The Flights and Day One (two?)

We have arrived in Israel. I suppose the first section should deal with the earliest part of the trip (that is, the flights and the first few hours in Israel).

The flight to Atlanta was fine until about Tennessee when the stormy skies caused turbulence. The entire descent was two-steps-down-and-one-step-up, though in the end we landed firmly. The storms were a fluke, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing, because there was less rain than comes out of one of those garden-hose mister settings. But the lighting displays were impressive. Jonathan and I found the group fairly quickly and we went to the Atlanta convention center a mile away from the airport to meet with the group (a ten-hour layover means that we can hike out for meeting, food, drink, general merriment). Naturally they wanted us back at Hartsfield three hours before our Israel flight, so a quick game of four-player scrabble used the time quite well.

An interesting social situation occurs when strangers are thrown together (granted, we're not entirely "strangers" because we'd read bios of the other 29 kids on the trip beforehand). There were no cliques (not even sub-cliques) and no inhibitions, either. Talk for a few minutes, find someone else, then go back to the first and ask the same questions because you'd forgotten in the meantime. It wasn't quite like the setting on the plane, beacuse our seats weren't all in the same few rows. I guess it's like the distinction they always drew between AP and IB: broad and shallow or narrow and deep. But I'll leave the psych to the experts.

I'd love to talk about flying to Israel. I'll say that it only really hit me that I was going to Israel when we took off from Atlanta on Sunday night. But by the time we hit Virginia (and until 500 miles past Halifax) I was asleep. And from well-before-England to Marseille, too. How do I know? Because Delta has this little screen in front of each seat on which the most interesting function is the map. It shows the orientation of the plane, where it's come from, its speed, the wind, temperature...everything you really didn't need to knowa bout your flight. But it was very entertaining (more so, probably, because of the hour of day and because I had the window seat with the best view: right over the wing) to watch the names of local cities show up and then disappear as we crossed borders. As I said, though, I turned it off after the North Carolina area. Sleeping was easy: headphones under sunglasses under black bandana under hat under blanket under airsteam.

I was awake entering Italy, though, and that's when the flight started getting exciting. (Skip a few, 99, 100). A blind man would have known when Tel-Aviv came into view because the noise level on the plame suddenly increased. A slight anti-climax as we flew over the city and then past and around the airport; all airports are the same, anyway. Only in this one, everything was in Hebrew! Baggage, cell phones, customs, cash conversions, phonecalls home, meeting the Israeli staff (probably more about them later): the usual touristy stuff.

There really isn't anything going on along the road we took from Ben-Gurion out to הר הצופים. At Scopus we had the view overlooking Jerusalem from the north. Also said Shehecheyanu (can I please do these in Hebrew: שהחינו) over a cup of grape juice there as a point of officially welcoming us into Israel. Back at Givat Ram (our campus) we unpacked and went to bed.

So that gets me caught up to the first few hours here. I have to head out now; a not-too-distant posting may include pictures and will be about the Jewish Quartet and Kotel, the Hezekiah tunnel (decided not to bring the camera...shades of Gamla, though, because the water only got thigh-deep once and it was really really amazing to walk in), the science part. More later.

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