Hello all,
Not only have I arrived in Israel safely and without major complication, but I have also managed to survive the Hebrew keyboard and login page to bring you news from my trip!
I left for the airport around 3:15pm yesterday (Jan 5) for my 6:30 flight to Newark, where I got on a direct flight to Tel Aviv. I nearly didn't make the latter, though, because the first flight was delayed nearly two hours. The flight to Tel Aviv was only ten hours, and I made it in time for supper (we're seven hours ahead of Eastern Standard, so hello from the future).
Immigration
It's a good thing I obsessively rehearsed my story about why I was in Israel, because I really got grilled. I think the woman at passport control hit a secret button while asking me why I had a Jewish name, because as I headed out towards baggage claim there were two Israeli security officers already walking towards me. They asked why I was in Israel, if I knew anyone, if I was part of a group, where I was going, where I was staying, about my school, my church, why I didn't just go to Italy, why I didn't read a book about Israel instead of traveling here... and on and on and on. I also got lectures about how I needed better planning to go to a country and how I should already know about the holy sites because I'm a Christian. (My cover story was that I was a seminary student coming to visit the holy sites.) "Don't worry, we're just chatting," he told me. Right. I know an interrogation. He kept asking me the same questions in different ways to see if my answers would stay the same. In the end, though, he let me go, and it was on to customs, which I was fearing even more.
Customs
I was nervous about customs because I was smuggling a very expensive camera and external hard drive in for CPT and didn't have the best explanation for why I was in possession of the equipment. I went through the line for people with items to declare, because by their posted signs I had a few things I had to tell them about. The customs officer seemed really disappointed, though, when I told him I had a phone, and he shooed me out into the airport as I murmured I also had a couple cameras. For all the trouble they gave me earlier, Israel ended up being the only country to let me in without the slightest interest in checking my bags.
Taxis
I met up with Shannon and Sharon, both of whom had been on my flight but neither of whom I actually met before landing, and we got a taxi to the Jerusalem hotel. We shared the taxi with a family of Americans who were trying to get to an apartment they'd never been to in a part of the city they didn't know. The driver got very frustrated with them, and they started yelling at him, and he started yelling back. He didn't speak much English and the Americans spoke almost no Hebrew, so the whole process seemed unconstructive. When he dropped us off (last), it was clear he liked us better. That, or he was really happy about the chance to light a cigarette.
And so on
We had a delicious dinner at the Jerusalem Hotel and then walked over to the Hotel Hashimi in the old city. The old city is incredible: tunnels and stone streets give it a feel very different from any city in the US, and even from anywhere I'd been in Mexico. It's different for there to be such an interior feel, outside.
There are 14 of us in all, including our leader, Sarah. We had a meeting a few minutes ago to go over some scheduling stuff and assign "roles" to the team members. I am the "blog coordinator," which seems right up my alley. Begging people to post on blogs is nothing new to me. I will include the URL of the CPT delegation blog in my next update. For now, though, speaking of blogs, remember that all of my updates will be, in addition to sent by e-mail, posted at cptnick.blogspot.com.
I will surely have far more interesting things to report when A) we have done more and B) I am less tired. As it is, I've had four hours of sleep in the last day, so I think it's time to go to bed.
Thanks for all your support,
Nick
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