Goodbye Israel!

As I write this, I’m sitting again in the United First Class lounge at Frankfurt International Airport.  We took a 5:30am (Israel time) flight to Frankfurt, and we had a 12:00pm (Frankfurt time) flight to Dulles in D.C., but it was delayed an hour.  I swear this airport wants to trap us here.  Anyway, we made our way to the United lounge after deplaning and were allowed once again to slip into the First Class section of the lounge.  We also got another one-hour T-Mobile Internet card for free, and you will read this blog post shortly after my time begins and I hit the publish button.

Since I wrote my last blog post, we moved to our third and final hotel.  We left early in the morning on a long drive with several stops.  Our first stop was a tree-planting excursion.  We each dug out soil and placed a small sapling inside; we then recited a prayer.  In Judaism, this ritual honors loved ones past and present.  After we left the tree-planting site, we drove to the city of Haifa, where our guide stopped the car so we could get out and take in a beautiful view of the Mediterranean Sea.  Our next stop was the ruins of Caesarea, where the seat of Roman power lies in excellent condition.  We saw an aqueduct, a theater, and a coliseum, and it was easy to see the shape of the ruins and imagine what they looked like long ago.  After we left Caesarea, we drove to our third hotel in the city of Tel Aviv.

Once there, we said goodbye to our guide, who had taken us all over Israel for the past week, and checked in.  We didn’t have much time before dinner, so we freshened up and then went out into the city.  We easily found our restaurant – which miraculously had free Wi-Fi, as did many places along the route.  We took a taxi back that night, as we were stuffed from the meal.  Unfortunately, our Tel Aviv hotel charged $20 for a day of Internet.  I bought the access and started it right after we got back from dinner.  That way, it would expire just before bed the next night – our last night in Israel.

The next morning – our final full day in the country – we enjoyed an excellent breakfast by the beach, and then set off for our day excursion at the Palmach museum.  The museum featured an interactive walkthrough of rooms set up to depict events in the life of Israel’s first defense force.  It was interesting to see the genesis of both the state and the army chronicled in such a non-standard fashion.  After we got back from the museum, we went to the beach for a little while and swam in the Mediterranean.  We only had limited time after the beach excursion, so we went down to the pier, where our dinner restaurant was located.  Amazingly, the pier featured almost-ubiquitous Wi-Fi access.  We were very tired from a full day of events, and we knew that we would get back to the room around 9:30pm and have to wake up at 1:30am the next morning (this morning) for our taxi.  I managed to get a fair amount of sleep anyway, and I also slept this morning on our first flight.

That’s about it from Israel.  We will arrive in Washington, D.C., at around 5:00pm today Eastern time.  Look for Twitter updates – and maybe more photos on this blog – in the coming days.

Lots of Rest, Photos, and Fun

Since I last posted, I’ve recovered from my sickness and gone on two days’ worth of excursions.  Yesterday, we drove from our first hotel to our second, stopping at several places along the way.

Our first stop was a large mountain city where several chronological layers of archaeology were on display.  We saw ancient bathhouses, entrance gates, palace bedrooms, and even horse stables.  We walked down into a passageway that was used to ferry water into the city from the outside.  Our second stop was an old synagogue where the floor mosaic had been mostly preserved.  The chamber containing the mosaic included a video depicting the story of its creation.  The last stop before we reached our second hotel was a series of pools, where we relaxed for an hour before continuing on our journey.

When we reached the hotel, I was dismayed to discover that the Internet was only available for a high price.  An hour of Wi-Fi here is equivalent to five dollars.  How unbelievable is that?  I understand that this place prides itself on rural living, but charging for one’s connection to the outside world is ridiculous.  Anyway, I bought four hours.  That should last me until we leave tomorrow morning.

Today was our first full day at our second hotel, and we spent most of it out in the country.  Our first stop was an old Jewish city, where we toured two synagogues of contrasting Jewish sects.  We also bought a new menorah, for what I believe was too high a price. (But the merchant was very nice, so maybe it all balances out.)  Our second excursion today was a long Jeep tour of the Golan Heights.  We saw various fruits and vegetables, some of which our Jeep driver picked and gave to us.  We also drove past several bombed-out Syrian bunkers from “back in the day.”  After our jeep tour, we met up with our main Israel trip guide, and she took us to a hill overlooking Syria.  It was my first view of the country. (Historical note: even though the conflict is over, Syria is still officially at war with Israel.)

