the phoenix has landed!

yep, that's right. After 20 hours in transit, 7000 miles, and three mysterious airplane meals, Jane has made it to Israel!

The flight was excruciatingly long, but I did manage to sleep quite a bit. I also watched Valentine's Day on my little screen, which sadly turned out to be pretty disappointing. Listened to all the PAs in hebrew, didn't understand much. Played a game with myself which involved guessing how many of the people around me were Jewish. Took a phenagrin to help me sleep/not throw up, and woke up with a crick in my neck and a terrible taste in my mouth.

We landed about a half an hour early in Tel Aviv, which was nice and made everything transpire with a bit less stress for me. However, I still do not have a phone. Yes, Jane/Jon plan FAIL. Apparently there are only two places in the airport involve phone rentals, and only one of them actually rents phones (the other, sim cards.....CURSE YOU VERIZON!). Pelaphone, as this is called, was going to charge me upwards of $150 to rent for the summer.....to which I said HELL NO. so, I'm working on non-airport phone rentals and we'll see how that pans out. For now, i'll be using skype to make calls. So Skype me! I think this is pretty much the coolest thing ever invented, but more on that later.

I decided to take a taxi to the hostel, which was way more expensive than taking the bus (about 120 NIS vs like, 30) but it was still cheap by US standards and I was pretty much exhausted and SO not in the mood to figure out buses. The hostel is your basic hostel, but nice because its like a block and a half from the beach. After dumping my stuff and calling dad and Jon, I went for a wander.

Stuck my toes in the Mediterranean. Met a random man named Gabi who guessed that I was from Germany. Um, wrong. Overheard some teenagers arguing about whether or not to take the bus because of the cost (I actually understood this one) Walked in a market and bought some food for dinner. Took a picture of sign that said MIAMI HOTEL in orange and green hebrew. Figured out what bus I need to take in the boker (morning).

Came back and ate, took a shower, and am now about to sleep the night away - hopefully afixing myself to my new time zone.

Which, FYI, is 7 hours ahead of EST and 8 hours ahead of CDT.

Skype me @ jpryjmak!