Day 1 -- 06/10/18

Welcome to my blog! This is mostly for me to keep track of everything I do this summer (as I have quite a bad memory), as well as for my mother to know that I'm still alive, so please excuse any typos or parts that don't make much sense. Feel free to leave comments or let me know of anything I should check out! I also haven't figured out how to put in pictures yet, so ignore references to images (:





After a week of very intensive, but overall very fun, coding bootcamp in Chapel Hill, NC, it was time to travel to Jerusalem! Somehow, over the course of this trip, it seems as though every single bad travel experience that could happen did (I’m honestly trying to come up with one that I missed, and I’m drawing a blank). For starters, my first flight was delayed three hours, meaning that I had to sprint through the airport to just barely make it onto my next one. When I started running I was happy that I’ve been running so much recently, as I thought it would make this much easier, but turns out running with a fifteen pound backpack with all of my non-clothes possessions is actually quite difficult regardless of how much you can normally run.


Once I got on, I found my seat, only to have it occupied by some guy who didn't really speak English. He asked if we could just trade seats, and pointed back at his -- a middle seat. I should have just said no, but I was already so tired and had already held the plane up so much that I took it.


After arriving, I went down to get my luggage which was, of course, not there, but rather still in Newark (but hopefully will be with me by tomorrow!). After getting all of this sorted out, I took a shuttle to my dorm. I sat next to a wonderful woman and her husband who have a lot of family living in Jerusalem. It turned out that she also went to Brown, and got her graduate degree at UNC Chapel Hill, where I had just been!


Although the shuttle was supposed to take me to my dorm, the driver instead said that it was easier and cheaper for me to just get dropped off by a bus that would take me close enough. This may have been true, but considering I had spent a total of less than an hour in Israel, do not have any data or wifi, and have a very weak internal sense of direction, getting to the dorm was not quite that simple. However, walking around combined with my time on the bus did give me an early appreciation for the city -- from the very little I’ve seen, it does look like what everyone says: a fascinating blend of tons of cultures and a mix of new and old worlds. Very excited to really observe all of it when I’m not quite as distracted by constantly monitoring my map to make sure I hadn’t put myself on a bus travelling in the opposite direction!

One of many views from outside my dorm!
(It's on top of a huge hill)

For the last mishap of the trip, when I finally did locate the correct dorm office, the clerk told me that while there was a mention of me in the system, I had no room assignment. This somehow got sorted out (I think they just found a misplaced form, but it is very hard to tell when everyone is speaking Hebrew). I got into my room eventually, met one of the people in the suite (seemed nice enough, but will be leaving in two days), and set out to find something to eat for dinne
r. There is a little stretch of fast-food-ish restaurants right down the street, so I ordered some pasta to-go, and came back to the room. It was definitely not the fantastic food of Israel that I’ve been hearing so much about, but after so much happening in the past ~day, all I really wanted was a ton of carbs --- and that’s exactly what I got!