Day 1. Istanbul Ataturk Airport - Tel Aviv

Well, it's not actually the first day in Israel. As some of you might know, the original plan was to be in Tel Aviv last Friday. Thanks to the stormy weather conditions and the nasty traffic in Istanbul, I had to postpone my flight till Sunday. I didn't want to risk this flight so I decided to spend the night at my friends Asli Arcan and Umit Ozkan's cute apartment in Tesvikiye Istanbul. It's on the European side where the airport is located. Asli cooked dinner for me and Umit and it was quite delicious. (The celery salad with grapefruit sauce was amazing.) Sunday morning around 10am, I took a cab and went to the airport. However, due to severe sand storms in Israel, my flight had a 6-hour delay only to be canceled at 7pm. Ben Gurion was closed down until 6am Monday. So I shared a cab ride with a Turkish lawyer (girl), and two journalists, Swiss and French respectively, who came to Istanbul to interview expatriates from France, Belgium, and Switzerland. Bought a chocolate cake and went to Asli's again. Had couple of hours of sleep before I was on my way to the airport at 5am in the morning. It was FREEZING! We were supposed to depart at 7:40am. Of course we didn't. It was 11:30am when we finally took off. Until then, I had pleasant chats with some of the co-travelers most of which were Sephardic / Turkish Jews, and took short, uncomfortable naps.

On the plane, I was sitting in the middle of a girl from New York who was visiting her brother in Tel Aviv, and and old Israeli businessman, Ehud, coming back from Ethiopia. Ehud was very talkative, which at first, I have to admit, worried me. However he ended up being such a great, cheerful companion that I hardly felt my fear of flying and weariness. He knew I was afraid of flying, hence the never-ending jokes he made. I even took notes of them! Apparently back in 1967, he was working as an information management specialist in Adana, a southeast city of Turkey. He says he isn't that religious  but one evening he was relaxing at his garden after work, it was Friday, and they had a power outage, something not so unusual those days. It was beautiful though, as you could see the stars in the clear night sky. After some time, a guy comes up to him and says "Happy Shabat, my friend!" Ehud was amazed by the fact that, this random Turk actually knows that it was the holy day for a Jew and comes all the way just to say that to him. He was so amazed that he's telling this story to a Turkish girl he just met on the plane in 2010. I should also mention that he shared his food with me on the plane when we realized that my vegetarian plate was going to be late. Once I got my food, I offered my pickles to him. The flight was an hour and 45 minutes long. Tel Aviv looks so beautiful from above. The beaches, the city, and the fields. Can't say I'm not impressed.

Anyways, I didn't have any troubles at the airport as I thought I would have. My luggage was one of the firsts that came out. The worst thing about tonight was the 250 shekels ($70) I paid for the cab ride to Neve Shalom / Wahat al Salam. Later that night, one of roommates told me that if I was an Israeli or someone who could speak Hebrew at the very least, I could have negotiated and reduce that price down to 80 Shekels!!! I should have thought. I don't know what happened to me for I almost always negotiate the price! Oh well. It was raining, and cold. My eyes were trying to absorb everything they see, like they were drinking the view, if that makes sense. That's when I thought about my fantasy of a camera that is placed inside the eye, and every time you blink, it clicks and you take a picture. I know one day it's going to happen.