Made it!

After a very, very long day of travel I am finally in my hotel in Tiberias, Israel, which is in the Northern of the country. We believe we can see the Sea of Galille from our room, pictures to come tomorrow. 

Today/Yesterday was simply a lot of traveling. We met at JFK at 2pm EST Monday and took off around 6pm EST for the 6-7 hour plane ride to  Brussels. After landing in Brussels we had about an hour layover where we stayed in a nice lounge and had breakfast with another Birthright trip. Then we boarded a much smaller plane for the trip to Tel Aviv, Israel, about a 4 hour flight, and landed around 2:30pm local time, 7:30am EST, Tuesday.

First seeing Israel!

Welcome in Hebrew as we go through customs.

After landing today, we got on a 2-3 hour bus ride to Tiberias and when we got to the hotel we ate, took much needed showers, did a few ice breakers, and little the menorah for the 4th night of Hanukkah (we missed the third night while flying). We are finally headed to bed now 10-11pm local time, 3-4pm EST.

I 

Lighting the Menorah

Although an exhausting, long day it is great to finally be here in Israel. It is clear everyone is excited to see what the next ten days will bring as well as meeting each other and hearing each other's Jewish, and non-Jewish backgrounds. One of the most interesting thing I learned today is between 1/4 and 1/2 of my trip comes from an Interfaith family so it should be interesting to see their backgrounds and how they were raised. 

Although I didn't see much of the country today, I am so excited to see what the rest of the trip brings. Our tour guide, מתן, Matan, is wonderful and made some really interesting points I will end today's post on. He read a poem to us about tourists in order to remind us that we aren't tourists here, at least in his mind, but rather Jews/family returning to their homeland and we should act like it. Part of the way to act like this is by embracing the culture and also remembering and taking note of the fact that the Israelis around us are people too just going about their normal days. 

In the next ten days, I plan to keep in mind the Israelis during my trip to see what life is from their viewpoint not a tourists viewpoint and to admire the fact that Jewish people have a homeland where they can just go to work and live their lives. Simply 70 years ago this type of place didn't exist and it's one of the things that makes Israel so special.

בוקר טוב! 

Boker tov!

Goodnight!

Laura