Shavua Tov!

"Shavua Tov" or "Good Week" is the traditional greeting at the end of Shabbat and through Sunday morning. It's been quite a week. Flying from California to Israel is quite the trip. We transferred airlines in Las Vegas which meant we had to switch terminals and obtain boarding passes and pass through security again. Fortunately, our luggage was checked through to our final destination. Our layover in Vegas was a mere 90 minutes which really just wasn't enough time to make a relaxing transition between terminals. Our second layover was in Atlanta and that turned out to be a four hour layover because the flight to Tel Aviv was delayed an hour.

At Atlanta, several guys tried to get a minyan of ten men together to pray the evening service but there weren't enough kippah-wearing guys around so everyone davened Maariv alone. And, on the Atlanta to Tel Aviv flight, morning happened so it was time for Shachrit, which includes a tallit and tefillin. No one organized a minyan on the plane as the sun began to quickly rise on the horizon so most people davened in their seats, including myself, and it was my first Shachrit with tallit and tefillin on a plane. The guy sitting on my left was also davening but he was faster than I and the only thing he said to me on the flight was, "Don't forget Mincha!" (the afternoon service) as we are getting closer to our destination. But, I had already davened Mincha but he was asleep. Ha!

When we arrived at Tel Aviv, the taxi driver who took us to the airport in December was waiting for us as he'd promised and that was so very wonderful. Plus, he helped us carry our bags up to our apartment, which was very nice. We took two suitcases to California and came home with three - one new bag we filled with 50 pounds of books in English. Our taxi driver wanted to know why we weren't buying books in Hebrew instead - apparently he is deaf and didn't hear us speaking in the language enough to know that it would take me a month to translate a chapter of Harry Potter. Not what I call reading for pleasure. Anyway, we'll sell or donate many of our English books before we leave - providing additional English reading opportunities for fellow visitors.

So, we arrived at our apartment late on Thursday night and were thrilled to have a message from a friend inviting us to Shabbat dinner last night. It was so awesome to have an invitation and be able to look forward to spending time with great friends immediately upon our arrival. We RSVPed, called family to let them know we were back, and went to the convenience store to buy some food to get us through Shabbat.

We both slept well on Thursday night and woke up early. I went to the synagogue for morning services on Friday and it was so wonderful to have that 15 minute walk. I grew lazy in the States by driving everywhere and I really missed walking. Then, I napped. Then, we went to services and dinner with our friends on Friday night. Then, I only could sleep two hours all night and went to Shabbat morning services this morning and was exhausted at about 10 a.m. and came home after services and slept for five hours and woke up right before Shabbat ended. Now, I'm starting to get tired at about 7:30 p.m. and I really need some sleep because tomorrow is a very big day!