How did we miss New Years??
Simple… our plane left JFK in New York at 1:20 pm on December 31st. New Years in Israel happenned 4 hours and 40 minutes after we took off which was far to early to celebrate. Eastern Standard Time New Years was at 7 am Israel time but we arrived at 6:30 am at Ben Gurion. Good luck trying to negotiate through passport control while tossing confetti. “Sylvestre” or not, the surly border police would not have been impressed. But whatever, I’m exhausted and it’s late and I am still going to post photos and tell you what we did today!

Welcome Home!

We of course started with our happy group photo. Can you spy Taltman/Oyster in there? How about Phoebe? Anyhow, afterwards, we headed off to Kfar Saba to hear a welcome message from Oranim’s Momo (“What’s cooking?”) – his plea for increased Jewish fertility made up for it’s complete lack of subtlety and political incorrectness with it’s total sincerity. Our trip participants now had a mission as we headed off to the North. First we stopped at Caesaria where the line of the day went something like this:

Yael (our tour guide): Who here knows Herod?
Trip participant: Harrod’s? That’s a department store in London!

Then we headed off for some ice breakers/team building excercises – lots of fun and big ups to the brave men and women who got wet for the sake of the group. Afterwards we visited the town of Zichron Yaakov on Mt. Carmel – I’d never been there before myself and was impressed that such a quaint town could uh… exist in Israel. Must be all the wine. This was followed by a visit to a Druze village where we all learnt something new about the Druze. Finally, our travels for the day ended at our Hotel in Haifa for some very badly needed sleep. Tomorrow we’re going to see the Bahai temple gardens, hot water springs and uh… other cool stuff. Really. Don’t expect anything deep from me – I am totally knackered from all the travel. Here are some pics for you to enjoy:

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About the author

ck

Founder and Publisher of Jewlicious, David Abitbol lives in Jerusalem with his wife, newborn daughter and toddler son. Blogging as "ck" he's been blocked on twitter by the right and the left, so he's doing something right.

9 Comments

  • hey ck- you need any recent olim to talk to the brithright group… you just let me know! i love promoting aliyah … 🙂

  • You sure you got the juice the confront 40 American kids about Aliyah? Especially after that craaaazy looking New Year’s eve party?

  • The Druze village was Daliyat Al-Carmel? I was there recently — we had lunch and I bought a carpet on the drive up to Akko. There wasn’t much to see there, but it was my first trip to a Druze village so it was enjoyable for that reason alone.

  • Hey Ck its too bad I missed you guys I was living in Zichron like a month ago its a beautiful place and they have some fun bars there too

  • thats terrific. youre going to have a blast. for how many on the trip is their first time to israel?
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