We have arrived!!!

We have arrived!! After filling our 4 overweight suitcases to the brim, lots of goodbye tears, missing our first flight, chaperoning 22 NFTY EIE summer session teens and 24 hours of travel, we arrived at Tel Aviv airport to smiling faces and the place we would call home for the next 11 months to come.

Aside from our one fabulous day at the spa courtesy of Garri, we have spent the last week and a day exploring Jerusalem and getting to know our classmates. More and more people continue to arrive on a daily basis, and what started as a group of about 12-15 people when we first arrived is now somewhere around 30 wonderful people.

We spent our first Shabbat with Yoni's family and friends. We attended services both at HUC and Kol Haneshama, and had many a meal to reunite us with family and friends here.

This past week has gone by in a blur, but some highlights include visiting my favorite waffle restaurant Babettes, large dinners with many of our classmates, and a David Broza concert with the walls of the Old City as a backdrop. This is a picture after the concert of me and Yoni with our friends Andrew and Bess (both fellow Rabbinical School students).

We moved into our new apartment in Jerusalem on Thursday - VERY EXCITING!! It's a not-so-large two-bedroom apartment with two cozy beds, wall-to-wall carpeting, a bathroom with a counter (very important), a washing machine, a cute living room in which we have displayed many pictures from home, a small kitchen with PLENTY of dishes and other supplies to make us feel at home for the year, and a vase on our dining room table already filled with beautiful purple flowers from the man up the street (I assume we'll be visiting him on a regular basis). We have a 20 minute or less walk to school, and our friends all live within a 20 minute walk as well. We are still in the stages of unpacking and setting it all up, but I will post pictures as soon as it looks like home.

Here we are outside of our new apt on move-in day!


Shabbat last night was wonderful. 15 of the HUC students here so far gathered at Kol Haneshama for services, and then returned back to a dinner hosted at Andrew, Matt and Kelly's apartment. Overall, there were about 20 people there, and it was wonderful to have a place to gather and get to know each other. There was a great mix of rabbinic, cantorial and education students, and because we haven't received our placements for the next 4 years, everyone is just getting to know each other as a whole group, which is prooving to be a wonderful experience!

Today is the 4th of July, and though it is one of our family's favorite holidays, I haven't been home in years to celebrate it because of camp. We are having a BBQ with the HUC crowd hosted by the interns later today at HUC - it's nice to be able to celebrate the holiday in a foreign country which is slowly becoming not so foreign.

That's it for now! Running off to Shabbat lunch with friends. Happy 4th of July and Shabbat Shalom to one and all!