We are in Jerusalem!

We just wanted to let you all know that we made it here safely. Jerusalem is full of people and is as beautiful as we remember - we can't believe it's been 9 years since we were here!

After arriving on Israir airlines early this morning, we traveled from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by sheirut (shuttle). We then met up with our landlord whom we are renting from for the first couple of nights and got settled in our studio apartment located very close to Ben Yehuda and center of the city. We then walked around the city center to locate our ulpan and grab a falaful, and then we embarked on the long walk down to Pardes, where we will be studying starting in September. It's fun to finally see the school we have been planning to attend - and so far the faculty and staff have been friendly and helpful.

Needlesstosay, after 36 hours of traveling, we are exhausted and hopeful to catch up on sleep tonight! We did pick up our cell phones and hope to get them up and running soon. Otherwise, our main goal is to find an apartment for our year-long stay.

Thanks for everyone's good wishes and prayers - we are happy to be here!

We leave for Israel in less than 2 weeks!

We are departing for Israel on July 30th out of JFK, to arrive in Tel Aviv the morning of July 31st. We will then travel to Jerusalem and stay in temporary housing for a few days. Meanwhile, we plan to enroll in the Beit Ha'am ulpan (Hebrew classes) beginning August 1st and to look for an apartment near Pardes (where we will be studying for the year, beginning on September 4th).

If you're in Chicago, feel free to stop by our "going away" BBQ on Sunday, July 23rd - we will be hanging out from 12-3pm on the lakefront, just south of the Waveland Golf Course (off Recreation Drive) - hope to see you there!!

Israeli News Source

As you can imagine, we are following the news of the current conflict between Israel and Hesbollah closely, so we thought we would share a link to the Israeli newspaper, Ha'Aretz. The newspaper is directly translated into English on this site, and regarding news in the Middle East, we feel it is more objective than most American news sources.