Right now, I’m sitting in the room writing this blog post with the Internet turned off (to save precious connection time).  The rest of my family is off on a kayaking/rafting trip—that’s not really my cup of tea, and there wasn’t an opportunity for photography, so I stayed behind.

More blog posts to come.

Photos from Israel

I’m sick today (as I was yesterday), which means no excursions for me.  While you wait for more updates on my activities, check out these photos from around Israel.

 

Our First Day in Israel

After arriving at our hotel room early this morning, we quickly headed to bed.  We needed as much rest as possible for today’s excursion: a full-day tour of the Old City of Jerusalem.  We woke up at 8:00am, ate a quick breakfast, and made our way to one of Jerusalem’s many gates to meet our tour guide.  She was a young Israeli woman who spoke perfect English, had a bilingual son, and was married to a Canadian.  She gave us a tour of the various religious quarters in the Old City.  We also visited the Dome of the Rock, the Wailing Wall, the Davidson Center archaeological site, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  There was many a great photo opportunity.  Our guide also brought us around the streets of Jerusalem, showed us the various market areas, and took us to a falafel restaurant for lunch.  We left the tour feeling very knowledgeable and very tired.

After taking a rest at the hotel, we went up to the top floor where they have an Executive lounge.  Our hotel rooms include access to this lounge, where we found food and drink, prime seating with a view, and a big-screen TV.  We ate a little bit up there tonight, and I think we’re going to forgo a large dinner because we’re so tired and just go out for dessert.

By the way, I’ll have photos from the whole day’s events up later in the vacation.

An Arrival Fraught with Problems

After I wrote that last blog post, we waited around for a few hours until they kicked us out of the United lounge.  We then split up: my dad and I went to the Lufthansa lounge while my mom and sister explored the airport shops and restaurants.  Later, we ate a nice, relaxing dinner, and then walked over to our gate.  Flights departing for Israel out of Frankfurt have their own secluded terminal with extra security (I was patted down for only the second time in my entire life).  The flight itself was uneventful; we slept for the most part, except for a pretty bad meal in the middle.

After we disembarked, we breezed through Passport Control and grabbed our bags easily.  That’s when I started to wonder if things could possibly go this smoothly.  So of course, things started going wrong.  First, the currency exchange machine ripped us off.  We put in a credit card to draw funds and exchange them into Israeli shekels, and the first transaction went fine.  However, when we decided to do it again, the machine didn’t give us the shekels.  We are of the opinion that the machine still charged the credit card for the money it didn’t give us.  We then went to the taxi area to get a ride to our hotel.

That’s when the second problem occurred.  We had been told that the taxi ride would be a flat fee of a certain amount, but when we had loaded up all the bags and gotten in the car, the driver told us it would be more expensive.  We would have left and waited for another one, but for two reasons: 1) our bags were loaded, and 2) the driver said all cab drivers would give us the same rate.  We didn’t fully believe him, but we were in a foreign country and didn’t want to push our luck.  So we took the ride to the hotel, jumped in bed, and feel asleep.

As I finish writing this, we just returned from a day excursion: a guided private tour of the Old City of Jerusalem.  More on that in my next update.

Travel Hassles Can Pay Off

As I write this, I’m sitting in the United Red Carpet Club lounge at Frankfurt International Airport.  Our flight here from Dulles was delayed several hours due to thunderstorms, so we missed our connecting flight to Tel Aviv and had to book another one.  The only problem is that it’s 11:30am local time as I write this (it will be published later, but I’ll get to that), and our flight is at 10:00pm.  That means we have an outrageous amount of time to kill before we board.  We were able to get to the United lounge, but this place closes at 5:30pm.  Luckily, we were told that we could go to the Lufthansa lounge after that.

