Well, after almost 24 hours of travelling, we have finally arrived in the holy land. It’s been quite a day. Things begun normal enough, with everyone getting to know each other with some ice breakers before we boarded our flight in NYC.

But we hit a little bit of a hiccup with our connecting flight.  Though our itinerary called for a decently long layover in Toronto, we didn’t expect to sit on the tarmac for an extra 2 hours waiting for the snow and ice to clear. The good news is that once we finally got here, the weather was gorgeous, 70 and sunny!  I guess we’ll take snow in Toronto over snow in Israel like they had to deal with a couple of weeks ago.

After meeting up with our 8 new Israeli friends who will be joining us on the trip for the next ten days at the airport in Tel Aviv, we loaded up the bus and drove directly to Arad to have dinner and get to know each other a little bit better.

With more icebreakers and a discussion on Jewish values still to come tonight, everyone is having a great time so far and is excited to get up early to climb Masada before sunrise tomorrow morning!

Ad Machar (until tomorrow),
Joel and Miriam