Day 1 (and a half)

It’s 5:15 in Tel Aviv, I’ve got no idea what time my body thinks it is, and I’ve just spent the last hour lying in bed hoping to fall back to sleep. Our first full day in Israel is coming and I have been trying to make sure that I’m going to be rested enough to get through what I’m sure will be a full day, but I’m just too excited to fall back to sleep (the same reason that I spent so many hours on the El Al flight yesterday just staring into the back of my sleeping mask). I was expecting to enjoy our trip, since Shoshana and I had been talking about coming here for at least the past 4 years, but I didn’t think that I would be this wound up. It’s pretty strange for a Jewish guy to make this analogy, but I feel the same way I did on Christmas, when Scott and I would wake up when the morning was still technically night.

So here I am, sitting on the balcony of out hotel room at the Renaissance Tel Aviv. It’s one of the only four hotels located directly on the Mediterranean in this city. After these 4 were built, they stopped allowing it so that the beach didn’t end up looking like Miami, with high-rise after high-rise on the water, with little open beach access for the public. You can see the sea while you drive down the coast here, unlike Route A1A in South Florida. In the short time that I’ve been here, I’ve really liked how much the public good seems to shape many of the civic decisions made here.

We flew in yesterday, arriving at Ben Gurion airport here in Tel Aviv at about 4:30 pm. Flying into the city I was amazed at how urban and developed the city looked: lots of skyscrapers and really modern looking architecture, large planned green public spaces. Driving through the city afterwards, it reminded me of L.A. or the hipper parts of Dallas. The people who live here have done so much with land that was just seaside desert.

The other striking thing was how all the buildings have a similar color. I’m sure it’s probably pragmatic (who wants to live or work in a black building in the desert?), but the look of the whole city makes it feel very natural, very “of the land.”

After going thru customs and then watching Shoshana nearly melt down in fear that our bags had decided to take a trip somewhere else (all the bags DID decide to join us), we met with the rest of the crew. Our group to this point is Shosh, Aliza and Ilan, and also Berna and Larry Klur, two synagogue members and friends of the Kapneks. Avi wasn’t feeling well (and by not feeling well, I mean really freaking sick), so he and Jacquie will be meeting up with us today, day 2, at 4pm or so.

We met our guide for the day and headed to the hotel. The hotel is nice but not ostentatious at all. I don’t know if it’s because of the socialist roots of the country, but nothing I’ve seen yet feels opulent? Elitist? That’s not quite right. I guess what I’m saying is I’m just not seeing the huge differences between the highest and lowest class of living like you would expect to see in other western countries. I really like it.

(Shosh just popped her head out to say hi, admire the view, and head back to bed.)

Dinner last night was in the Yemenite quarter of the city. The food, if I just list the dishes, sounds like (and looked like) meals I have had a hundred times before: humus, falafel, Israeli salads, shish kebab. But it was so much better than anything I had eaten in the U.S. My only complaint is that it felt a little “This is where all the tourists go to have Israeli food,” but since so much of the economy of this place revolves around tourism anyway, the number of Americans eating there did little to affect how much I liked the meal. Oh, that pita bread.

That’s enough for now. Don’t want to burn myself out on writing about the trip. I’m not sure how good I’ll be about writing (or posting, if I can get the internet running), but I really want to try to make an effort to keep a record of what is shaping up to be a really moving and life changing experience. And if it’s not, at least I’ll lose a few pounds dragging my ass around the desert for a couple weeks.