Wednesday April 16th, 2008

Well, I made it to Jerusalem, yesterday!! I arrived from Frankfurt, Germany to Tel Aviv (Ben Gurion Intntl Airport) at around 4:00 pm and took a shuttle to Jerusalem. I was cramped into a van with mostly Jewish people visiting for Passover, and wouldn't you know it, I was squished next to a very large New York Jewish lady, but she was very nice. The shuttle dropped me off at the wrong place but it wasn't too far, however I got a taxi to take me only 2 blocks because I couldn't lug around all of my luggage. But I made it to my destination! 10 Hulda Haneviah Street, which isn't really a street, it's an alley, which is why the shuttle guy didn't really know where it was.

I am very pleased with the place. It's a 150 year old, unique building, but seems modern because of renovations, and it's only a few blocks from the Old City, so last night I walked over to the Western Wall and walked through the shops, most of them were getting ready to close, because it was around 6 pm. I was utterly exhausted by the time I got back to the house, and just went right to bed. I got up this morning and got to know the family that I'm staying with. The owner is a man named Dr. Uriel Adiv, I googled him before I came and found that he is an author of Jewish Architecture, a photographer, and a father of an adopted son named Assaf (sp?). He has two guests from Zurich, staying at this time and today Ruth and her 13 year old son, Yosef, showed me around the Jewish marketplace and later in the day, we toured the ultra-orthodox section of Jerusalem. It was very interesting, you can check out the slideshow to see pics. It was very crowded and hectic and definitely felt foreign.

Ruth invited me to her son's Bar Mitzvah next Tuesday which should be very interesting. He just turned 13 and she wanted his celebration to be here in Jerusalem, even though they live in Zurich.

So far the past few days has gone very smooth and I'm just taking in all of the experiences, I really haven't planned anything, I'm just going to take it a day at a time. Today I had my very first Falafel, the Jewish version of a Yuro, or however you spell that. It was delicious.

It's kind of late, almost 1 am, I spent too much time trying to figure out the layout of this blog, but it's done, and I will be logging into it daily to share my thoughts, experiences and pictures.

Until tomorrow. . . .