Israel, Round II

I arrived on Thursday!
The flights were smooth and rather exciting.
On the first flight a pregnant woman went into some kind of distress. The flight attendants made an announcement for doctors and thank goodness there were two on board. When we landed, emergency crews boarded the plane to take the woman to the hospital. It was quite an event with fire trucks, police, ambulances and such. I hope she and her little one are okay!
On top of that, I opened my water bottle during the flight and sprayed water all over myself and the person sitting behind me. Dang that pressurized cabin!! That was also quite exciting. The best part is that I did it a second time after waking up near the end of my flight to Israel. Only this time I completely soaked myself and the guy sitting next to me. Luckily he was really nice and we had established a good flight relationship beforehand.
Eyal's dad picked me up from the train station in the evening. I arrived to his parent's apartment and his mom and brother were also home. It was really nice and comforting to see them both. His mom made a lovely dinner of scrambled eggs, cheeses, bread and yummy olives and delish veggies.

Eyal's brother invited me to join him and his friends for the weekend at a beach just south of Haifa in the area of Atlit. The beach is called Neve Yam. On Friday we went grocery shopping and prepared and seasoned the meat that would be bbq-ed during the weekend. Of course no start to a new adventure is complete without extreme jet lag. I woke up after sleeping from about 5 am - 10 am Israel time feeling so sick. So the only cure? Throwing up in multiple locations - the apartment before we left to go shopping; the spice shopt (which was great because a lot of people were waking by and saw me throwing up behind the building. I'm sure they thought I had just been out partying all night which is a much better reason): and last but not least at Omer's friend's family's apartment. Greeaaattt!! Finally today (Sunday) I am starting to feel more normal.

The weekend at the beach was fantastic. The second full moon of August was Friday night and the water and whole beach was glowing. We didn't need any lights! We took midnight swims and you could see the bottom of the sea because the light of the moon was so incredible.

I didn't sleep very much and felt pretty out of it a lot but it was still really awesome and a great way to start the year in Israel. Many thanks to Omer for taking me along for the weekend! 

This week I am starting the National Israel Trail and will have less access to the internet but I will let ya'll know what's happening as often as possible.