When will someone invent the cure for jet lag??

So here I am, sitting on one of the couches in our living room looking at the sun rise and the day begin because IT'S 5:44 AM. After going to sleep at 1 because we stayed up playing this amazing game called the Game of Things even though we were still all pretty tired, I assumed I'd get a solid amount of sleep before we had to get up for more orientation meetings at like 8, but no. So alas, I decided to update the world of my life.

After a pretty uneventful airport and plane experience minus the third degree interrogation by the El Al worker who wanted to know my favorite Four Question and the horrible movie selection that forced me to endure The Bounty Hunter I arrived in Ashdod to a wonderful man named Omri holding a sign with my name on it ready to take me to our apartment...first potential crisis averted (if you know my travel experiences at all, you know I don't react well to crises in the beginning).

Our apartment is on the 9th floor (thank God there's an elevator) and has a beautiful view of the beach. It is a lot nicer and more modern than I expected; after the ancient Rome apartment I lived in, this is a breeze. There's 6 of us here, 4 girls and 2 guys to kill the spiders. My roommate's and my room is the "safe room" -- apparantly every newer house/apartment/building has one designated safe room where in case of a missile attack you run to, so that's a plus i guess...

This week is orientation so lots of boring meetings that aren't helping with the fact that I feel like I'm always tired 100% (benji percent) of the time, but that will go away soon. We start Hebrew Ulpan class next week and begin to check out the schools we will be volunteering in. I've learned a little more information about what we're doing here (it's about time right). We'll spend pretty much the rest of August and September (minus a holiday break we have for Sukkot at the end) finding places to volunteer in and start really volunteering steadily in October. 2 days a week we will have Ulpan, volunteer in schools teaching English I'm not sure how many days a week, and volunteer somewhere else a couple afternoons a week. We have a lot of free time in the afternoons and on weekends for beach, hanging out, traveling, etc. It may take a little time to get used to weekends being Friday and Saturday and having school/work on Sunday.

What else, what else...It's VERY hot and humid here but we have A/C so it's good in here. Everyone's cool, the coordinators are cool. I wish I could post pictures, I wish I could take pictures...I took my camera out of my bag last night to make sure the battery was charged and surprise surprise, it's messed up, some lens error or something..I'm gonna see if there is a camera repair shop nearby, but I don't know what to doooooo so it's very sad. I should just buy a bunch of disposables and be old school...we'll see! The languages spoken here in Ashdod are Russian, French, Hebrew, then little bit of English (in that order)...might be a hopeless search.

Miss and love you all,
Lindsey

P.S. Skype calls are kinda if-y here I think but video chat on iChat worked really well!
P.P.S. My hair is holding up AMAZINGLY (thanks for reminding me to share this very important experience Barrie)! It's so hot and humid here but my hair is perfect and I'm so so happy I got the blowout...thankfully by the time it will start to grow out the weather should settle down a bit. People don't believe this isn't my natural hair, so I tried to find some crazy fro hair pictures to share. They will see the truth in time...