Jerusalem and Orientation

After watching Remember the Titans and Date Night several times on the plane, Ellie and I arrived in Tel Aviv! We made it through customs and pushed our overloaded carts out to the taxi section for our first experience negotiating a taxi ride. We got in line for a shared taxi (well not really a line, Israeli's don't form lines, if you didn't know) and tried to find someone to help us. Many pushes and shoves and lots of sweat later, we were on our way to Jerusalem.

View of the Old City and Surrounding Neighborhoods

Driving through Jerusalem provides an incredible view of the mountains and hills around the entire city. From the Old City to the local neighborhoods on the rolling hills of Jerusalem, everything is photo worthy (pictures will be on Facebook soon). During orientation, we had an amazing tour of the four quarters in the Old City of Jerusalem and heard lots of the stories of each religion as we walked through. We visited the Armenian, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish quarters. We also went to the Western Wall at night and took a tour of the Kotel tunnels, which again included lots of stories. The wall is even more magnificent at night, and is surprisingly crowded.

The night life in Jerusalem is nowhere near that of Tel Aviv, but we managed to find a loud, crowded bar and a quiet bar for quality time with friends next to each other and with outside seating. The best part of going out was the waffle bar! That's right, waffles with any topping made to order, hot and fresh. Delish.
Speaking of food, the food here is incredible! Everything is fresh and unique to the chef. Fresh vegetables, real hummus, falafel, and rugelah for dessert!
There are about 120 people on my program (Career Israel) and most of them will be living with me in Tel Aviv and working in the general area. The rest will be in Jerusalem for their internships. There are a lot of Americans on the program, and a bunch of people from the UK and Australia as well. It's been great meeting so many new people from around the world (just like camp!).
That's about it for my week in Jerusalem. More updates soon (depending on internet access)!