The best part of this “my dad is a Global Services member” thing is that they let us into the First Class section of the United lounge even though we’re not flying First Class to Tel Aviv.  They have soup, sandwiches, and pizza in here – as well as the usual assortment of cookies, candies, and snacks.  The only downside is that the T-Mobile Hotspot service isn’t free – not even to Global Services members.  They gave us a 1-hour access card for free, but we’re waiting to use it until later in our stay.  That’s why I’m writing this at 11:30am despite the fact that you’re reading it much later: I’m waiting to hit the “post” button until my hour starts.

I’ll try to provide more updates as the trip continues, but you should check my Twitter page (http://twitter.com/erier2003) for all the details.

UPDATE 2:37PM: My stomach hurts.  Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten all that food in this lounge.  But it was so free!

UPDATE 3:40PM: Our free Internet card isn’t working.  It says 05-2009 on it, which leads me to believe that it expired.  Leave it to the airlines to ruin the one free thing I really care about.

Lots to cover, where to start?

As I said in the title of this post, I’ve got a lot to say.  I last blogged in mid-April, and a lot of stuff has happened since then.

Well, for starters, I turned eighteen on April 28.  My parents and sister took me out to Clyde’s, one of my favorite restaurants, for dinner.  We then proceeded to my grandmother’s apartment, ostensibly to help her with some chores.  But of course, since we hadn’t yet had cake, I was suspicious.  We picked up my aunt and uncle on the way to my grandmother’s apartment (clue #2), and it was not long after we arrived that the singing began.  We did indeed have cake, and we ate it too.  I received several excellent gifts that day, including several Barnes & Noble gift cards and a Slingbox PRO-HD TV streaming box.  Despite all the hype from turning eighteen, I don’t really feel much different.  And I still haven’t registered for the Selective Service – out of sheer laziness, yes, but I also don’t think they even want me.

I also took my first AP exam, the culminating event of a long year of Calculus.  I took the exam from 8:00am to 1:00pm – a long, grueling process by which all the Calculus knowledge slowly seeped out of my brain and onto the answer sheet.  Since the exam, by the way, we’ve just been learning about extraneous Calc topics and concepts by way of graham crackers with frosting, brownies, candy, and cookies.  Yeah, I love my Calc teacher.

Mother’s Day was also a lot of fun.  My dad was actually away on a business trip, so my sister and I got up early on our own to fix a great breakfast for our mom.  We made cards, brought up the newspaper with the tray, and brought Maddie along.  We even got our dad on the phone for a bit.  Needless to say, all of it was recorded for posterity on my camera.  Of course, Maddie helped herself to quite a bit of food at one point, but the fact remains: our mom had a great Mother’s Day.

Last Saturday (May 16), we went to a neighborhood event for dogs entitled “Strut Your Mutt”.  The event, which consisted of vendor booths with free pet swag, contests for “Best [Insert Dog Characteristic Here]”, and a parade of dogs and owners.  We took a ridiculous amount of great free stuff, and Maddie even placed second in the “Best Kisser” competition.  By the way, you should really be reading Maddie’s Twitter page for the latest on her life.

While Saturday was a great day for Maddie, this past Monday (May 18) was a bittersweet day for me.  Monday night, from 8pm to 10pm, was the Season 7 finale of my favorite TV show, the FOX action series 24.  I have really loved Season 7 (“Day 7” in 24 terminology), and this double-episode finale was nothing short of brilliant.  I know that it’s received a lot of flak (I’ve been monitoring #24 on Twitter Search), but I thought it did a great job of both tying up a few loose ends and setting up an interesting Season 8.  I can’t count the number of times I was shouting at my TV during the 24 viewing sessions that quickly became routine on Monday nights.

Along the lines of 24 and Twitter, can I just say how much I love celebrities on Twitter?  Twitter plays host to great discussions and insight from personalities such as 24’s Annie Wersching, CNN’s Ed Henry and Larry King, NPR’s Peter Sagal, and StarWars.com’s Bonnie Burton.  Ed Henry is constantly posting photos behind the scenes of live shots and political events; Annie Wersching is a great source for images on the set of 24; and Bonnie Burton has easily become the link queen in my Twitter subscription pool.  I am truly glad to see that these individuals (and many, many others just like them) have embraced social media as a tool of outreach, communication, and promotion.

