I'm Finally Here!

So, after what feels like millions of hours of travel, I am finally living in Jerusalem. I left Salt Lake City at like 2 PM on Tuesday April 29th and arrived in Tel Aviv at like 6 PM on Wednesday May 1st. This does include a 9-hour time difference. So if you want to figure out my actual travel time, you can do the math. I'm too lazy to. I’m a history major now. Math isn’t a required skill for me anymore. Also this blog will probably be kind of boring for like everyone except my parents. However, if you truly care about me, you are expected to read every single post. Don't be surprised if there are blog pop quizzes when I get back to prove you read it. 

The Plane Ride

So the good thing about the plane ride was that our entire group travelled together. At some points it was super chaotic, particularly going through international security stuff from New York to Tel Aviv. I probably would have cried if I had been alone. No, I definitely would have. 

I think I attempted to sleep in literally every position possible on the plane. This didn't quite work out, so I instead turned to the wonderful variety of movies Delta provides. Sidenote: I tried to watch The Impossible, the tsunami movie with Ewan McGregor or however you spell his name. Big mistake. That movie was so bloody. I couldn't handle it. Like the mom's leg was literally falling off. I'm sure it had a happy ending, but I only watched like 20 minutes of it, I then turned to The Odd Life of Timothy Green, which was really weird, maybe cute? I still can't decide.

The most interesting thing about the plan ride was at sunrise, the Orthodox Jewish men stood up and started praying or reciting scripture. I couldn’t quite tell. I'm also not sure why they were doing this, but I'll look it up and get back to you. #humanencyclopedia

The JC

The Jerusalem Center, or JC, as it is more fondly called is my home for the next few months. We haven't really gotten to do much exploring. We've been super busy with orientation stuff and classes. We did go on a walk around the Old City and West Jerusalem, however, we weren't allowed to take pictures because they wanted people to actually walk. It was such a cool experience. It’s definitely different from walking down the streets of Provo or Phoenix. It was kind of sad cameras were forbidden, but there will be plenty of time for pictures and boring historical explanations from me. Just you wait.

This is the view from my room's balcony so it's super cool.

The balcony is covered in roses, it's super pretty. However, there are supposedly snakes too.

The Old City, the Dome of the Rock! From my window!

Anyway, I’m sure once we’re done being oriented, I’ll actually have fun things to start posting about. You know what they say, it’s all fun and games unless you’re going to 100 orientation meetings a day. Also you can send me emails because I like talking to people. And I miss America. And Americans, particularly those Americans who I am already friends with. The grammar there is probably wrong, because the sentence ended with with. However, I am in the Holy Land. English is not the native language here. I believe that is a valid excuse.

My greatest challenge here will be not being allowed to pet dogs. They don’t want us to because you never know if they have fleas or rabies or other dog diseases. If I come back with fleas, it’s because I succumbed.