Early Returns

Thank you all for waiting patiently on my second post. I thought I wouldn't be writing anything until tomorrow or the next day, but it turns out that a lot can happen in a short amount of time. I have decided that I will try to tell short stories of my travels in an attempt not to bore you too much with the particulars of everyday life. If you would like to hear more about that, send me an e-mail or a facebook message or just leave a comment at the bottom. I will start with the official beginning of my trip: the flight.

Well... we had to wait a little while before the actual take off. There was some trouble getting water in the plumbing on the plane (I didn't even realize that could even be a problem), so we were delayed for an hour and a half.  They couldn't fix it so they decided to put bottles of water in the bathroom and let the passengers figure it out for themselves. I was just imagining the Israeli pilots and flight attendants saying to each other: (insert heavy Israeli accent here) they are going to a country that is constantly in... emm... how do you say... drought. They might as well get used to it now.


Once we got to the campus in Ramat Aviv, they gave us our keys. I carried my bags up to the fourth floor of one of the dormitories. I could not remember whether I had signed up to live with Israelis or other American students. I weighed the pros and cons of each before thinking that it didn't really matter. Whichever room they put me in is where I would be and there was no reason to worry about it. I opened my door and I found an apartment style dorm with a well stocked fridge.  When I went into my room I saw the two beds, one empty and one made with a purse on it. Did they put me in a room with a girl?  I was really confused: I could see why they might put two different genders in the same apartment, but the same room seemed like a little bit much. It turns out is was just a mistake.  There was a girl who was placed in the with all guys, so I just moved into her original placement.

My real bedroom (check out the b-grams!)

After all that trouble coming to the country and then finding the place I would be spending the next five and a half months, my roommates were very kind and inviting.  Last night the three of us went looking for a place to eat dinner and ended up exploring a little bit (read: about an hour) before finding a place to eat. It turns out that if you follow the signs for "Center" it is really trying to take to the center of Tel Aviv instead of the center of Ramat Aviv (where Tel Aviv University's campus is located)

Introduction

Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in! As I am finishing up my preparations to leave for Israel, I wanted to get the ball rolling with my first blog post. This post is an introduction to my blog. For those of you who know me, I love you very much and thank you, in advance, for reading the rest of this post. For those of you who don't know me: I'm surprised that you are reading my blog. Here is a little bit about myself so that you get caught up:

I am a Junior majoring in Psychology at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts (GO JUMBOS!!). I went to Jewish Day School in the suburbs of Philadelphia from kindergarten through 12th grade and spent many a summer at Jewish sleep-away camp. Some of my favorite things to do are cooking, playing sports, Israeli Folk Dancing, and last, but not least, singing with my Jewish a cappella brethren (also known as Shir Appeal). I will be spending the coming semester studying at Tel Aviv University's School for Overseas Students.

I haven't designed a particular format for this blog, so I imagine that the first few posts will a little bit all over the place. This is the first time I have ever kept a blog or journal or anything of the sort and the going will be rough. My goal is to post one or two times a week and allow you to live vicariously through me. With that, I also encourage you to write comments on my posts or send me e-mails or facebook messages. Not only will that help me stay in tune with the interest of the common folk ;) but it will also remind me that I should be putting up new posts.

Thank you all for reading my blog! I'll be getting into Israel on Wednesday and you can expect another post to be up by Friday. I suggest you just stay by your computer until then and click the refresh button on this page every couple of minutes.