Airport lovin'

Wow wow wiii. Sitting here at my new home for the next 4 hours with shoes full of sand, bags under my eyes, all my belongings for 4 more months and a whole new set of memories and friends. And also important to note I am alone for the first time in 200 hours, without taglit group 599. I already used up my right by birth to go to Israel for essentially free for 10 days. What a lucky guy I am to have this chance, so s big thanks to my Jewish heritage and to the program for taking jews as religious as I am, whats the torah again?

But seriously anyone who has this opportunity would be a fool not to take it. Travelling around a large part of the country,  seeing so much world and rekigious history, trying amazing meals mainly of hummus, kebob and falafel, and seeing a whole new spectrum of lifestyles. Did I mention it was free? Maybe thats my jewish side coming out.

My thoughts on Israel before I went have drastically changed as I think everyone on my trips did. Coming into israel I imagined it being a very dangerous country always in a state of conflict.  I imagined all those big nose, pushy, religious stereotypes that I imagine a lot of ppl do. But reality has proved me wrong, at least the one im living in. I felt extremely safe in israel walking aroud with my camera and phone out in public without feelings of threat as ive felt in other places. Internally israel is safe, within their own communities. However these people do live and have lived in a country with the threat of war. At times on a daily basis and other times not in many years. Many of the ppl we met have lost friends or family or acquaintances not to old age but to what are labeled as terrorist attacks or in battle. But as a tourist this is hard to imagine as you are walking around the cities as everything feels perfect and you have to remind yourself sometimes where you are and the status of Israel to many other countries. Also I realize that I only got to really see/hear one side of the story. Im sure if I was in Palestine my outlook would probably be completely different.
Either way most israelies were not religious and very similar to us Americans and fit right in. They were jusy normal people who wanted to have fun and be happy.

Here are 2 pictures from our sunrise hike at masadiah. Such an amazing place and unbelievable work by humanity to be able to live up there for many years. The sunrises over the mountains of jordan and over the dead sea (lowest point on earth. Here I am with 2 isrseli soliders about to finish their service, Ran and Idan.