(Post written Monday, June 20, 1:31 p.m. at Bucharest Airport. I’m now safely in Madrid and I’ll meet with my school group tomorrow.)

To all my loyal followers, I apologize for the lack on Tumblr updates over the past month. I promised to keep a running blog of my overseas travels this summer at this site, but haven’t followed through. So this post is a brief summary of what has occurred already and what to expect until I return home July 27.

The reason for my Tumblr nonexistence is the internet firewall settings at Livnot U’Lehibanot, my community service program in Tzfat, