Welcome to Israel!

This week has been a rather quick one. Work has been uneventful, I started to do some basic coding after last week I spent mostly reading. It's hard to start from scratch like this when you code because you could be missing one comma, not know it and it could throw you off completely. It would be really nice to have someone to help me here, there is one guy who said he would, but he's never around or available. With someone a little bit more veteran, it becomes much easier.

On Monday we had our weekly Yavneh dinner, this week it was at the Nefesh b'Nefesh headquarters. They served us bagels but really it wasn't about the food. They gave us the choice of 2 out of 3 presentations that we could attend, one on the social aspects of Israel, one on jobs, and one on oleh benefits. I chose to attend 2 & 3 and learned quite alot about what an oleh is entitled to. I learned that every new oleh gets NIS 15,000 (about $3,500) upon aliyah as well as numerous discounts for appliances and cars. Really, its not that great, but every bit helps.

I visited Yeshiva on Tuesday and couldn't believe the changes they've been making since I last had been there less than a month ago. That night, I had dinner with my family friends the Kays and another fellow Detroiter, Avi Davidoff, who I had met maybe a few years ago. He was here trough MSU studying at Hebrew U, but they had pulled their students out of the program a few days earlier, and he was headed home that night.

Thursday morning I woke up at the nice hour of 5:30 AM and followed by a quick davening, I boarded the busses for Ben Gurion Airport (NatBag). Yavneh sent a bus load of kids to greet the Nefesh b'Nefesh flight that was arriving from New York. Aboard the 17th chartered flight in NBN's history and one of 7 this summer were about 250 new olim. They were praised by speakers at the ceremony as well as by the media for coming to Israel in such hard times. As their plane pulled up the crowd cheered. We were in a hangar only several feet away but of course they could not walk that distance. Upon disembarking the plane, they boarded the famous busses to be driven about 50 ft to the hangar. We all greeted them with much energy and congratulated them on their new home. Bibi Netanyahu was the keynote and best speaker, he is very powerful, and his English is great. The funniest part was after the ceremony, which lasted about 40 minutes, the olim boarded the busses again, then boarded the plane, only to taxi over to the gate which was just across the tarmac from us. They had to go through officially beaucratic stuff (well, most of it gets done on the plane thanks to NBN) but getting their passports stamped and customs has to be done in the airport. Apparently the ceremonies that are not during the 3 weeks have a live band more energy, so hopefully when I come I’ll get the full deal.

On Thursday night I had a mini high school reunion at a nice Italian restaurant near Ben Yehuda. In attendance was Rabbi Baruch, Mrs. Wrotslavsky, Ian, Ari Barak, Jeremy Baruch, Lauren Schanes, and of course the head of school. For Shabbat I'll be in Yerucham (40 minutes south of Be'er Sheva), we are leaving bright and early tomorrow, for a tiyul beforehand and we'll be back on motzaei shabbat.