tel aviv

I'm sitting here in the lobby of our hotel with my little brother, David, after spending the day traveling from JFK to Tel Aviv. I guess it was yesterday that I left Ben's apartment near Columbia and got lost on the subway route to the airport. Now, a time change and a 12+ hour flight later (I watched three movies), my whole family is jet lagged. Today is Saturday so it's the Sabbath here and most places are closed. But we walked down the beach and ate at KFC (my dad's choice), and we will have time to do some more exploring tomorrow before we take the train to Haifa. So, I've only had a small taste of this city but I'm excited to come back and explore it with Micah in less than two weeks!

I left Atlanta to go to New York last Tuesday, and I spent those few days wandering around/getting lost in the city. In the evenings, Ben would get off work and we would wander around together, without getting lost quite as much. When I was by myself, I was lot more ambitious about where it was possible for me to walk, so by the time I could meet up with Ben my legs were killing me. (An aside from my brother, "the average New Yorker walks three miles a day, or something like that.") For a while I doubted if I have the stamina to explore new cities with the itinerary I have planned for the summer, but now I feel much better and I think I just needed to work my way up.

Some places I went: The Design Museum, which is housed inside Andrew Carnegie's old mansion and where I got inspiration for some art projects for the fall; the reservoir in Central Park; an indie Spanish movie about soccer, Rudo y Cursi (starring my fave, Gael Garcia Bernal!); Greenwich Village; Little Italy for "the best cannoli on planet earth" and espresso; a taco stand near Columbia (not quite as good as Carrboro's, of course); Ground Zero; Times Square and all over the theatre district in an unsuccessful attempt to get a cheap ticket to a Broadway show.

Also, I have more concrete travel plans about getting to Bangladesh. On July 2, I'm going to fly from TLV back to JFK where I will meet up with the rest of my team on their way up from Raleigh. Then we will all travel to Dhaka via Dubai. Afterwards, Griffin and I are going to Malaysia and Thailand and I will fly out of Bangkok back to the U.S. on August 17.

My family is waiting on me to go exploring now, I think we are going to try find a place that is open so we can have tea or something. But one last thing, my brother and I are working on a project that you will all be able to enjoy via YouTube soon. He won't let me reveal any more, but trust me, it's good. The Travel Channel or the Discovery Channel might pay us millions for this :)

Love,
Sarah