We’re getting very close to the end of the school year.  Most of my classes are now much more casual, and I have barely any homework anymore.  So let’s look ahead to the summer; mine is jam-packed.  I’m taking two SAT II Subject Tests (Math and Literature).  But after that, it gets much more fun.  I’ll be working for several weeks at my school, getting paid to help out with technology-related tasks.  I’m also taking two classes at American University: one in broadcast journalism and one in general filmmaking.  To add to all this, I’ll be going on several college visits across the east coast – and even some in the Midwest.  And that’s not to mention our family trip to Israel in mid-June.

So you should expect to see a nice big blog post about all of this (or at least some of it) in a month or two.  See you then.

Actually, this would be a good time to plug my Twitter feed.  I post multiple times per day and update my followers on the latest goings-on in my life.  So if these blog posts aren’t enough, follow me on Twitter.

College Tours, a Mini-Meetup, and More

Spring Break is officially over tomorrow.  I had two weeks (plus an extra day) of relaxation and school-free activities.

Well, not entirely.  While I wasn’t attending classes, I did have to travel quite a bit over the course of four days in the first week of break.  The reason being that I needed to get a head start on college tours.  On the first trip, from March 31st to April 1st, I went with my dad to look at Wheaton and Connecticut College.  Both schools looked appealing to me, and the campus-wide Wi-Fi certainly didn’t hurt.  I made it a ritual to try a specific lunch item from both colleges: a turkey sandwich with lettuce and mayonnaise on wheat bread.  Both colleges passed the taste test.  We returned home Wednesday night just in time for me to catch the live Force-Cast taping.  Then on April 3rd and April 4th I went with my mom to visit Skidmore and Vassar.  Again, both college had the right “individual attention liberal arts” feel to them.  At Skidmore we went out to lunch in a nearby restaurant (a Circus-style cafe where popcorn was served before the meal in lieu of bread), and at Vassar I again had my signature college lunch item.

You may have noticed that there was a day for me to relax in between those two college trips.  April 2nd was not a college visit day, but it was still a busy one for sure.  In fact, I had been looking forward to it for the past week.  You see, Bethany Hamilton (known to Force-Cast listeners as the Jedi Princess of Jazz) was in D.C. that week to visit with her family.  Knowing that I lived there, she asked if I wanted to meet up with her.  I of course accepted.  We took the metro and met up near the Newseum, since that was the area of D.C. that I was most familiar with.  Bethany had never been to the Newseum, so I thought I’d give her a brief tour.  We checked out several of the exhibits and galleries, and she took some pictures.  After we left, we hit up Starbucks for a drink and a snack before walking back to the metro.  It was really great to meet up with a fellow Force-Cast listener and I’m glad that Bethany had a good time as well.

The second week of my Spring Break was much less eventful.  The cherry blossoms were out in full bloom, and there were tons of tourists walking around my neighborhood (we had the most cherry blossoms of any D.C. suburb).  We took Maddie on several walks where she was praised and complimented by numerous tourists.  On Tuesday I had a brief session with my math tutor, where we did a little bit of practice work for the AP Calculus exam I’ll be taking in May.  Wednesday saw a trip to the bank and to Petsmart to buy Maddie a new bone—after all, we had to keep her happy and occupied for Wednesday’s Passover Seder at our house.  That Seder, along with a second one on Thursday evening at my aunt and uncle’s house, was full of good food and great conversation.  I was able to have some of my favorite Jewish food--Gefilte fish and matzoh ball soup, to name two, and Maddie even made an appearance as Elijah the Prophet during the seder at our house.  Friday was a little less hectic—no new episode of The Clone Wars to look forward to at night.  We went to Staples to get some printer ink for my grandma, and I stayed in the nearby Petsmart with Maddie.  We brought Maddie along so she could visit Grandma, whom she hadn’t seen in a few weeks.  Maddie was able to run up and down Grandma’s apartment’s hallway, which tired her out and left her much more docile on the ride home.

As I’ve said before, tomorrow is the first day of school after Spring Break.  I’m that much closer to the end of the school year, and to the jam-packed summer ahead.