#3

hello. shalom. salaam.
i am writing from step one of my journey- day 2 in israel.
thus far, i had a pretty decent 10 hour plane ride where i watched "confessions of a shopaholic" (i do not recommend) and "madagascar 2" slept and ate meat for the first time in a while. of course theres always the overweight, smelly israeli that has to put his bag above your seat. but thankfully no one was sitting next to me! waiting in JFK for 5 hours doing laps around the terminal and duty free shops was also a blast. imagine the movie The Terminal i guess.
last night we had a shabbat dinner with what seemed like 100 loud jews (family) and 50 huge dogs (really only 12 people and 3 dogs). at dinner i ate even more meat... i'll get used to it again i guess... oh ya... and cockroaches are definitely in season now! otherwise the weather is beautiful.

today we went to rosh hanikra which are these caves at the north part of the country at the lebanon border. the caves are made by the Mediterranean sea crashing into it and water dripping down from the rocks. the walls are very salty and have beautiful colored algae growing on them. it was definitely a nice place including the cable car ride you have to take to get down there and the very cheesy movie they played that included water spraying at the audience whenever they showed the waves crashing into the caves. very wannabe-disney if you ask me.

on the way there we stopped at a mcdonalds to get some ice cream. even though i hate going to mcdonalds here, its mildly entertaining to see that they have hamburgers in pita instead of a bun if you want. and on the way back we stopped for shwarma at some famous place in haifa (at which point i left my brand new camera on the table. we went back half an hour later and got it back though). after shwarma we tried going to this apparently beautiful park, but it had closed a few hours earlier so we took a tour of the town which was equally nice. it was really cute and full of little coffee shops and art galleries.. oh and more ice cream... kinda like miracle mile for a miami reference and... ya i have no reference for worcester. haha.
all this time outside has left me dehydrated and with a huge headache.

as far as plans for malawi... oy vey. lets just get there already so we can overcome all these stupid road blocks which currently seem to be neverending. ummmm i cant believe i'll be in malawi in like 5 days.

until next time, salaam