Sleeping Pills Don't Work

Read the title, because if there's anything I learned today, that's it. 

We left for Newark from Steph's house around 8 AM, arriving at the airport and meeting our group around 10. From there we waited in line, went through customs/security and got some food before the flight. 

 Side Note - Israeli Customs loves to ask strange questions. "What was the name of your Synagogue?" Ok, I guess its sorta relevant.

So after a brief ice-breaking name game to pass the time before we boarded our flight, we walked onto what turned out to be the coolest plane I've ever been on. In seat TVs with On Demand style movies, TV shows, Music and Video Games is AWESOME for a 10 hour flight. We even figured out how to make seat-to-seat calls, which would have been cooler if Adam and Steph weren't right next to me. Adam and I were able to play against each other in Tetris though, which made everything even better.  About an hour into the flight, we popped our Over-The-Counter sleeping pills and I sat back with The Simpsons Movie in hopes of sleep. 

No Such Luck. 

What ended up happening was the three of us couldn't get comfortable enough to stay asleep for more than 30 minutes. Trying to fall asleep is almost exhausting by itself.

At 7 AM Israeli time (Midnight in Maryland), we touched down and got on a bus. We drove out to a beautiful hostel in Northern Israel, near the Golan Heights. We went to our rooms, cleaned up, and had lunch until about 2 pm.

From here we went on a hike down a mountain, which was great until around 5 pm when being awake for 24 hours started to catch up with me. Adam will vouch that Dan says some weird things and stops making sense when he's exhausted. 

We drove home at this point and I passed out on my bed until 7, when we had dinner. Then we all met for a brief discussion about being Jewish in Israel, what we hoped to get out of the trip, What it meant to be Jewish in general, etc. It was interesting to get so many different perspectives, and there seemed to be some common bonds connecting all of us together. 

After this, it was about 9 PM, about 10 of us went down to the convenience store/bar at the hostel, had a beer and went to sleep. 

Day 1 was looooooong, but a great start to the trip.