Finally Here!!

Sophie's Goodbye Sign!

At JFK, better late than never!

Okay.. let me start by saying that my mother was so kind to buy  me a very nice camera about a year ago.. and it broke (because I got sand in the lens) and I was too lazy to send it in for the free warantee so now I'm stuck with  no camera (I'm sure my mother is gloating now...)

!! I'M IN ISRAEL

These feet are made for walkin' the holy land!

I got on the plane yesterday to find about 50 other kids joining the army. Nefesh b' nefesh was smart enough to seat us all together (probably to help us find our future spouses and create other Jewish kids). They told us not to switch our seats as they would be coming around with important documents to sign, but all of you reading this know me well enough to know that I switched my seat twice and ended up sitting rather far from my original assignment. Whatev, they found me anyway.

The flight was so fun. Obviously I didn't sleep. On my left was a guy named Alon who just graduated from University of Maryland and on my right was a guy named Josh from Colorado. Alon and I watched City of G-d- a crazy movie about Brazil. It was so intense, but good. After that I needed something to cheer me up a little, so I watched the 4th Shrek- which was not intense, and very good =)

I met a lot of cool people on the flight, and there were already 2 that I knew from my garin. I also ran into a kid that I went on Ramah Seminar with almost 3 years ago!! It was so silly to run into eachother- but fun, obviously.

My eye started killing from the dry air and lack of sleeping so I went around bitching to everyone asking for advil .. this girl gave me and also some eye drops. It felt better for about 2 minutes and then I puked twice. This kid Chad held my hair back (poor kid, he probably thought I was super drunk.. which I super wasn't. Then again he's probably used to these shenanigans). I had to throw out the bag with my puke in it and everyone was probably thinking "what a sissy". seriously- I never threw up on a plane before!!

About 30 minutes before we landed everyone started singing and cheering and clapping and the flight attendants had to force us to sit down. There was so much energy- it was so fun!! Walking off the plane we saw Shimon Perez (President of Israel) and he shook all the guys hands and kissed all the girls once on each cheek (what a playerrrr). Then we had an entire greeting commotion of people .. Israelis and soldiers and everyone welcoming us to Israel, passing out free water (wich I chugged), singing and dancing, saying "welcome home"...

My cousin Barry came to greet me which was really nice. aaaaaaaaaaaaaand then we had another tekes (ceremony) where I promptly fell asleep on this woman's shoulder (didn't know her). Whatever! It's Israel.

after taking a cab to even Yehudah where my cousins live, I fell asleep for 21 hours and just woke up. Sure, I feel like a lazy bum, but whatever, It's Israel!