Tuesday, February 21, 2006
The Journey Begins
I am at the airport, the infamous Boston Logan international Airport. I check in with my people at AA. They tell me that I am flying America West to JFK. Fine, as long as it's a jet and I get there. I follow the signs to my gate. I discover the America West loosely translates "cheapest domestic shuttle ever." The gate area is four gates in some godforsaken corner of Logan. There is a sign in front of the security check point that says: "No Bathrooms beyond checkpoint!" Cleary this is a joke or an error. Unfortunately, it is neither, and there is also only one dingy gross restuarant (no au bon pan, which I had really been looking forward to).
The plane to Israel, in classic El Al fashion, loads early, rearranges all the seat appropriately, get everyone settled and the proceeds to sit on the runway for half an hour (yeah it could be much worse, I know) while we wait for the 28 planes ahead of us to take off. Once we do take off, I peruse the magazine and cycle through the channels to discover that we are watching mostly crappy movies and that there is no music to listen to either. To make up for this, I am served meatballs with penne which is surpisingly tasty. Better though are the fresh rolls, tomatoes and cucumbers that I ate with gusto, topped with large amounts of sabra hummus. The dessert is some chocolatey thing with chocolate chips, also delicious. About 2 hours after I begin to get antsy, we land at Namal Sde te'ufat Ben Gurion and the Hasidim clap. I hightail it off the airplane to avoid the lines at immigration, only to find that there are none, so I wait roughly thirty second before the lady tosses my american passport aside, glances at my Israeli passport, glances up at me, then gives the old double stamp and I am done. She does not even glance at my ptor, which is inside my Israeli passport, just waiting to be examined. The shayrut takes me through mevaseret so I get to look at kenyon harel and long for the kosher mcdonalds (mmmm) within. I meet up with everyone and we have a party with Avi's hebrew homework. We go out to Ima's (morrocan) for dinner which is fair, although it turns out I don't like majadra. In the evening we have social time, so I fall asleep repeatedly while Abra and Yael try to wake me up. Eventually, they all go out and I go to bed. I wake up this morning at 630, so I am going to be a disaster at dinner, I will probably fall asleep in my sumoburger. For my next amazing trick, I will eat breakfast at the Inbal. Updates as events warrant them.
The plane to Israel, in classic El Al fashion, loads early, rearranges all the seat appropriately, get everyone settled and the proceeds to sit on the runway for half an hour (yeah it could be much worse, I know) while we wait for the 28 planes ahead of us to take off. Once we do take off, I peruse the magazine and cycle through the channels to discover that we are watching mostly crappy movies and that there is no music to listen to either. To make up for this, I am served meatballs with penne which is surpisingly tasty. Better though are the fresh rolls, tomatoes and cucumbers that I ate with gusto, topped with large amounts of sabra hummus. The dessert is some chocolatey thing with chocolate chips, also delicious. About 2 hours after I begin to get antsy, we land at Namal Sde te'ufat Ben Gurion and the Hasidim clap. I hightail it off the airplane to avoid the lines at immigration, only to find that there are none, so I wait roughly thirty second before the lady tosses my american passport aside, glances at my Israeli passport, glances up at me, then gives the old double stamp and I am done. She does not even glance at my ptor, which is inside my Israeli passport, just waiting to be examined. The shayrut takes me through mevaseret so I get to look at kenyon harel and long for the kosher mcdonalds (mmmm) within. I meet up with everyone and we have a party with Avi's hebrew homework. We go out to Ima's (morrocan) for dinner which is fair, although it turns out I don't like majadra. In the evening we have social time, so I fall asleep repeatedly while Abra and Yael try to wake me up. Eventually, they all go out and I go to bed. I wake up this morning at 630, so I am going to be a disaster at dinner, I will probably fall asleep in my sumoburger. For my next amazing trick, I will eat breakfast at the Inbal. Updates as events warrant them.
# posted by Daniel @ 1:42 AM 
