Our trip began on Sunday, March 29, with Dave waking me up and saying that our flight to NY was canceled. We could still get there, but we had to take a very indirect route, and we flew to Philadelphia instead of NY, since all the flights going to LaGuardia seemed to be delayed. So, we flew through Orlando, landed in PA, and rented a car to take us to NJ, where we stayed overnight, with our Israel flight leaving in the morning.
As I realized we’d be passing the town we used to live in, I texted my friend who still lives there and asked if we could stop by. She said yes, and it happened to be her birthday, so we got to have birthday cake with her and her family.
We spent the night at my sister-in-law’s house, and in the morning we headed to the airport again. We had heard that people were being interviewed and questioned in order to fly to Israel, since at the time the war was still happening, but they didn’t question us at all and we were through security with tons of time to spare. I worked on my blog a bit using Simon’s computer and basically hung out until boarding time.
I really prefer to fly to Israel overnight, but they had rescheduled all the flights to be day flights, which mean landing just when you’d normally be going to sleep in America, but it’s morning in Israel. I tried to sleep some on the plane, but I wasn’t that successful. The airport was pretty empty, so we were through customs in very little time.
We managed to get our rental car and head on the way, but we couldn’t decide if we should go straight to see Zachary or go to Dave’s sister’s house first. The GPS decided for us, as there are times when the signal is jammed and frozen, and we were too tired to figure out the navigation when that happened, so we just went to Dave’s sister, as Dave knows how to get there.
I lay down for about 3 hours and when I woke up, I found out that Simon went to Jerusalem with his cousins and was already with Zachary! So I was jealous!
So Dave and I got ready and headed there too. Simon decided to stay over that night with Zachary, so we brought him clothes too.
When we got to Jerusalem, our first stop was for iced coffee, and then we started walking towards where the boys were.
Here we are with Zachary and one of our nephews – two of them were there!
We walked through the Old City towards Zachary’s dorms (which have since moved out of the Old City!)
Zachary took us to see his dorm and the classrooms (this was before he decided we were too embarrassing) and we enjoyed taking pictures from the roof there. You can see that everything was empty below, as things were closed for the month of the war.
We saw our friend from home that goes to Zachary’s school as well:
And I got to meet, or re-meet, a woman who I knew 16 years ago in NJ, when our boys were in the same play group. This year we realized they are in school together and she was visiting at the same time we were.
We left Zachary and Simon and headed back to Dave’s sister’s house for the night. The next day was Wednesday and Passover started that night, so we were mainly getting ready for the holiday. Dave, his dad, and I went to a store to pick up some food, but mainly we didn’t do much that day!
Zachary and Simon saw this fire for burning the remaining bread before Passover and I thought this was a cool photo!
Zachary and Simon came back and also brought another friend from home who was with us for the holiday. Zachary and his friend and Dave and I slept in the neighbor’s house, so that night when we heard the siren for the first time, Dave and I were already in the shelter there, as that’s the bedroom we were sleeping in. The missile alerts come to your phone and at first, you get a warning saying they may be near you. After a few minutes, if they actually are near you, the siren goes off. We got a lot of the pre-alert warnings, but only 3 actually sirens. The second was on Passover as well, while Dave and I were napping in the shelter room again.
Thursday was the holiday, and in Israel it’s only 1 day instead of 2 days of holiday, so on Friday we got a visit from another nephew, his wife, and 4 kids. Simon was taking a bike ride at the time, but he came back to see them.
This one is two – look at her last year!
I love meeting new babies.
On Friday-Saturday, our nephew (whose parents we were staying with) and his wife and 4 kids were also staying over and it was crowded! His kids mainly speak Hebrew, and it was fun hearing Zachary and Simon talking to them. I can talk to them too, kind of!
Here they are, minus the baby, who I did get to hold as well.
That covers the first few days of our trip!
