20140220 Thursday; JFK

20140220 Thursday
12:30 / 3:30 (Depending on what coast you prefer)
New York, JFK Airport

We are off.  Another "once-in-a-lifetime" trip: this time to Israel.  Siegfried and Riitta Naumann picked us up at home at 4:00 am this morning to take us to Seatac for our 7:00 am flight to JFK.    Four plus hours later we landed and are now waiting for our 7:45 pm flight to Tel Aviv.

We were visiting with the Naumaan's last Spring and realized that it had been 5+ years since our trip to South Africa so someone said, "Where are we going next?" Then someone else said "Israel." Which was met with a unanimous and resounding "Yes!"  The next question was "When?" But, that took a little while longer to schedule.  Obviously we did, and we are off.

A funny side story about scheduling our trip is that between work, school and church it really became a challenge to coordinate.  Riitta finally (and I was grateful for it) took charge and told everyone of a date.  She told us that unless we could come up with some reasonable reason why the date would not work that she was going to book the flight.  At that point we all agreed and Riitta and Judy went ahead and booked the flights - non-refundable flights - when Seigfried was at a Stake Presidency Meeting.  He told Riitta to go ahead and book the flight.  Later during the meeting he asked if Stake Conference had been scheduled yet - of course, and yes, during our trip.  Too late.  We were committed

As we sit at JFK, eating lunch, chatting, logged in with our various devices and catching up with phone calls to family we are noticing other members of our tour group starting to drift in.

Siegfried and Riitta Naumann and Judy

I had a wild hope that Carey, who lives in NYC  might be able to visit with us at the airport while we waited for our connection; however, and alas, by the time she would have finished work for the day and took the 1-1/2 to 2-hour trip to JFK we would have had only a precious few minutes to visit before we would have to leave so we agreed that a phone call would have to suffice.  So close, but still no hug.