Shalom, Jerusalem

After flying all night, we finally arrived at the Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel. We were all so excited to be here, but a little uneasy with the fact that we are on the last leg of our trip. As we were walking through the beautiful, brand new airport, we were drawn to the fact the almost everyone is Jewish. We went into the bathroom and said, “the janitor’s Jewish.” We walked outside to get our taxi and said, “the taxi driver’s Jewish!” We were so excited because I had never been in a place (except for Ikar) where the majority of people are Jewish. We drove past Tel Aviv and through checkpoints and we went to Jerusalem. After we got to the point when we could see the beautiful and spectacular city, I fell asleep, only awaken by our (Jewish) taxi driver asking for directions to the place that we were going. We were all very tired, so we went to get some food and then we took a nap.

After that we met up with Scott Perlo, who is a friend from Los Angeles. He took us around the city and into the old city. We went to visit the one, the only, the beautiful Western Wall. We walked up to it and we prayed (we didn’t have paper to write our blessings on and put in the wall, so we are planning on going back). When we had finished our prayers (there were tears in my mom’s eyes) we walked backwards from the wall, since you are not allowed to turn your back to it. It was an incredible sight. After that, we went to Ben Yehuda Street, which is in the downtown area. It reminds me of the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. That was fun to see. Because the day after we arrived in Jerusalem, it was going to be the Day of Jerusalem, or Yom Yerushalayim, the day had lots of rally-like things going on. Yom Yerushalayim is the celebration of the reunification of Jerusalem. There was a lot of music and dancing and singing. It was fun to see.

For the past four months we had been learning about other people’s cultures, and now we get to learn about our own. As we walked through the streets we didn’t feel like such foreigners. I don’t speak Hebrew, but I can understand every couple of words. It is also nice and it feels very comfortable to be in a place that looks so familiar and to be able to read the signs. We were so excited to be here. It was like being at home, but totally foreign. Even though I had never been here before, it felt very familiar to me. I loved walking around seeing Jewish stars and the Israeli flag. After one day, I had fallen in love with the place. It was different then the kind of love that I felt for Tanzania. Here, the people aren’t as sweet and warm and welcoming as the Tanzanians, but in a way, it feels like home.