Day 1: Travel and Arrival

We left San Francisco International Airport bright and early Sunday and arrived without a hitch at LAX for our connecting flight to Israel. The El Al Airlines security was very thorough, some of us being questioned for over 5 minutes. The flight left on time. We flew over the arctic circle through Greenland an north of Iceland--some of the students were treated to a dazzling display of the northern lights! Total flight time was 14.5 hours, which seemed like a long time for most of us who who don't sleep well on planes. Still, it beats walking!

When we arrived at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv at around 2pm Israel time, we were greeted at the baggage claim by Amnon from Oranim (our tour company). Everyone got their luggage (whew!) and we were on the bus and traveling to a neaby town for quick orientation and dinner. All in all, total time from when we entered SFO to when we left Ben Gurion was around 22 hours.

After dinner, we traveled north near Nahariyah where we are staying at Yehi'am Kibbutz for our first two nights. Everyone was pretty beat when we arrived, so we got them to their rooms so they could try to beat the jetlag and maybe get a little sleep.

Enjoy the pictures!  (note: The pics are uploaded at a quality good enough for small prints and viewing full screen on most monitors.  I can get you the original resolution copies at the end of the trip, but they are too large to upload on the road with sporadic internet connections.)

Israel Trip - Day 1