Israel Day 1

March 5, 2005.

Jon, David, Jeremy, Trisanna and I left on Continental Airlines to fly to Israel. We went with a group put together by Copperhill Community Church. It was so fun! It was a busload of people.. so maybe 45 people were on the trip? Most of us met at LAX where we flew to Dulles. There we met up with the rest of our group. Had a layover. Received instruction on arriving in Israel and what would be happening as we got off the plane. The plane ride was about 18 hours. Including layovers, going from start to finish the trip took 22-24 hours.

This is us when we arrived at the Tel Aviv Airport. Tired and dirty.

We assembled into our group. Retrieved our luggage. Got our passports stamped. Answered questions. And walked out to our waiting bus. It was evening when we arrived. And we were like 12 hours off from what our body clocks were telling us. It's a mind game to get your body adjusted to a time change like that.

We arrived at our place of residence. Received notebooks of info on what we would see and such. Received our room keys. Dumped off all our luggage. Then we were ushered inside the dining room for the dinner that was waiting for us. Even though we had eaten breakfast shortly before getting off the plane.

Breakfast .. dinner... sleep?

We had a brief welcoming after dinner and a meeting to inform us of what we needed to plan on for the next day's activities. They kept us busy from sunrise til after sunset. We had to make sure to always have a rain jacket, and if our legs were showing, some sort of covering for our legs in case we went to a "holy place."

Boys room consisted of two twin beds and a cot thing.

Girls room. Two twin beds.

Looong plane ride. Breakfast follwed shortly by dinner followed shortly by bed.