Sept 11
There were 46 Olim Hadashim (folks moving to Israel under the Right of Return) on the El Al flight. This was actually announced several times during the flight, and we were cheered by the rest of the passengers. Everyone had a story. My seatmate on the aisle, Ruth, was joining some of her children and grandchildren. My seatmate by the window was a nice Israeli guy who owns a business that operates out of Pennsylvania. All pleasant. I tried to sleep some, with little success, and found myself peeking over shoulders to watch portions of other people’s movies.
We landed at what felt like past-my-bedtme, though locally it was 6:25am. A Charedi (super-religious) guy sitting behind me blew the Shofar (ram’s horn) in the traditional cadence. Then the processing began. We dragged ourselves onto a bus that toted us for what seemed like an hour to the old terminal one where we sat about drinking coffee, eating sandwiches and getting processed one at a time. Each of us showed our passport and our visa, signed forms, confirmed info, selected a national insurance company, and received a Sim card, some shekels (the New Israeli Shekel is the currency here, current value is about $.28-.29) and forms we’d be using over the next month as we navigated the bureaucracy.
We broke up into groups of three or four for further processing. One guy in our group was a rap musician who had actually played in Ithaca. One young woman had just come out of the army, where she had been responsible for some kind of artillery. And another one, Netta, turned out to be a climber! We are hoping to get together soon for a climb.
Then, feeling like the barely-living dead, it was back on the bus to terminal 3. I’d taken Dramamine on the plane and was afraid I’d pass out if I took more, but this was pushing my buttons. We all retrieved our luggage (I had 4 50-lb bags plus carryons and my hand in a brace, so it took two carts and one of the admin folks to get me to the taxi area).
Now here’s a really important word to know when you live here: balagan. It’s actually Russian but you hear it here all the time because it does so fit the bill. It means a mess, but more than that. Think: utter chaos.
That’s what it felt like as they tried to organize us on to the proper taxis/vans to get wherever we were going in the country.
There were 46 Olim Hadashim (folks moving to Israel under the Right of Return) on the El Al flight. This was actually announced several times during the flight, and we were cheered by the rest of the passengers. Everyone had a story. My seatmate on the aisle, Ruth, was joining some of her children and grandchildren. My seatmate by the window was a nice Israeli guy who owns a business that operates out of Pennsylvania. All pleasant. I tried to sleep some, with little success, and found myself peeking over shoulders to watch portions of other people’s movies.
We landed at what felt like past-my-bedtme, though locally it was 6:25am. A Charedi (super-religious) guy sitting behind me blew the Shofar (ram’s horn) in the traditional cadence. Then the processing began. We dragged ourselves onto a bus that toted us for what seemed like an hour to the old terminal one where we sat about drinking coffee, eating sandwiches and getting processed one at a time. Each of us showed our passport and our visa, signed forms, confirmed info, selected a national insurance company, and received a Sim card, some shekels (the New Israeli Shekel is the currency here, current value is about $.28-.29) and forms we’d be using over the next month as we navigated the bureaucracy.
We broke up into groups of three or four for further processing. One guy in our group was a rap musician who had actually played in Ithaca. One young woman had just come out of the army, where she had been responsible for some kind of artillery. And another one, Netta, turned out to be a climber! We are hoping to get together soon for a climb.
Then, feeling like the barely-living dead, it was back on the bus to terminal 3. I’d taken Dramamine on the plane and was afraid I’d pass out if I took more, but this was pushing my buttons. We all retrieved our luggage (I had 4 50-lb bags plus carryons and my hand in a brace, so it took two carts and one of the admin folks to get me to the taxi area).
Now here’s a really important word to know when you live here: balagan. It’s actually Russian but you hear it here all the time because it does so fit the bill. It means a mess, but more than that. Think: utter chaos.
That’s what it felt like as they tried to organize us on to the proper taxis/vans to get wherever we were going in the country.
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