It's only been 48 hours?

It's still hard to realize I've only been in Israel for about two days. The first flight I took from Newark to London was fine, but when I arrived in London everything began to fall apart. We were delayed a bit in landing because the whole ground was covered in fog. It was gorgeous to look at from the sky but it made what followed extremely aggravating. I followed the signs in Heathrow to transfers for Virgin Atlantic (what I had flown to London) and when I got there and tried to get my boarding pass, I was told that Virgin doesn't fly to Tel Aviv and that I was actually taking a bmi plane (British Midland International) which was one of their associate airlines, so I had to take a bus all the way from terminal three to one. The first trip wasn't so bad but when I got to the bmi desk, they told me that Virgin had canceled my reservation and I wasn't even in the system. They informed me there was nothing they could do about it because I had been booked through Virgin so I needed to go back to Virgin and have them fix it. By this time I was getting pretty frustrated not to mention I was exhausted from jetlag and just wanted to be on my plane. It's pretty annoying going through security each time and having to take my shoes off, unload everything, wait in line, and put everything back on. When I approached the woman at Virgin again and told her what bmi had told me, she looked in the system, made a few phone calls, and it turned out I was still reserved to fly and she told me to hurry as fast as I could to get back to the other terminal. Trip number four was the worst. By the time I got back to the bmi counter I just wanted to be done with the running around. I relayed the information and the woman still told me my reservation was canceled but I pushed further and told her that someone from the Virgin desk had just called. After about 10 minutes of her speaking to someone in the back, she returned with a boarding pass, proceeded to give me a 5 pound food voucher, and told me the plane was delayed until 3 from 11:55. I ended up picking a spot on the benches in the main area with the gate board and fell asleep for about an hour and a half. By the time I had woken up, my gate was posted so I picked up my food and headed to the gate. Long story short, the plane was extremely delayed and we ended up not taking off until about 4:30 London time, which got me in around 11 pm Israel time. The pilot told us the reason for the delay was both the fog and the fact that the plane had been delayed in Tel Aviv before and they needed to do 2 1/2 hours of ground work before they could let us fly. Rumors were flying around that the original pilot hadn't wanted to fly the plane so we were wasting time waiting for a new one. It all seemed a bit fishy to me but it was nice to be on the plane and finally on my way. I ended up sitting near someone who was going on the program as well, from Muhlenberg (Joe if you're reading this his name is Ira and apparently he once called you for help on a paper) and a student from London who missed going to his cousin's wedding because of the delay. The flight was uneventful except for the fact that my tv screen didn't work so I ended up finishing the Nicholas Sparks novel I picked out to read on the plane. I snoozed for a bit but woke up as we were ascending into Tel Aviv. Flying into any city at night is beautiful and it was particularly breathtaking because we had just been flying over water so the view from my window went from complete darkness to the twinkling lights of Tel Aviv. (fuzzy but still cool) The next thing to go wrong, which I should have seen coming, was that only one of my bags had made it to Tel Aviv and it wasn't the one with all of my clothes. I filed a report with the lost baggage claim and took a Shirut to the student village (kfar studentim) where I met up with a friend of a friend of mine who had been here last semester. By that time I was completely out of it, angry about my luggage, and just wanted to go to sleep. That was two days ago. Yesterday I got up pretty early to walk with her to the campus so I could find my own way later on and registered, came back to the kfar studentim to get my room. Yesterday was great. I met a ton of people who have connections to people I know and most of them have been from New Jersey (go figure that's who I end up hanging out with). Last night we went to downtown Jerusalem to a bar and a dance club with Shoshi (the girl who I stayed with who has been here for a semester already) leading the way. It was nice because the bar wasn't full of Americans. I found it interesting that they served chickpeas instead of salty peanuts but other than that it was great. We stayed out pretty late and I was woken up this morning by a phone call from the airport saying that my bag had come on the next flight from London to Tel Aviv and the driver would drop it off. It came about about 11:15, perfect timing before Shabbat, because everything stops running at around 2-3. A group of us went to the Shuk today (Mahaneh Yehudah) to buy groceries because it's the cheapest place in the area. It's such a fascinating alley to wander down. You have store owners yelling at you from all directions trying to get you to buy what they have. Everything is cheaper on Fridays right before Shabbat because they want to get rid of what they have before things close down. There was everything from towels, pots and pans, dried fruits of all sorts, nuts, cheese, hummus, pita, fruits and vegetables, chocolates, candies, you name it they had it. On the way back to the bus stop we stopped by the famous Marzapan place that has the best chocolate ruggelah in town. Since we got back I've just unpacked and been lounging around becuase it's pretty chilly and dreary out. Tonight we're going to the Regency hotel for Shabbat dinner which I'm looking forward too. Over the course of the past two days, I've also found a bunch of other people interested in playing Ultimate while they're here which makes me happy to know I'm not the only one. We'll see how that ends up turning out. For now that's all. Shabbat Shalom.

P.S. Kristen, I'm still alive :-)