Touchdown

I’m on my way to Jerusalem, and the sun is setting over the parched hills on the horizon. The flight wasn’t nearly as long as I had imagined – only 10 hours. Most people would be frankly relieved by this, but I was actually disappointed. I love being in transit, having a good chunk of time between places where I can step back from my life and think about it from a new perspective. This is also why I really do love taking the train rather than flying (it’s for the environment too, but I suppose I could be doing it grudgingly). I was telling the woman next to me on the plane why I was disappointed to only have ten hours, six of them asleep, and went on to tell her about how wonderful my two and a half day train ride from Toronto to Green River , Utah was. She said: You don’t have children. I have six. I don’t like my trips to be longer than they have to be. Touché.

And now the sun has set over the hills, and the Orthodox man sitting in the seat next to me is moving effortlessly back and forth between his prayer book and his cell-phone. I’ve received help from no fewer than three smiling faces in the hour I’ve been on the ground: A gentle elderly man who chased me down because I dropped my swim goggles from my bag, the Russian about my age who held my hand through getting a bus ticket and getting on the right bus, the 14 year old girl who let me use her cell phone (which had a topless picture of Eminem as the background). I’m getting excited to start learning Hebrew through immersion rather than just my Rosetta Stone, though I’m happy to see that I can pick words and phrases up here and there already. Since I picked up the Arabic alphabet before I left, I can now at least sound out all three versions of the messages at the airport. Meaning is the tricky part.

And now it is dark, and I’m on my way to one of the oldest cities on Earth, where people weep in the streets for what they believe happened there thousands of years ago. I’m glad that after my travels I’ll be met at the station by a friendly face. I struck a deal with the people at the Arava that since nothing was really going to happen in the ten hours between 1:00 am and 11:00 am, I could meet up with my friend Daniel in Jerusalem and stay with him for the night, taking the early bus out of Jerusalem in the morning. Then, at 11:00, I start my new life here. But until then, it’s kind of nice to still be in transit for a while.