Today's the day!

Yes indeed! Today is the day, the final day, the day during which I go to the airport and fly out. Yay! It's both exciting and scary. I can't believe that this day is finally here. But my suitcase is packed (mostly), I have my passport and visa, I've got a scale to weigh the suitcase on, and I'm mostly finished with the map stuff.

Ah, I suppose I should explain the map stuff.

For one of my classes, Physical Settings of the Bible (which all undergraduate students are required to take, I believe), we were given a series of 7 maps, a booklet-type-thing and a pdf 108 pages long. We were, over the summer, supposed to read through the PDF and mark up the maps and read the booklet as it told us to. The idea was to get us acclimated to Israel's geography and connect it with Scripture that we've been reading our whole lives. Pretty neat. It was hard to get into, but once I was really marking the first map, I realized how cool it was. Doesn't change the fact that there was a *lot* of work to do, but at least it was good work. :)

So now, it's almost 10 am EST. I'm going out to lunch with my family around 1, and then they're taking me to the airport around 2:30. My flight leaves around 5:30. And my granddad is walking me in! :D 'Cause he's cool like that. ^_^

So this is the basic flight plan. I leave from Dulles Airport at 5:30pm. I arrive in Vienna around 10 in the morning Austrian time (I think...), switch flights during an hour and a half layover, and then fly to Tel Aviv, where I'll be arriving around 2:30 in the afternoon Israeli time. Once I collect my luggage and get through customs, I'm meeting a group of other students from the school, and together we will get into a sherut and go to Jerusalem. Pretty exciting!

Sorry there's no pictures with this post. My phone is on the other side of the room, and I'm feeling lazy at the moment. I did get an SD card for my camera, and figured out the problem with the phone camera. Apparently I had it set to a weird setting that didn't have the flash on. Odd.

So now I'm off to more packing and making sure my suitcase is under 50 pounds... that ought to be fun.

I'll try to write a quick post when I arrive in Austria to keep you all informed. Or maybe while I'm waiting in Dulles... we shall see. :) So see ya then!

Shalom!