The 39.5 Hour Trip

I have finally arrived in Jerusalem and am well and safe! The entire trip took 39.5 hours (but who's counting). First we all flew from Salt Lake to Chicago, from thence to Austria, and on to Tel Aviv. Then a bus to Jerusalem.

The interesting part was in Austria: the group is 80 people, and half the people had a 2 hour layover before they were off to Tel Aviv, and the rest of us had an eleven hour layover. The airport is just outside Vienna, or Wien in German, and....seven euros later, we're in Vienna! It was very exciting to everyone to be on the metro that goes to the city from the airport: for the most part it was above ground, and for the first time in about 24 hours we saw the sun, a blue sky, and for the first time in months - it was green! Spring is in Vienna! We broke off into groups of approximately ten people depending on what we wanted to see. My group wandered around a lot, saw Stephansdome (I can't spell in German, forgive me) and a lot of other pointy churchy type buildings. We also saw the Vienna university and the parlaiment building, and several exciting fountains. My favorite part was when we walked through the gardens (there are a lot!) and took a nap on the grass. It being 4 am at home, this was glorious.

We arrived in Tel Aviv at about 1 am Jerusalem time, went through customs and baggage claims, had a 45 minute bus ride to the Jerusalem Center, and arrived at about 3 am. (For your information, Jerusalem is NINE hours AHEAD of Colorado time.) The other 40 people had gotten there at 5:30 pm, so they were all asleep when we arrived. We had fruit and muffins the center had made just for us, and then we went out on the balcony and looked at Jerusalem by moonlight (AMAZING!) so we didn't get to our rooms until about 3:45. The rooms each have 4 people, and 2 of us were late comers. Our roommates woke up enough to tell us that everything's in fours so we each get one of everything, and oh by the way the shower head is a little funky. This was an understatement, but we can live with it. It felt so good to be clean, and no longer stinky, and get clean clothes on and go to SLEEP!

Then we were awakened at about 4:30 or 5 to a very odd sound. We sort of vaguely knew it was the call to prayer (5 times daily for Muslims). We all sort of sat up and asked, "Is someone singing?" or "Should we be praying right now?" and "This is gonna be a long 2 months."