Oh happiest of days! After all sorts of chaos, I'm finally here in my new home. Here's some catch-up on the last day and a half of travels -
I received a call Tuesday morning around 8:30am (only three and a half hours before I had to be at the airport) letting me know that, after analyzing the blood test I had done on Friday, it turns out that I do not now, nor did I ever have what they thought I had. Perhaps I just needed that experience to prove to myself just how determined I was to do this? Who knows, but I'm not one to look a gift-horse in the mouth, cuz that's how you get Oregon Trail diseases. (Isn't that how the saying goes?)
From DFW, I flew into Philadelphia, and from there I went straight to Tel Aviv. After making my way through passport control, I was to meet up with two of my coworkers. After a short period of wandering and wondering if I would ever find them, I spotted one guy who looked suspiciously like one of the two who I'd seen on Facebook. It was them, and after our cumulative idiotic attempt at using the Israeli payphone to call one of our fellow teachers/admins, we gave up and decided to just ask the taxi driver we ended up using to use his phone. We did, and he kindly allowed us, despite my painful butchering of Hebrew.
He drove us to the spot where we were to meet our next contact, who would take us to our final destination. I'm going to make my first attempt at including video so you can see what I recorded during the trip from the airport.
We were all pretty relieved to finally be done with the traveling portion. While we were in route (yesterday) there was a shooting of four Israeli settlers, which the armed wing of Hamas has claimed credit for. There were concerns that this might make our passage through all of the check points more complicated, but this was not the case. Political/historical/backgroundical sidenote - Hamas is in power in Gaza, and this group has a strong rivalry with Fatah, the group in power in the West Bank. It is significant that Hamas would take action in the West Bank (where it is banned, and where Mahmoud Abbas controls as president), and this coming at the time as recent discussions of resuming peace talks does not seem the least bit coincidental (Abbas is the one involved in the prospective peace talks).
We reached the house easily, and it is fantastic. There will be one more house in order to accomodate everyone, so it's not certain who will end up where, but this one is fantastic. Photos to come.
I went for a short jog and then came back after having realized that I was possibly lost and finding my way back with the help of some little boys, worked out in my room, showered up, and then walked to a store down the street to get some food to make breakfast in the morning.
So there it is. No one can complain that I didn't check in, cuz this shiznit is on the inferwebs. Love to all of you who helped me get here, and please know that I am totally safe and very, very happy.
Til next time.
