Still not back...

so anyone want to guess where i am right now? a holiday inn in new york. am i saying this with a smile on my face? not so much! why you ask? therein lies the tale...

so our group was slated to leave saturday night/sunday morning at 12:04 a.m. well as happens with many flights, El Al overbooked and gave the option to passengers to give up their seat in return for a flight the next day and either some monetary compensation or a free round trip ticket to Israel. myself and 4 others said, what the heck, we don't have to be back right away and promptly volunteered to possibly give up our seats. of us five, myself and Laura were the only two that ended up randomly being selected to stay. so Laura and i thought, what a fun adventure. and for the first half, it was. El Al put us up in a beautiful beachfront Sheraton Hotel in Tel Aviv and provided breakfast and transportation back to the airport. we hop on our flight and have a lovely time watching "300" and that (surely) drug-induced story "the last mimzy" among others. then the tides turned...

we ended up getting to JFK in new york a little after 4:00 p.m. what time is our connecting flight to LAX? 5:00 p.m. let's do some math...

sitting in literally the LAST row of seats/last to get off the plane + going through customs and immigration + finding out we have to claim and recheck our luggage + JFK being the most inefficient airport i've ever been to = definitely missed flight. after that we got to wait around for 4 hours while connecting flights for tomorrow and hotel arrangements were made, all the while with extremely frustrated people yelling. it was lovely.

the compensation i received for giving up my seat on the El Al flight was worth it when i was set to arrive back in LA the same day a mere 14 hours later. as of now, it's just turning into a story i'll be able to tell people (aaaand yeah, you're right, it's not even a good story).

in any case i feel like i've been tested to the max (in a good way) in the areas of faith and patience over the last two days.

i'm not super tired right now, just physically exhausted. i'll post another blog with more pictures of Israel and commentary on the trip over the next few days or so.