Finally Home

Good Afternoon.

After a relaxing flight of 10 hours, I finally arrived at the holyland. This flight was nothing like any other flight I have been on. There is nothing quite the same as being a plane full of fellow soldiers and people making Alyiah. (It actually was a record flight because 55 soldiers-to-be were on the flight, the most to date.)


When we left JFK, we had a moving ceremony where we said goodbye to our parents and friends, then we were on the flight. When we landed, we were welcomed by various people, soldiers and officials, including Bibi Netanyahu and Noam Sharansky at Israel's old terminal. This means that the whole terminal was for us and no other flight. It was a very moving ceremony, where strangers came up to us, hugged us and wished us luck on our journey.

Once the ceremony was over, we got our first taste of Israeli Beauracracy. We had to go upstairs to the back of the terminal and register our names in order for us become citizens. Since the flight was run through Nefesh Be Nefesh, and all the lone soldiers are on Garin Tzabar, there was no communication between the two groups and as such, we were told to do things in a different order, depending on who told us what. Once everything was worked out, we were then lead to the luggage claim, where there were two belts of luggage going at the same time. Once the whole mess was worked out, we were finally allowed to leave and off I went, with my father and grandparents to my grandparent’s house.