YYZ to FLL

I am sitting in the airport writing this. I am on my way to Florida to visit boba; however, naturally it’s going to be some sort of adventure.

So I go through US customs and normally, I get stopped heckled and they drive me insane. Today, the guy asked me what I do. So I told him where I worked and explained that I work with university students, he called me an over-achiever. He wanted to know if during the time I was in Florida if I was going to eat sweet molasses cookies with my grandmother – the guy tried to have a sense of humor. Ok, fine. It actually didn’t take me an hour to go through customs, just 5 min. Impressive. So after that, I go through the joke of security. Let’s be honest. If you’ve flown through Ben Guirion Airport (or TLV for the airport code literate) you know that anywhere else is a joke; a laughing joke. So here we have people who are clearly trained in security (HA!) doing security. I get to the thing, put everything on and walk through. I beep. They tell me to take off my shoes. Excuse me?!?! The floor is gross (it has been snowing), it’s hard to take off boots and you want me to take them off. Fine, I take them off put them on their belt and go through, So that makes them happy. Now, I want to put my boots on. You think that there is room? Nope. The lady in front of me, wearing her fancy shmancy boots was also having trouble. We suggested to them that they should have benches available if they expect people to take their shoes off. They reply, “Oh, there is a chair.” Now, this chair (circa 1948) is being blocked by the “beeping machine.” So we laugh at that, walk through the dirty floor and find an area to put our shoes back on (there is also a back-log of people as we have to put out lap-tops back into the bags, collect our belongs and shoes) It’s funny. As I re-read what I am writing I notice I have turned into one of THOSE people. Ha ha ha. Oh well. I guess I am an overachieving, terror suspect that has a laptop. Oh the joys of travel to the USA!


So after I get through, I decide to go to the store and stock up on reading material. I look at the book selection. Oddly enough I had read most of them. This means one of a few things:

1) I am an overachiever like the nice man said at customs
2) I am a dork that reads too much
3) They don’t have a huge selection because who actually buys a book?
4) People read?

So I bought a few magazines.

So now I sit in the bar, having my (spice) bloody (two shots) Mary. Why the hello not. There is even a nice man that walks around and serves them. The ladies next to me told me that I was American because I didn’t drink a Caesar, I didn’t want to have to explain kosher and shell-fish laws.

So now I drink. He actually made it spicy (YAY!) and thank goodness for the 2 shots in there, Shimon isn’t around and well yeah. : ) The ladies beside me have shitzus (The same ones that laughed at my drink) there are two of them. She’s feeding them cookies. Glad I’m not on that flight… I hope.

I’m sure that there will be a story on my flight from here to Cincinnati (home of Gogie, Moshe, Buckeyes and WKRP) and then again on the flight from there to Florida. This is me we are talking about. There is always something to laugh at.

I’m laughing. But then again, it could be the Mary.

Nikki


(So the truth is, I am actyally stuck in Kentucky right now.... but I will write more about that later...)

a post! yay! Musshhh!

Could it be? A post? Well yes, it is.

Ok fine. So I took a bit of a hiatus from writing; mainly because I had been sick or just too tired to write. So here it goes, summing up the past month.

Birthright

So I staffed birthright. Let me tell you; they were great. AMAZING. I was a bit apprehensive at first, there are normally the handful of participants that drive you up the wall and make you go batty, right? Wrong. Not on this group. Sure, some people had their schtick, but really they were great. After being to the same place many times it looses feeling –but seeing places through fresh eyes was pretty amazing. We had ag reat time, got rained out, flooded, snowball fights and general good times were had by all. There isn’t really too much to elabourate on other than it was a great time. I really hope that people will come back to Israel and visit and left Israel embracing their country and religion more.

IN Israel it was really nice spending time with people. I had a great time, just hanging out and paying the government crazy amounts of money.

OK, so the month is over between when I got back from Israel and now. So here is a brief synopsis.


1) My friends got married: Mazal tov to Chayah and Hymie – great wedding.
2) My cousin Shimon created the ultimate tree.
3) I had a great time in Jerusalem and Moddin seeing friends, doing work and just being back in Israel.
4) I took a long flight back to Canada where I was sick. And my ears killed the whole time, I coukd not see the movie screen and I generally just don’t like air Canada anymore. (did I ever really like it anyways?)
5) Snow is cold. Very very very cold.
6) Work is good.


Vacation

So I am writing this from Mt. Tremblant in Quebec. Yes, I know I don’t ski, but it has given me some great downtime. I am here with some good friends of mine. Yesterday I just hung out, today we went dogsledding (it was amazing, I will post pictures later in a week) tomorrow, who knows. We’re just having a great time.

Anyways I will try and be better about posting…. I’ll work on it.

Leave some posts, miss ya!