Long road to get here...

I arrived here in Tel Aviv on 15 October to begin my two year tour as a political officer at the embassy. It's amazing that I am here, as these last seven months or so were quite intense. I had a house that I needed to fix up to prep for rental, my father fell ill and passed away, and I dealt with the administrative, logistical and other crunches to prepare for my departure. I'm here now.

I had shipped off all of my belongings on 1 and 2 October and then sent my car off to the port on the day I left. It was an odd feeling, but my months of living out of a suitcase during the runup to my departure made it easier to digest. On the 14th, I said my goodbye to Catherine following a nice lunch (mmm, bison burger!) and then grabbed all my bags and toted Slappy down to the cab. She had no idea how much her life would be turned upside down.

The flight was rather smooth, though my feet really had nowhere to rest with Slappy taking up all the space below the seat in front of me. I got to watch the Chronicles of Narnia sequel and a bit of the latest Indiana Jones (were all of them that bad?). I also got to watch the Israelis on board mill about constantly; hard to keep them in their seats. The highlight of the whole trip, though, had to be the looks and comments Slappy got when I had to take her out of her carrier and walk her through the metal detector. Needless to say, people have not learned to never comment on a gal's weight (they loved her, though!).

On arrival in Tel Aviv, I was met by an expeditor from the embassy. It's one of the pleasures of flying as a diplomat...someone else scoots you very quickly through all the lines upon arrival. Things were going smoothly until we were waiting at the luggage carousel for far too long and learned that my luggage was...."delayed."  We filled out the paperwork while a lady with two dogs let them urinate on the tile floors. Great!

I headed back to the apartment that I will be staying in at least temporarily, and then my sponsor took me out to a grocery store so that I could get cat food and litter. After a little snack and unpacking my welcome kit of necessities the embassy provides, I went to sleep. What a long day and a half.