Arrival

We arrived Friday afternoon to the Tel Aviv airport. Tali and Max met us at the airport, and we had a nice drive to Jerusalem (under an hour). Jerusalem really is up in the hills. The drive up took us on a windy highway, climbing through the desert to reach the city. If it wasn't for the irrigation, supposedly this place would be completely barren.

We were happy to get settled in our Jerusalem apartment. It's a nice little 3-story building in a "fairly religious" area of the city. We are so happy they found a place that all the MIT staff can live together in. The 9 instructors live in an apartment covering the top 2 floors (with little balconies), while the other MIT staff shares the 1st floor apartment. Space is a little tight as we are sharing mostly doubles and triples, but the two common areas should work well for team meetings and general hanging out. Oh, and we have two minivans to drive ourselves around.

Tali and Abeer are the local co-directors for MEET. They're the ones that filled our apartment with furniture and food! Tonight, they took us out to eat in the city and we met Caroline, another local staffer. Afterwards, we swung by the Mount of Olives for a great night-time view of Jerusalem. Jerusalem sits on a large hill, surrounded by more hills, one of which is the Mt. of Olives.