The Case of the Nearly Stolen Suitcase and other travel adventures

First blog from Israel! Are you excited? Cause I am!

First, before I get to the Israel part, I just need to say what an awesome last couple of weeks I had in Cali and Portland. Giants games, weddings, epic floats, and just hanging out with all my friends.

Both of my flights (Portland to Newark and Newark to Tel Aviv) were fairly uneventful, I just slept for most of them. I even had an empty seat next to me on my flight to Tel Aviv so I could stretch out! Unfortunately, the man in the isle seat slept the whole time and wouldn't wake up, which made it very hard to go to the bathroom. Finally I just started yelling at him, "Sherutim! Sherutim!" (bathroom! bathroom!) and he got the idea and got up. 

I did however learn several things during my 7 hour layover in Newark:

1) Although it sounds like New York, Newark is actually located in New Jersey
2) People in New Jersey really enjoy their leathery skin and having their butts hang out of their short shorts. People from Portland do not enjoy this view as much
3) Newark Airport is taking a stance against technology by not having any accessible outlets to charge electronics

I landed in Tel Aviv around 3:45pm on Wednesday, and easily went through customs and got my bags. I met up with one of my fellow classmates outside of customs in hopes we could ride a sherut (a shared taxi van) together to Jerusalem. Unfortunately since we were going to different parts of Jerusalem we were put on separate sheruts. And here is where my adventure really begins.

There was one other large group of people on my Sherut, an Israeli soldier and his family who were visiting him. The driver dropped them all off then we headed to my apartment. We got there and he was taking out my bags, and handed me two and started to walk away. I asked where my third bag was and he said, "What third bag?". We looked in the back of the sherut and sure enough my bag was gone! Now, this was bad enough, but this was my suitcase with all my underwear! It is not something I could wait for it to be found!

I convinced the sherut driver to take me back to where he dropped off the family before. He showed me which building they walked into, and together we just started knocking on every door! After several doors I found them and my bag. They claim they didn't realize it wasn't their bag-- I'm pretty sure they just wanted all my shoes!

So the driver took me and my bags back to my apartment building. I got there, and realized that none of the doors were numbered, so I didn't know which one was mine. Again, door to door knocking. Luckily the first people home knew Rayna who told them I was coming, and they showed me where I live.

I spent the rest of the night getting to know my roommate Elle and unpacking. We had a fabulous dinner at the coffee shop next to my building. While unpacking, there was live klezmer music playing and children dancing in the streets. It hit me then that I am in Israel. I am here for a year and get to experience a place unlike any other. 

Tomorrow morning I'm off to HUC to get all registered and then time to explore the city! I promise to take pictures for the next blog post!