in yishivat maale gilboa

I am in the yishiva after a long journey. Eitan a kollelnik from DC is really nice and put Gilboa in perspective in comparisson to Gush. its 12:25 AM and I am piggybacking on the DSL wireless that the American shana Alephs set up. Its a very laid back place and everyone is nice here. getting here was hard though. I hade to miss saying goodbye to all the netivot people, well I didn't have to but I thought I would try to catch the 7:15 to afula which I missed and instead for an hour this 18-year-old Israeli with a criminal record was waiting for me at the bus stop trying to get his hands on my money, in the end I lent him my telacard, I figured it wold get him away and the absolute worst that could happen is that he will make a long call to a mobile and waste 5 shek, he wasn't all that bad though he wanted to go into Tzahal and is working with the justice system for rehabilitation to try to get into a combat unit. so from tzomet raanana with all my loguage I get to afula and from there I wait half an hour, buy some random thing for dinner, Israel is great (almost) everything is kosher and get the 412 to tzomet haetz where suddenly it feels like melbourne, its cold lukily I only have to wait 2 min for a tramp up the mountain. Its finnally cold, on friday in raanana i was wearing a tshirt and it felt warm i think it ws 30 degrees out in the winter! I still don't know about otniel, hakotel, gush and ein tzurim but I am sure the people here will help me and tommorow night is beit bnei akiva in katamon. anway its 12:34 am and shacharit is at 6:45 so i best get going. my mobile number is +972525877249 its on cellcom, but I still check my SMS on +61404738718 oh yah and I love my new Gmail account with a full gig of space its seraphya*gmail.com (replace the * with @, its to avoid the automatic spam email harvesters)

shavua tov, m'eretz YISRAEL!!!!

in bangkok on the way to Israel

I am in bangkok, and we are finnally about to board. Its the coolest there is high speed wireless internet for only 250 baht an hour. I am about to use up the card and run out of battery so I will make this quick. I figure I'll get a sim card in israel for my phone, and אמא's phone is working so thats good. I am on flight LY 082/ TG4593 things seem to be going well. I met mark the mad from melbourne in bangkok he came on a different flight. It was a long annoying flight here, both meals being meat. uh oh times out