Days One and Two

DAY ONE
So DAY 1 was mostly a travelling day. We flew a direct flight from Toronto to Tel Aviv which was about 11 hours. I'll tell you though...the security in the airport is crazy. When we were in Toronto we each had to have an interview with a security person, check our carry on luggage with them (to be returned when we boarded) and had our shoes X-rayed! We were allowed to keep our wallets, passports and boarding passes. We found our gate and then spent the time getting to know one another. When boarding time came our carry on luggage was wheeled to the gate on a cart. It wouldn't have been so bad except that it was only our 6 backpacks! They set up another metal detector and we had to go through, taking off our shoes again so they could be scanned. We then collected our bags and went directly to the plane...we did not pass go...we did not collect $200!

On the plane was ok but there were alot of small children which was bothersome when you were trying to sleep. Oh but just so you know, it all worked out...the meals were kosher and I have the papers to prove it! It was a pretty uneventful trip and when we arrived in the Ben Gurion Airport we didn't really have any problems, we met our driver, Ofer, and he took us to the Kibbutz Yad Hashmona. There were two other people who came in at the same time as us but on different flights who we met at the airport. One was Lisa who is also a Canadian (and became a "bosom buddy") and Noelle who was from New Zealand (she also became a friend). On the ride to the hotel Ofer asked if we minded a little music and we said no so we listened to Ricki Martin for the 15-20 minute drive! We quickly learned that the Kibbutz Yad Hashmona was our first of many hotels.

I expected Israel to be very deserty, rocky and dusty but I was completely surprised by the amount of vegitation that was there. Sure there were parts of the country that were that way...like the desert...but for the most part it was absolutely beautiful, lots of green and flowers everywhere in all colors.

So back at the Kibbutz Yad Hashmona...we found our roommates, mine was Andrea from Canada (she goes to Summit Pacific), we found our room, we had dinner and a meeting where we were told all kinds of things that our tired minds promptly forgot and met everyone else on the tour. There were people from Georgia, Florida, Washington, Tenesee, Finland, South Africa, Holland, New Zealand, Australia and England. I'll have to admit that the Finnish names went in and out of my brain that night...who am I kidding they didn't even make it in!

DAY TWO
Day two took us into Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv is on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and is a beautiful and modern city. We were going to Tel Aviv to visit the Dugit Messianic Outreach Centre. The Centre is an outreach which includes many types of ministry. They do not limit themselves to evangelism they also meet the needs of many poor people as well. Every Thursday night at the Centre they have a night of music, fellowship and coffee. They call it the Gospel Cafe. They have had wonderful success with this ministry because it allows them the opportunity to build relationships with the people that come in to the cafe.

Our purpose in going there was to help them in anyway possible. We cleaned, organized and did whatever they asked of us. With so many hands to help we finished everything that they had for us and found a few other things as well. We were fortunate enough to be there on a Thursday and had the opportunity to go to the cafe that evening if we wished. I did not go to the cafe but instead chose to catch up on some dearly needed sleep:)

After we were finished at Dugit we got to spend some time at the beach. It was great, the sun, the surf, the sand...the topless women...yikes. Actually that didn't bother me, I had more issues with the speedo-clad, George Hamilton tanned, old men that trolled the beach. So skantily-clad, golden, old boys aside the beach was great. I drank about a gallon of seawater which I will confess didn't sit well with me and I did reguritate it.

We stayed at the City Hotel that night. It was a nice hotel. The elevators were like closets and the first floor started two floors up so it really sucked for the people on the sixth floor. I would like to take this moment to thank the incredibly nice guys who helped the girls carry their luggage up the stairs. Justin, thanks for carrying mine.

There were a few of us that stayed behind that night and we decided to go for a walk along the beach. I witnessed the quickest setting of the sun that I have ever seen. The sun was a ball of firy orange and pink one moment and I got my camera out of it's holder, turned it on, set the flash, looked up and it was gone. It only took a few seconds and it was done. I guess I'm just used to the sun taking several hours to set. It is something that always surprises me when I'm near the equator.

Back at the hotel Lisa and I had our first of many many coffees together. It was a beautiful evening while we sat out on the patio of the hotel and had coffee. We didn't stay long because I was almost asleep in my chair and wanted to get to bed. I was in bed early but unfortunately only ended up getting about 4 hours of sleep. At about 2am Andrea and I realized that we were both awake so we got up for a little while. Andrea went back to sleep, I just went back to bed. I did everything I could think of to sleep but nothing worked so I got up and read for an hour on the bathroom floor. I didn't get back to sleep after 2am which was really not good. We had a long DAY THREE ahead of us but I did ok until our evening lecture but that's for another blog.