Lesson One

The flight was great, the timing was not, but you can't realy complain too much even though the plane left New York at 3 PM and landed in Israel at nine in the morning, leading up to a sleepless night followed by speeches follwed by finding our luggage followed by the taxi ride to Ranana, where we are staying for the next week, until the boat with all our stuff gets here.

Lesson one came during our taxi ride to Ranana. The driver ewas an old Israeli, driving a fifteen passenger bus/taxi, filled to the top and loaded on the roof with our 11 pieces of luggage and dozen small carry on bags.

After teling the driver that he needed a rope to secure our bags to the roof, and listening to him tell me that he guaranteed the boxes wouldn't fall off, I finally gave in. The driver did not have rope. No one at the airport seemed to have any rope, to be honest, and after listening to sppeches and flying and listening tomore speeches and seeing relatives you haven't seen in quite some time, well, you finally give in and trust the taxi driver.

So he's pulling out, and as he is exiting the airport he is waved to the side of the road by a guy sitting in a booth, checking paperwork from taxis as they drove off.

They spoke in hebrew, but even I knew there was a problem. There was a form that needed a signature, and the driver hadn't gotten the signature yet, and the guy on the side of the road insisted that the driver return to the airport to get his form signed. Yashar, Smol, Smol, he said, or soemthing like that. It turned out the driver could not understand where it was either, so he drove around a little, stopping other taxies, and trying to find the signature place.

Finally, we had enough, and yelled at the driver, in hebrew, since that was all he understood, that we had been on a plane all night, and were tired and ready to go. We were Olim Chadashim, we told him, and needed to get to Ranana already.

Tell the guy at the side of the road, he said, and pulled back on the road to exit the airopirt another time.

The guy at the side of the road waved us over, and then started to yell at the taxi driver, until Veev got in between them, and told the taxi waverer dude that we had been up all night, and were not going to sit in the taxi for another sightseeing trip around the airport.

And the dispatcher guy listened, and waved us through, which just goes to teach us lesson one, which is Be Assertive, and don't be afriad to tell people that we are Olim Chadashium when we want to get people to bend to our will. (I wonder if that will work in other situation other than leaving the airport, we'll find out, Ill keep you posted.)

By the way, the taxi driver was right; nothing fell off the roof, even though it was not tied down.