Hello from Jerusalem! I have been flying since 9 am yesterday so needless to say I am very tired. I think I've gotten about 7 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours but I decided to delay my beautiful time of sleep a little bit to write you a lovely letter!!! Our flight from JFK to Jerusalem was packed with a lot of people, and we flew in a 747, and it's ginormous! It's like hauling a thousand-ton bag of sheep into the sky!!!! We saw a lot of Jews, from the super orthodox to the secular ones. It was very interesting to talk to everyone from Jerusalem to see their view on Israel and us. Israel is amazing and we are kind of weird, basically. And loud. At the end of it Neil, Ashley and I were the last ones on the plane and we wanted to see the second story (which is business class) so we asked if we could go up and they said yes. On the second story the pilots were just chillin and talking to each other and then before I knew it they had pretty much ushered us into the cockpit for pictures! So now we have awesome pictures of us in the cockpit of a ginormojet and it was really fun!!!!
After we got to Tel Aviv we took a bus to Jerusalem. Isreal looks just like it does in the pictures!!! It is very dry and desert-like, and all the buildings are made from more adobe-like material (although they are still very westernized). It was so exhilarating to turn the corner and see our first glimpse of the Old City and the Dome! It was like the scriptures coming to life! Then we pulled into the Jerusalem Center and all the staff and professors wth their children were there to greet us and show us around. We had an orientation meeting in the chapel, which is beautiful by the way. It has walls that are all almost completely glass so you can see out into the city while the speakers talk. After that we had tours of the center (very brief, but the center isn't very big so I don't think I really need a tour anyway) and then we took our stuff down to our rooms. Afterwards we ate dinner and had our first two classes (where I could barely keep my eyes open. I kept on falling asleep by accident and I didn't realize I was asleep until my head started nodding off and jerked me back awake). Then Ashley decided she REALLY needed to go work out, after being in airports and airplanes for two days, so we went to work out which was nice even if I am exhausted.
I'm going to go to bed now so I'll finish up whatever else I wanted to say later, probably Saturday. Good luck and thanks for the emails!
-Annie
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