Sunday 6/25/06 - Los Angeles & Toronto

Left house at  8:30 - right as planned. (That may be a first!) We arrived at LAX at 9:00 and found that Mom and Dad and Don and family were already there and checked in.  We checked into El Al very quickly. They sent our bags through X-ray and as the blue one came out, a woman said “של מי זה?”  (“Who’s [bag] is this?”)  So I raised my hand. She said, ”את מדברת עברית?” (“You speak Hebrew?”) To which I said “קצת” (“a little bit.”) Then I said, “But I’ll do better if you speak English.”  She wanted to know about the vitamins we were bringing for my friend David.  Afterwards, Marc commented that she probably assumed that we spoke Hebrew because our last name derives from the Hebrew word for wolf.  The flight was uneventful.  The kids were good as gold – they read, did puzzles and watched a video on Don and Sue’s portable DVD player.  Between ~11 pm (LA time) and ~4 am we all slept some.  They showed 3 movies, one on the flight to Toronto and 2 on the flight to Tel Aviv and fed us numerous times. 

Monday 6/26/06 - Tel Aviv – Day 1

We landed at Ben Gurion Airport about 4pm Israel time.  We got our passports stamped, got our bags, met David and got shooed onto a bus to take us to the hotel.  We got our rooms and then Don and Sue and Marc and I took the kids to the McDonalds around the corner.  Ordering was a little challenging at first because I didn’t know the Hebrew for chicken nuggets, which turns out to be “נגטס” (“nuggets”) Sue wanted to order ice cream cones, and although I know “ice cream,” I don’t know “cone.”  But the presence of pictures solved that problem. 

After the kids ate, we went to the beach, which is less than a block from the hotel.  One of the things we noted on our walk to the beach is some very interesting buildings.

Man, what a beach that was!  The sand is soooo soft and the water is soooo warm!  We took off our shoes and dabbled in the water and let the kids played in the sand and watched the sun set.  It was a wonderful introduction to Israel. 

Then back to the hotel where we found that Benjamin’s bag was missing.  Since the bag had definitely gotten on the bus to the hotel, we weren’t too worried, but he (of all the kids!) really needed to change his underwear and shorts, since his were wet from the beach!  So we changed him into a pair of Jonathan’s underwear and shorts (one of the advantages of having same sex children!) and went to dinner, trusting that the bag would show up (which it did – and so did the other two bags that went astray in addition to Benjamin’s.)  Dinner was Yemenite food and very good.  Then back to the hotel and got the kids settled (at 11 pm!)

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