The journey begins

Welcome to my blog. Herein I will write abut my trip to Israel and document the six weeks I spend living there as a student at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem during the 2009 summer sessions.

I have never kept a blog before, and to be honest I have never really kept a diary or journal of any kind. This will be a learning experience for me as I go along. What I hope to capture here and share with you are my thoughts, feelings, and anecdotes, from my experiences and what I am learning during my time away. I hope to post at least once or twice a week.

This is "Mustang Sally" - the plane that would take me from JFK to London.

Location: London England. Rather than flying directly from New York to Tel Aviv, it ended up being significantly cheaper to fly from New York to London, followed by a flight from London to Tel Aviv. This meant that I my way home I could spend a couple extra days on vacation in London with Jessica (who will be joining me in Israel later on during my trip). However, this also meant that I would be stuck with a 14-hour layover on my way to Israel.

Faced with the prospect of spending the entire time stuck in the airport after I landed at Heathrow, I decided to spend some time in London.

I took the underground (one of the local train systems) away from the airport and into the city. Approximately 24 minutes on the train seemed like the right amount of time, so I got off at the random stop of Acton Town. This was a cute downtown area. I had lunch at a local pub and found a park where I am writing this first entry.

What I have learned so far:

1) Wi-Fi hotspots with free internet access are rare in London. After nearly two hours of searching I found only one location that had free internet (a pub which didn’t open until noon). Of the people I asked most had no idea where to find a place, and others gave me directions to places that simply did not exist. There are however, several for pay internet cafes, and a couple of free outdoor internet kiosks where you can send email and perform web searches (they are slow and had to use, but they do exist and are free).

2) I love having four rotating wheels on the bottom of my luggage. It makes moving it around town so much easier.

3) My luggage is just slightly too tall to fit through a subway turnstile as I go through.

4) Exploring a new city or sitting in the shade of a tree at a park is so much nicer than being cooped up in an airport.

The next time I write, it will be from Israel!

Time elapsed since my departure from Detroit Metro Airport: 1 day, 3 hours.
Time elapsed since I slept in a bed: 2 days, 2 hours