Arrived in Haifa

We're here.  Work up at 5am Friday to fly to Philadelphia.  Got to have dinner Ben and Rachel which was a real treat!  Then took the 11 hour flight to Tel Aviv during which we each slept at least a couple of hours, though not great sleep.  Landed and got through immigration and customs without incident.  The airport it about an hour's drive from Haifa.  We though earlier that a ride was being arranged for us and realized Thursday that it wasn't.  But we saw someone with a sign for Intel so we went up to him to see if by some chance a ride had magically been arranged.

There was much "pass the phone" between the person with the Intel sign and Jeff and eventually another Intel employee from a different group which led to the conclusion that a ride had not been arranged for us, but some drivers were exploring what they could do. I confirmed that my Hebrew is pretty useless.... I understood the following: "[lots of syllables] me [lots more syllables] two [still more syllables] I [yet more syllables] me".  So apparently I remember pronouns and numbers....hardly enough to use for any conversations (and no, I neither know how to ask where the toilet is nor how to understand the answer even if I could ask the question.)  I did recognize when a driver (not the one with the sign) said "bo" which is "come" and we followed him to the car.  The driver listened to the news in the car which consisted of "[lots of words] Israelis [more words] Palestinians [yet more words] Hamass [many more words]" which I'm sure is just as informative to you as it was to us.  Somewhere in there the word "facebook' appeared as in "blah blah lah facebook blah blah blah."

At the end of the long drive it wasn't clear which of two buildings at the correct address was the right hotel and the driver impatiently asked "po" or "sham" (here or there)....I guessed po which of course was wrong, but at least I recognized the words.  And the walk between them wasn't too far.

We checked in to the hotel and asked about Haifa tourist information.  They had some, but not in English.  I asked whether they had anything in French and a nice brochure appeared.... Great.  The only traveler's dictionary we brought on this trip is Hebrew/English. Maybe I'll be able to find something somewhere tomorrow when I start sightseeing....

We can check "watch the sun set over the Mediterranean Sea" off the bucket list.  We're staying across the "boardwalk" from the beach (is it still a "boardwalk" when it's made of bricks?).  So we wandered down to one of the beachside restaurants and had an interesting dinner....amazing hummus, a variety of pickled items, mediocre main dishes, and fresh watermelon.  We had a window seat and got to watch the sunset.  Didn't have a camera with us, but that's ok because it was pleasant but not spectacularly photogenic. 

Having met the goal to stay up until at least 8pm to try to get on the time zone (10 hours earlier than Portland), I'm going to call it a day or a night, as the case may be.