Day 0: Travel

Okay, so, even though our travel day wasn't technically part of our 10-day itinerary, I'm writing this brief post because it helps set the context for our first "official" day.

I'll state outright that my group (Shorashim Bus #146!) was pretty lucky about a couple things:

• Our flight left from Chicago. Most birthright trips, even those that are Chicago community trips, leave from New York, and participants have to figure out (and pay for) their own travel for that first leg.
• We didn't have to be at the airport until about 12:30 PM, so there was none of that "wake up at 3:30AM and trek to O'Hare before the sun rises" nonsense.

The Madrid airport

We all received nametags, which was crucial at this stage. We numbered 39 American participants, three American staff, and we would soon be adding seven Israeli participants and two Israeli staff. That's a lot of names to learn.

Our first flight was to Madrid. It took nearly nine hours. We had been warned in advance about the food, but I don't think any of us were expecting it to be quite so bad. Kosher meals had been pre-ordered for all of us (in spite of the fact that none of us actually keep kosher). We received some sort of breaded chicken (at least, I think it was chicken) and...frozen eggplant, and frozen tomatoes. Literally frozen solid, completely inedible. We were not allowed to switch to non-Kosher (and presumably non-frozen) meals.

After a roughly hour-long layover in Madrid, we caught our next flight to Tel Aviv. This one was about four and a half hours.

We landed, exhausted, and had to go through customs and get our luggage, and then we were greeted by our Israelis with cheers and balloons and applause and a song. Our group was finally whole, since we would all be traveling together the full ten days. (All birthright trips have Israelis join them for several days, but the trip organizer I went with, Shorashim, is unique in that the Israelis stay the full ten days.) So, we loaded up on the bus, which would serve as a second home, of sorts, during our trip.