Superficial Joy

The last segment of my whirlwind summer was FRANCE!  My friend Zena invited me to join her some of her hiking friends on a week-long trip to the Alps in the south of France. WOW! I have always wanted to do this! Zena!! I took the train from 3 nights' rest in Geneva, Switzerland, to Lyon where I met my 7 newest friends! Together we got to Veynes where we were met by our guides. The following 7 days were absolutely amazing! The women I was with are all retired and know each other primarily from a hiking group. We hiked from lodging to lodging and because of the drought several of them had no electricity (apparently the electricity is hydro-powered). It was fantastic to be unplugged for a week. With the exception of lunches in the high mountains, we didn't get a signal.  I turned off airplane mode long enough each day to keep my 200+ day streak on Duo-lingo alive! Here  is the trip we did and here are a few snapshots of the week--just know that the pictures don't do it justi...

  Nothing more to say.

I'm headed now to Greece to meet up with an ongoing tour in Thessaloniki, the organizer of which I met in Hebrew class online during Covid! The group has been to Egypt, Jordan and Israel and I am joining them for only the Greece section. Michelle and I had no problem leaving on time and getting me to London Stansted Airport 3 hours early, as Ryan Air recommended. Even I can be on time for airports now! The first wrong move I made was getting into a line that I didn't realize was Customer Service rather than a Check-In line.  This was easily fixed when an employee walking around making announcements stopped near me and I clarified if I was in the correct line or not. I have learn that I must  listen to that little voice that tells me when it thinks something is wrong--it is always right. So I move to the line where the guy directs me and a few others, as he condescendingly says, "You have to read the signs."  Yeah, thanks--I hadn't thought of that yet. How about yo...

  I began writing this on Tuesday evening in Tel Aviv after 3 flights that began at 9 a.m. on Monday, Boise time. I wasn't really looking forward to coming back to Tel Aviv before I leave on Thursday morning to go to the UK, Greece and France.  If I'm really honest, I've been dreading it. Nothing these days gives me as much anxiety as the Tel Aviv airport. When I left in mid-June I arrived 4 hours early and it took me 2 hours to get checked in. Turned out that that was fast . Friends who left the next week had to wait 3-4 hours to check in. Pictures on Twitter showed people standing in line outside  the airport to get through the first layer of security. This fed my anxiety which was even higher because my original plans for the summer involved coming back to Tel Aviv twice during July!! I spent most of the first week of my time in the US with this underlying anxiety interrupting my sleep and constantly churning in the background. I managed to change one flight so that I...

What a great trip the the US it was this year. I only stayed for 3 weeks primarily because if this is my last year abroad (still yet to be determined), I want to pack in the travel this summer, especially after Corona took away a lot of travel time.  I took a graduate class this summer, so the first two weeks I was preoccupied with that. I spent one day in bed after getting my second booster for Covid (so that I could travel go on a short cruise in Greece this summer). Other than that, I spent time with family, friends and, most importantly, myself. I am not super great at planned down time where I am truly present with myself. I tend to turn on the TV and zone out--a habit I am not in the least condemning! I just would rather only do that by choice rather than as a habit when I don't want to. I made sure to preserve time to myself and I made sure I spent time outside in the amazing weather in Boise. I forced myself to go hike Table Rock in the evenings and spent both Saturdays in ...