Hi guys,

It’s my first night here at 4:45 am and I can’t sleep for the life of me. I guess that’s what happens when you spent the last week of winter break staying up till 2 then try to go to sleep one night at 9:30. I figured I’d write a little about my first day here though there isn’t a whole lot to say yet.

The flight over was relatively uneventful; save for a few problems I had getting through JFK after flying there from Boston. I ended up sitting right in the middle of a group of Birthright kids which was nice, the two girls I sat between were pretty psyched to be going. On flight movies: Hairspray (amazing!), Ratatouille (also really good), and that movie with Matt Damon where he’s an assassin trying to figure out his true identity. That was ok, didn’t see the whole thing though. Turns out I had packed my headphones with the luggage I checked so had to keep myself busy with movies and attempted sleep. At least the former was successful…

When we arrived in Tel Aviv there was a bus waiting to take us to Be’er Sheva, the city where I’ll be studying. Haven’t seen much of the city yet so I’ll hold judgment on the parts I’ve seen thus far. We got our room assignments and we all have singles in small apartments of four rooms each. I haven’t met any of my roommates yet, I guess they’re home for the weekend. But there is a guitar lying out on a couch in the common area as well as a decorative fan on the wall, so I have high hopes for normalcy and potential coolness. Some of the apartments I’ve seen of other people on my program are much more stark so I suppose I’m in decent shape. But, I will say that I will appreciate American university furniture when I get back, especially the beds. This bed is about 2/3 the area of the beds at school and maybe three inches thick. I’ll send some pictures soon but I’m conserving camera battery since somehow that’s like the one thing I forgot.

Anyway, after we moved in they fed us pizza (I was hoping for some corn pizza, one thing I appreciate about pizza in Israel which inherently disgusts most Americans, but I had to default to cheese) and gave us our rented cell phones. I’m planning on buying one in the next couple days so I don’t have a phone yet. If you want to talk, I’m on Skype at ilana917. Then we “socialized” while eating (whatever conversation could be maintained while wolfing down pizza jetlaggedly).

When we got back from that I unpacked some more and then decided to take a walk. I ran into someone on the overseas program who said he was going over to another apartment to play cards, so I went over with him and hung out with him and two other girls (who like frisbee!) which was nice and definitely better than being alone in an empty apartment. Plus they were as bad at cards as I am so it was a good time.

Over the next couple of days we’re having an orientation Shabbat weekend at some kibbutz nearby to get to know each other a little better. By the time you get this I’ll already be done since they told us we don’t get internet till Sunday (really harsh, since I have an Ethernet cable and a jack but it’s firewalled). I miss you all a lot and can’t wait to talk to you. I hope you’re weathering the snow and cold (oh yeah, the weather was pretty nice yesterday but night gets pretty chilly) and I’ll talk to you later!

Love,

Ilana