One Week From NOW

From the moment this post goes up, it will be exactly one week until Kaitlin gets to Israel. Most of our relationship has been over a long distance. By that I mean two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half hours away, and I never went more than six weeks without seeing her. Now it has been almost six months.

Six months is a long, long time and I can't wait to see her.

We have some tentative plans in place. Since she has never been to Israel, we're going to get a car and go to the Dead Sea and climb Masada in the morning to watch the sunrise from the top of the mountain (I really wanted to do that when I was here on Taglit, but y group decided they didn't want to do that). Kaitlin also wants to check out Eilat, but instead, I think we're going to keep going south into the Sinai. This way we can get into Egypt, something we both want to do, and check out some really cool places some of my friends told me about when they took trips down there.

There are a bunch of things we want to do around Jerusalem. Check out the Dome of the Rock/Temple Mount, museum hopping, you know I'm going to take her to the shuk, restaurants, campus and many other things. She really wants to head to Tel Aviv for a day or two to check out that city and we might find a way to take a day trip or two.

I'm really excited to show her the city I've been living in for the last six months and to introduce her to my friends. I think it will be good for her to meet some of the people that I will be studying with for the next four years.

Anyway,
It's Christmas Eve. It's strange to not be in the cities. It's strange to not have snow all over the ground. It's strange to not hear a ton of Christmas Music and Christmas commercials on the radio. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I like that I don't feel overloaded, but I strangely miss some of the normal signs of the season.

For anyone who is celebrating Christmas tonight and tomorrow, "Merry Christmas!" I hope you have a meaningful holiday and spend some good time with family.

For everyone else, I'm probably going to search out some Chinese Food here. I'm not sure if any of it is any good, but it may be worth a shot.