As another week begins here in Jerusalem, it seems to be an appropriate time for me to start this blog thing that I promised many people I would do. Not having blogged before, this is likely going to be a bit rough at first, so bear with me :-)
I arrived in Israel on June 30, 2010 at 2:30pm (more or less). I had visited a couple of times before, so I knew the general layout of the airport, and what to expect at immigration at customs. After standing in line for about 15 minutes, I breezed through my arrival "inteview" at the immigration window. I guess it helps to have a pre-authorized student visa in your passport. I collected my bags, and walked through customs without a hitch, grabbed a shuttle bus (sheirut) to Jerusalem, and got dropped off at the curb by my new apartment about 1.5 hours later (based on who was on the shuttle, I ended being one of the last stops). The keys were in the mailbox as promised, I went up two flights of stairs with one bag at a time. Someone called out in Hebrew asking whose bags were at the entrance. I had the presence of mind to answer (unattended bags are very sensitive issue here, as you might imagine) and all was well.
I unpacked a bit, found out that I had free WIFI available in certain places in the apartment, and connected with my friend Sari that I had met in NYC asking if I wanted to go out for a beer with a bunch of classmates. That sounded fantastic.
The next week and a bit have been spent buying food and various things for the apartment, getting to know my neighbourhood a bit (kind of the gray area between Rehavia and Talbieh, if that means anything to you). It turns out that the Prime Minister of Israel (Netenyahu) is practically my neighbour! I've gotten used to passing visibly armed guards at the street leading to his residence. I've also been to school, got my local cell phone, health insurance card, pictures taken, etc. We had a 4th of July BBQ picnic that was a lot of fun, pictures can be found on my Facebook page.
Orientation starts this week, and then intensive Hebrew classes (ulpan) the following week for the rest of the summer. I'm either going to be rather fluent, or have one massive migraine, time will tell.
