The First Few Days

It's been just over two weeks since we arrived in the United States, but tonight has been my first opportunity to blog. Things have been crazy and emotionally intense. In my next few posts, I'll try to re-cap the adventures of the past two weeks.

Here is the last picture we took before boarding the plane at Ben Gurion Airport (I'm on the far right):


Sadly, my kosher McDonald's-inspired smile didn't last very long. I was asleep when the plane took off in Tel Aviv, but I cried all through the landing in Boston, and when we walked out of the airport, and many more times in the ensuing days, most recently on Shabbat morning when Adam's family's synagogue sang Hatikvah during morning services. I hadn't expected to feel so homesick so soon, and it's tough, but I'm trying to focus on enjoying my friends and family.

Luckily, I've had plenty of opportunities to enjoy them. We arrived in Boston two weeks ago (on a Tuesday) and flew to Florida the next day. We were supposed to land in Palm Beach at 9:30pm and get a good night's sleep at Adam's Nana's house in West Palm Beach before driving to Miami the next morning for the family cruise to the Western Caribbean. Unfortunately, our flight was delayed by bad weather, and we didn't make it to Nana's until after 4:00am the next day. My specially-prepared kosher meals were supposed to arrive at the dock a few hours later, at 10:30am, but they were delayed by the same bad weather and didn't show up until 4:30pm -- and that only because of our many frantic phone calls to FedEx.

The picture below was taken just after the meals finally arrived, as the ship was leaving Miami. Things got much better after this point!