Hello Everyone,
This is Katie and Eliza writing from the office at the Children’s Village. Our journey started at 10:45 AM on Saturday morning. We met at the Pittsburgh International Airport with excitement in the air. It was entertaining watching Tpisy bargain with the flight check-in airport employees about the amount of luggage each person could bring. We had over 12 suitcases, some filled with shoes and activities for the children and the rest were full with our own clothes for the trip. We first travelled to Newark and then got on the plane to Israel. On the plane they served us beefaroni or chicken rice for dinner. It was your typical airplane food. We were all very excited to see that we each got our own TVs on the ten hour plane ride. We were all supposed to get a good night’s rest on the plane because our arrival time to Israel was at 8:30 AM. Lets just say some us got more sleep than others. The two us hardly slept for one hour to say the least, with so many distractions and limited space. We arrived in Tel Avivi right on time, went through customs easily, and collected all of our baggage. We were greeted at the airport by a videographer.
We arrived at the village, within two hours, excited and anxious to meet our families. Our home where we are staying is very cozy, with 3 bedrooms, with 2 girls in each room, 2 toliets, a shower, a kitchen, and a living room. We were excited to see a dog in our backyard, whom Jessie immediatley fell in love with. We each went around at briefly met each other’s families. It was exciting to see Trinity’s and Amanda’s reactions when they reunited with their families at the village. All of the kids ran up to them with open arms, some with tears in their eyes. We then spent the evening with our families, getting to know our kids as well as their parents. Some spoke very little English while others spoke fluently. The language barrier was not a huge problem but it was a challenge at times.
The father of Katie’s family bought himself a hockey stick, after reading her emails and learning that she played hockey. He said he taught some of kids how to play, and that they were also ready to play a game with her. Due to communication challenges, Amanda ended making over 30 sandwiches when she was simply offering to help with dinner. Once we arrived back to our house, we crashed immediatley, putting on over four layers of clothing, plus a comforter.
