The Beginning

At a little before four am this morning I safely arrived at Tel Aviv airport. With shaking hands and sweaty palms I fully suspected a long and tedious few hours ahead of me. Fortunately or possibly unfortunately I was dead wrong. I was asked two simple questions at passport control and issued a stamp outside of my passport, a stamp which was taken from me only moments later and ripped up. It was at this point that I have now been made aware that I should have found the authorities who would issue me a more perminent form of my visa. Though instead I collected my bag and, like a fish in a stream left the airport with no issue. What followed was a taxi ride that, if it weren't already abundantly clear, made me aware of the fact that I indeed was in a very foreign place. After an hour and a half of close calls with death by car crash and much closer calls with extreme invasions of personal space with my nine fellow passengers I was dropped off a few blocks from Demascus gate, a point from which I was marginally successful in finding my hostel and much more successful in sleeping for a good portion of the day. I was able to get a hold of the people in my organization and they assured me that my visa dilemna was a common problem that would only mean a little bit longer at check points. I have since spent some time coming to these small random revelations while socializing with my fellow backpackers. I will be having a perfectly normal conversation, talking politics or travel logistics and be struck with awe of the people i am with or where I am. I certainly am in fast pursuit of beginning to fulfill that pocket of wonderlust that has occupied my brain for far too long. Tomorrow I leave to sleep the remaining two nights before my training in a house somewhere further into Old Jerusalem with fellow internationals, hopefully more later.