Day 1

Welcome to Israel!  First off, I would like to say Mom-I’m safe.

We started our journey yesterday (March 27^th) at Newark Airport.  The group that we are traveling with, Jewish Federation of Lehigh Valley (JFLV) packed many boxes of goods and supplies for various charities in Israel.  The contents contained anything from clothing to medical supplies to portable combination walker/toilets.  I’m not kidding.  The Hammel  family (which for this trip consists of Simon and me, his parents and two of his brothers, Aaron and Nathan) had the most allowed bags on the flight over so we were in charge of most of the boxes.  Poor Aaron was in charge of the walker/toilets.  Because we had such odd luggage and because Israel’s airport security is something that the US could never even dream of being, check in was, to say the least, challenging.  They had an Israeli Profiler speak to us about why we were going to Israel, if we speak Hebrew etc.  He was really hot, but scary. 

We finally get on the plane, and the flight was lovely!  I slept for about 4 hours, watched “The King’s Speech” and have a tasty dinner and breakfast.  Fun Fact: Israelis eat salad with EVERY meal.  I have had 4 meals so far, all had salad.  Breakfast-salad.  And on that note, everyone here is beautiful!  Simon refers to it as “LA, but real”.  So, America, eat more salad.

When we landed in Tel Aviv, Israel, we were bussed immediately to a field to start the day off (at 6am) doing physical labor for charity.  I think I’ve told a lot of you that this was going to happen.  The thing is this—An organization called “Table to Table” collects food that is left over from restaurants, grocery stores, fields, etc. and gives them to soup kitchens.  It’s a great program and we really were happy to help.  And it wasn’t that bad.  We worked in the field for about an hour.  There was talk about what we would be picking and the winner is…. (get ready, dad)…..BEETS!  We all left looking like we killed a man with our hands covered in beet juice.  My poor jeans and Second City hoody-you now could be evidence in my murder trial. 

After our beet adventure, we went to a Kibbutz (think non-cult communal living) for brunch and some  kick-a (literally) history.  This particular Kibbutz (there are many around) was a cover operation for a bullet making factory.  When Israel was fighting to become a nation, they recruited really dedicated 19-20 year olds to go undercover and build, manufacture and ship all the ammo for the army.  They did this by building a factory underneath the laundry room and bakery of the Kibbutz and smuggled the workers in and out every day for 3 years.  This was so undercover that the workers even kept it from their families.  What struck me most was how young the workers were.  Imagine yourself as a sophomore in college and all of a sudden a couple of your friends disappeared every day for 7 hours because (as it turns out) they were building bullets.  Weird.

We (finally) got to our (swankity swank swank) hotel and had about 4 hours of down time before dinner.  We then went down the street to a French restaurant and listened to an Israeli reporter talk about uprisings in neighboring countries and how Israel plans to handle similar uprisings in it’s own country.  No offense to him, but I kind of zoned out.  I’m sure it was a great speech, but I was tired. 

After dinner I was surprised by a cake coming out and the group singing Happy Birthday to me.  The cake had a sparkler in it, but it went out by the time it came to me.  Oh well, no wishes this year  ;-)

Now we are happily in our room and Simon is about to taste some Israeli candy and apple nectar.  When in Israel….

Goodbye until tomorrow!

Elaine