage claim. So, I did a lot of running for nothing.

Next, we met up with our very talkative (in impressively fluent english) taxi driver. He shuttled us to the college all the while talking politics, economics, and god knows what else. I think all we really wanted to do was sleep, but it was a nice ride anyway. So there we are, exhausted, confused, out of our element, not knowing what to expect, and we're shown into the dormitory that will house us for the next 6 months. Wow. For the first time in our lives, Gillian and I are the proud occupants of a two bedroom apartment. Sure, it doesn't have a full kitchen, but it's ten times what we expected. Honestly, we didn't know what to expect but what we got is far beyond what we would have expected if we had been expecting anything. Luckily, a nice gentleman named Mark, a student here at the college, gave us a brief tour of the campus after translating how each appliance worked for the dormitory supervisor. He was very helpful and even offered to hang out with us. And no, it was not out of pity for the silly americans.

Considering that airplane food was the only sustenance obtained all day it quickly became clear that finding something to eat was of the highest importance. After talking (from here on out it will be known that the word "talking" stands for "awkwardly attempting to communicate with people who either speak only Hebrew or broken English) to a few people we ventured off campus and went scavenging for food. after a number of wrong turns and conversations (same definition as above) with locals we stumbled upon something magical in the distance. For a short time we had trouble making the figure out, but it seemed to be glowing. Upon further inspection, the sign seemed to call to us, as if it were saying, "Everything is going to be alright. You aren't going to starve in this strange land." And then, it all became clear as the golden arches came into focus. I have to say that I find it oddly comforting that no matter where you go in the world McDonalds french fries taste exactly the same. Am I slightly ashamed that I travelled half-way around the world to consume my first meal in the holy land at an awful American fast-food export? No, we were fucking hungry.

Airplane food and McDonalds can really screw up your internal organs, so we'll skip through the rest of the night and move right on to the events of this morning.

If I thought my stomach was turning, you should have seen my head spin today. First thing we had a breakfast appointment with our contact and shepherd here on campus, a lovely woman named Maxine. Born in Philly and an Israeli resident for over 30 years, Maxine couldn't understand our situation any better. Anyhow, back to breakfast. We met her in the dining cafe, a low key place where students hangout throughout the day and are greeted with a full scale israeli meal. Dining at the only table with a table cloth, we consumed delicious pastries, eggs, tomatoes, cucumbers, orange juice, tea, etc. It was wonderful.

After breakfast Maxine took us on a full tour of the campus and introduced us to everyone, including the president of the college. We were paraded around like prize turkeys, shuffled from office to office for inspection. It was overwhelming. I can honestly say that I've met a very large number of people in a very short period of time and each one of them and been kinder and more anxious to be of assistance than the last. If this continues I'll be in serious need of a New Yorker's attitude in order to keep me sane and balanced. It's just not normal for so many people to be so helpful.

Talk about going above and beyond, Maxine finished her welcome wagon schedule with a tour of downtown Karmiel and a trip to the supermarket so that Gillian and I could obtain some food stuffs and other necessary items to make our apartment a home. Later in the day, Lillit, the human resources officer for the college, an extremely nice woman we met on our whirlwind tour of the college and a recent grandmother to a beautiful new granddaughter named Mica, was extremely kind and shuttled down to the Orange store for some more essential shopping. Orange store you say? What on earth does a community need with an entire store dedicated to a delicious acidic fruit? Don't be ridiculous. It's only a cell phone store. Have a little more faith in the country, jeez. So anyhow, after many hours trying to understand our options and rates and phones and blah, blah, blah, we have local cell phones. If you would like the numbers email me and I'd be happy to oblige. After receiving a few random comments from anonymous spammers I'd prefer not to post them on the blog.

So that was the majority of the day. This evening has been just as fascinating however. I discovered (not really, I just hooked it up. I've known about it for a while.) Skype. I've become an addict and yet, I don't really have anyone to use it with yet besides my mother. If you are technologically unknowledgeable, Skype is a fantastic program for most modern operation systems that allows people to talk for free over the internet anywhere in the world. All you need is the program, a microphone and a set of headphones and you're good to go. Sure, that's amazing but that's not all! Skype not only slices and dices and slashes the prices, with just a small investment of $22.00 dollars, I purchased a local CT number that allows people at home to make a free phone call on a regular phone that makes my computer in Israel ring and enables us to talk for absolutely free any time, day or night. Also, I can make Skype calls to regular phones at home for the next to nothing price of just 2 cents a minute. That's cheaper than dirt cheap. How could you go wrong? Get in on it today and visit www.skype.com, or just email me for the local CT number so that we can speak anytime for however long we'd like.

So that's the scoop. Don't think I've left anything important out, but you never know. I may wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, just itching to tell the world some important detail I've carelessly omitted. Or maybe it can wait til tomorrow. Goodnight.