Arriving in Israel
The last two days of packing were very rough. We were pulling all-nighters trying to get the house empty, clean, etc, and everything all packed. I made hundreds of trips up and down the stairs carrying boxes, etc. (my apple watch literally said that i had done 111 flights of stairs on the last day – for comparison, the Sears Tower in Chicago, i think its called the Willis Tower now, has 103 flights of stairs. The John Hancock tower has 94 flights of stairs. Anyway, i climbed a lot of stairs. Each day. For several days. Did I mention the stairs? 😧) To top it all off, I got a bad cold with low grade fevers, muscle aches, etc right at the same time. Good times.
We worked right through the last night until around 3AM when we had to shower and change to get to the airport. My parents were quite helpful, taking the kids for most of the last couple days so Val and I could get the house done and the packing done. Our friends the Don’s also helped out with getting us and our 18 bags plus carry-ons (plus cats) to the airport. They came over earlier that night to load up their minivan with 9 bags, and my parents took the other 9 bags. We took the carryons and the kids in our minivan. Val and I arrived at my parents house around 4AM, only an hour later than planned, to collect the kids. Then we and my parents set our for the airport where the Don’s were already waiting for us. Checking in at the airport in Phoenix was fairly uneventful, thankfully. Of course we had to rearrange several items between bags, several of which were a pound and half over weight, etc, despite my having weighed them at home. We arrived in LA on time, and thankfully did not have to get our checked bags – they went straight through to Israel. The cats did well on the flight and although I was worried about the carriers we chose being technically bigger than the allowed size, it wasn’t an issue.
We found the ELAL gate in LA, arrived there early with enough time to get some food for the kids, and to do the security check at the gate, where they checked the documents for the cats as well. They asked us about all our bags, and actually had opened one up and taken a cell phone picture of my GoalZero solar charger, texted it to the gate agent, who showed it to me and asked me if I knew what that was and how it worked. I excitedly and somewhat nerdily explained to them how it allowed me to charge cell phones etc. when camping from just the sun! They evidently decided that the solar charger and I were not threats and let us on the plane.
The flight itself was long but also uneventful. The boys sat with the cats, and we sat with an Israeli family we know from Phoenix who were visiting Israel at the same time.
We weren’t on a charter flight so there was no fanfare or anything – there was only one other person making Aliyah that day on our flight. When we landed, everyone still clapped, and we were met just off the jet bridge by a greeter to help us get through the registration in the airport. She was very nice and took us first to customs, but then instead of going straight through to get our bags we went upstairs to an office where we were met by a gaggle of Russian Israelis who worked diligently to get us officially registered and gave us our official identity cards, a form we needed to set up a bank account, and an envelope with a few thousand shekels to get us started. Then they took us back downstairs to collect our bags and finally to a pre-paid van to take us to our apartment. Luckily I was able to get our six new Israeli SIM cards working so I could text the apartment guy to meet us there to let us in and give us the keys, etc.