back again in the motherland

hey everybody,

so i can't believe it's been five days already, although that's probably because i've slept through 80% of it. i wouldn't say i'm enjoying israel, because i haven't experienced anything yet that really says to me that i'm in israel. but i am really really happy to be with limor, and that was more of the point of this trip.

my flight was moderately uneventful. it's been so long since i've used a paper ticket, i didn't know where to check in, so i shuffled back and forth between lines until i realized i was just supposed to go to any counter. after an quick pass through security, i double-checked that my flight was on time (which it was). after i walked to my gate, i checked again if my flight was on time (which it wasn't). so i sat around for an extra hour. fortunately i wasn't too late to new york to catch my next flight to israel.
in new york, i was continually assailed by waves of nostalgia. every couple of minutes i would look somewhere and realize that almost two years ago i was standing in the same spot, waiting for my first trip to israel. it was fun getting quizzed again by what i call the "el al girls", those female flight attendants who generally ask stupid questions relating to judaism in some bizarre security ritual. by the time i got through all of that and found the terminal, it was about time to board.
boarding for el al is quite different than boarding for the average american airline. instead of a logical progression of passengers ("we will now begin boarding group 3, group 3 only please") there is just this mass stampede towards the plane. passengers don't and aren't even encouraged to form lines - they form funnels. combine this with the fact that a lot of israelis have no concept of "personal space" and you get quite a mess. so after filing through the first door, we all wait in a packed group (of about 300 passengers) on a ramp leading to the loading gate. As we stand around for about fifteen minutes, i can't help but laugh at how frustrated everyone looks - after all that rushing and pushing to be the first, they wait anyway. i thought it was even funnier when eight minutes into the wait i see the flight crew slowly making their way through the crowd. you'd think el al would streamline the process, but i'm sure they get some kind of perverse pleasure from being rude.
my seat was great - window seat far enough behind the wing that i had a clear view, although it was on the less-exciting ocean side. something else i really appreciated was the fact that i had a centered window. sometimes i get unlucky and my window is either too far forward, in which case i need to lean out of my seat to see, or right at my shoulder, in which case i twist my head off every time i want to look out. this time, i felt like goldilocks with her last bowl of porridge.
the flight itself was kinda boring - i didn't feel like watching "cinderella man", so the next best movie was "dukes of hazzard". i watched it for jessica simpson, and then fell asleep feeling like i would have done my brain a better service by slamming it through the reinforced airline window. i did wake up periodically to look out said window, and i was lucky enough to see the french/italian alps during daylight and no cloud cover. wow. *sidenote: the last couple times were at night or i slept through it*

you can probably tell by how much time i just spent describing my twelve hours in transit that i didn't do much the next couple of days. i just wish i had remembered to charge my camera batteries before leaving, so they wouldn't have died right when i arrived in the first airport. ah well, there's always the return trip...

limor met me at the airport - which was an unexpected and wonderful surprise - with her dad, mom, and youngest brother. after an hour drive from tel aviv to beersheva, we had nice dinner of hummus and labneh and other stuff. but lots of labneh. yum.

after that sleep was the order of the day. and week. i just couldn't help myself - any time we didn't specifically have sometime to do, i took a nap. it was great. also, it was kinda chilly, and it's just too warm under the covers to leave.

so other than sleep, limor and i did a couple other things:
- made alfredo pasta and ate it in her friend hadas' apartment, along with seventeen other people and their assorted dishes. *sidenote: hadas makes a really freakin' good dessert*
- played pool (extremly poorly) with hadas and re'ut, two of limor's friends from school.
- went to school. ben-gurion university has a really nice campus - very attractive landscapes and building designs. we went to her first class, sat outside in the unseasonably warm sixty-degree weather for about half an hour, then spent the next four hours in a student lounge so limor could work on some papers with her friends.

right now, limor is in dimona for her internship. she spends two days of the week in on-site visits for a couple hours, so i elected to sleep in. i love not having anything immediate to do...

hopefully, once limor and i hit something approaching a regular schedule, i'll be awake late / early enough so that i'll be able to talk to you guys online. this whole seven-hours ahead time difference sucks. for example, it's 1:00pm now - early afternoon - but everybody back in the states is probably asleep at 6:00 am.

peace out for now.