The First Day: January 26, 2014

Arriving in New York,

Lets talk about New York.

First we landed late.2:05. Five minutes after we were supposed to be at orientation. Getting out luggage was easy, but then we find out the airtram is broken and we needed to catch a bus to our terminal. We had to wait about an hour for that bus. In the cold. With two 50 pound bags each until a really nice lady named Deanna helped us get on a bus that wasn't going to our terminal, but she convinced the bus driver to go to Terminal 4 finally. And I don't think I thanked her enough. Should have given her tzedakah. Would have been the perfect opportunity to! Oops. Guess not... Once we got to our terminal we found Robin Kulwin who got us checked in within fifteen minutes of meeting her. When you go to Israel, you get asked a lot of questions before you get your boarding pass. The lady asking me questions seemed like she was nice smiling when I answered questions, asked very nicely but I could definitely tell she was VERY serious. And extremely intimidating. But the lady at the desk that gave me my boarding pass was very sweet.

We ended up missing the majority of orientation and stood outside the door with everyone facing us, getting some pretty awkward looks. I just ended up standing there awkwardly waving at people. They announced our arrival which made things more uncomfortable. 
Going through security at JFK took so long. You know, about 70 people having to go through all at once was pretty bad. We did make our flight though, which wasn't as bad as expected to be honest. So many people were willing to introduce themselves and sit with me during the flight, the whole time we were pretty obnoxiously loud, apparently EIE participants have never been this bad. Oops. We just really like talking, we're meeting new people, having fun, what else can you honestly expect from a group of teenagers. The entire flight was just teenagers being really excited and ready to bond with people they will be with for the next four months. I maybe slept for half an hour the entire flight. But I was totally exhausted and couldn't sleep anymore than that. Maybe the most incredible thing I saw was the orthodox Jews getting up to pray. Its like nothing I've ever seen before and I'm so glad that I did.The views over Israel were incredible and my anxiety and excitement grew with every mile we got closer. Once we finally landed in Tel Aviv, the wait to get off the plane was maybe 15 minutes considering we were all the way in the back. Customs was a pain in the but, then again when isn't it. While waiting in another line, everyone was uncomfortably hot. I was obviously complaining because its my thing but I loved that I wasn't freezing my but off. 
Baggage claim took a while. Lots of baggage for lots of people.
We left baggage claim and went to our buses and thats where the journey truly began in Israel.

(pictures are to follow.)