Eilat, Israel, Asia Today was my first day of diving in Eilat, and it was awesome! My instructor, Yaniv, picked me up from the hostel at 8:45am and we headed straight down the South Beach. Yaniv is awesome. I was lucky enough to be the only person on my Advanced Open Water course, it was excellent. Every other course I’ve been on has been with six to twelve other people, so you don’t get that personal attention that might be…
Eilat, Israel, Asia I got up this morning to say bye to the Zimmermans. They have been so awesome to put me up for the last nine days, I can’t thank them enough. I wanted to get the whole family together for a picture, but Kinerit was already gone, Ori was studying and Eitan was not feeling the picture. So I got a picture of Gilad, Emitai and Amir before they headed off to school. I packed up all my…
Hod HaSharon, Israel, Asia I got up today at 7am and got ready for a big day out. I hitched a ride into Tel Aviv with Gilad who had to go into the city for work today. I got to see first-hand what the traffic is like going into the city on a Sunday (Monday to all of us in the US and UK) morning. It was ridiculous. A 35 minute train ride took about three times as long by…
Hod HaSharon, Israel, Asia I had a great night’s sleep last night and woke up feeling much better than I had the last two days. We got ready for the day and Pnina and Marta picked us up at 9am. We headed north to Lee’s aunt’s house for the Bar Mitzvah. They live in a community like a kibbutz, but it’s a little different. It was a really nice house that Gillad had built a few years ago. I met…
Hod HaSharon, Israel, Asia I woke up today and still wasn’t feeling very well. I had taken some night time cold medication that Pnina gave me yesterday, so at least I got some sleep and wasn’t completely exhausted. Lee and I had a tentative plan to go to Tel Aviv today, but since I wasn’t feeling well and today is the start of the Sabbath, we decided to put that on hold until Sunday. We would have had to leave…
Hod HaSharon, Israel, Asia I woke up with a pretty awful sinus cold this morning and didn’t feel up for doing anything. I ended up spending the whole day in bed either napping or watching movies on my laptop. I think it was exactly what I needed. Pnina was nice enough to bring over some cold medication and pita breads for me. That saw me through the day and then I went out for dinner. Mark and Dikla treated Lee…
Hod HaSharon, Israel, Asia Wow! Today was amazing! It started with what felt like a late wake up call at 7:30am. We had a great breakfast at the Park Hotel which consisted of eggs, cheeses, cereals, yogurts and fruits, but no meat. Because we were in Jerusalem, no places can mix dairy and meat. You can only have one or the other at a restaurant. We checked out of our room and ended up waiting in the lobby for almost…
Jerusalem, Israel, Asia Today was by far the busiest day we’ve had so far. It started with a 5:30am wakeup call to get ready for our tour. We were out of the house by 6:15am and Dorita drove us over to Hyrzliya for our pickup. Our bus driver showed up a few minutes late, but nothing drastic. We got to our meeting place in Tel Aviv where we picked up the rest of our group. We took a drive to…
Ra’anana, Israel, Asia Today started with an early rise to get ready for our big day up north. Pnina and Marta picked Lee and I up from Gillad’s house at 7:30am and we hit the road. We first visited the kibbutz where Pnina and Marta grew up, along with the rest of their family. It is quite a small community now (they think there are only about 300 people still there), but you can tell that it used to be…
Hod HaSharon, Israel, Asia I dozed for about an hour on the flight to Tel Aviv, but was a little too excited to actually sleep. Our flight went as planned (except for the worst airplane food I’ve had since about 1994). We arrived on time at Ben Gurion airport and immigration and customs could not have gone smoother. The three of us went to the immigration counter together and the guy did not ask us one question. I made sure…