Israel Jan 17-18

The time-zone change really screwed me up so I’m blending the 17^th and 18^th together because I don’t know the difference. That’s what 36 hours without sleep does to me. Woke up at 6 am to catch the 7:55 plane to JFK. When I got to JFK at 9:30 I had to waste time until 2:00 in JFK. A dream come true. I walked as slowly as possible through terminal 8 three times looking at shops and people to waste time. Then took the air tran to terminal 4 where I was to meet the group. Unfortunately that wasn’t for another 3 ½ hours. Luckily there is a small little shopping mall outside security in terminal 4 to waste time in. Many testings of Brookstone massagers, some Chinese food, an article about an illegal animal smuggler kingpin (very interesting actually), and 1,656 games of pyramid solitaire later it was time to meet up with the group next to Swiss Airlines. I found 5 Jewish looking 22-26 years olds in front of the Swiss Air counter. Dan, Ryan, Lindsay and Farrah and Jordan were the 5. They were very nice people and we continued to pick out lost looking Jews to join the group. After everybody gathered we got our tickets and made it through security with ease. I hung out with Courtney and Laura most of the time until we took off. On the plane to Zurich, Freddie asked to switch seats with me (so he could sit next to Lindsay, DO WORK!) and I agreed. Little did I know it would send me in a whirlwind of bromance that would not end. I ended up sitting next to Kyle, a Target pharmacist from NJ, whose first impression led me to believe he was an asshole, but whose heart of gold corrected my false accusations. He was a really nice guy, a Seinfeld fan, played basketball and soccer and randomly brought up Detlef Schrempf on the airplane (huge plus in my book). We played cards, watched District 9 and ate a kosher meal that was to die for (or die from, not sure). The hot part of the meal said “meat” on it, with no specification of what kind. The meat was a gefilte fish looking ball/patty that was completely unrecognizable to the human eye, or taste buds. It also seemed on the plane that every time (twice) I was just about to fall asleep, the lights were turned on. I must be living right. So no sleep on that 8 hour flight and no sleep on the 4 hour flight from Zurich to Tel Aviv. On that one I did sit next to a State alumni thought, Stuart. When we got to Tel Aviv we got through immigration quickly and right when we got to baggage claim our baggage was there. How about that RDU. We got on the bus and they gave us a nice hard-cover Israel “travel” book and cash. Yes, cash!! A free trip to Israel where they give us 105 shekels for spending money? Life sucks. So we rode to our Kibbutz (Afik) in the Golan Heights, ate a decent dinner and I then conked out immediately after about 35 hours straight with no sleep. My roommates were Stuart and Josh, and Josh had some of the nicest clothes I’ve ever seen, especially his shorts. Also, when we took showers we had to squeegee the floor afterwards because the shower was even with the rest of the floor and the curtain was about a foot off the floor. Brilliant.