Jerusalem!

Well, after 1 million hours of traveling and copious amounts of coffee and black tea (not the best combo in the world) I have arrived in Jerusalem. Flying over the Atlantic was no easy task, considering that the woman in front of me thought I needed no leg room and the older man sitting next to me snored. Plus there was another woman in front of me shouting across the plane something in French (I knew most of the words and for that Mrs. Claudio would be proud) to a woman in the back. I’m almost positive that’s why the stewards and stewardesses stopped serving alcohol and began serving coffee and tea. I can’t be 100% sure but it’s a plausible theory. It was really cool thought, getting to see (on the map) all the places we flew over. We didn’t quite make it as far north as Glasgow, but we did fly over London. (I waved to you Tom Hiddleston but I don’t think you saw me.) Ok, ok. So while I didn’t REALLY wave at my celebrity crush, it was cool knowing that London was below us. Then we landed in Frankfurt. There is really nothing to report about Frankfurt. We landed and then booked it to our gate and we were STILL 50 minutes early. So it was a lot of Facebook updates and wi fi connectivity. Our flight to Brussels was only 40 minutes long but I got to talk to a man from Norway who travels more than I sneeze! He’s been to Croatia three times THIS! YEAR! I mean you couldn’t even read “Passport” on his passport! That’s how I would like to travel one day. Then we disembarked upon Belgium soil into the Brussels Airport. Seriously we really did. We met up with our classmate Travis and wandered the airport for a little bit. But the good stuff happened when we walked into a Starbucks. Ohhhhh was this funny. So the lovely man—such a sweet man—was French (seriously Mrs. Claudio would be proud). My first impulse was to say “Bonjour” but then I thought I would just butcher the whole thing. So maybe Mrs. Claudio wouldn’t be so proud after all. I ordered an ice water (which apparently ice and water in the same cup is weird to that man) and Becca ordered a green tea latte which they’d never even heard of. Anyways, we then boarded our last plane to Tel Aviv. There are only a few things to report there. I got to witness a lightning storm from above (which looks like cotton candy with a glow stick as the stick that holds it) and the flight steward was REALLY cute…that is until I remembered who he looked like. At that point every time I looked at him it was like “YIKES! LOOK AWAY LOOK AWAY!” We then landed and found our Sherut. That part was easy. The hard part came when the man decided he didn’t want to deal with driving all the way to the hotel so he dropped us off a mile away and had us walk the rest of the way. Let me clarify that we each had three bags. My carry on backpack was about the size and weight of a seven year old, my check luggage was 50.5 pounds, and then I had stuffed a whole bunch of stuff into my camera bad which definitely increased its weight. Then as soon as we got to the hotel we crashed. I mean crashed hard. In fact I crashed so hard that I was embarrassed this morning when I was the last person awake. Yeah. It was really embarrassing and I don’t feel good today. But alas, I shall be fine! I’ll keep blogging as we do more so keep watching for updates!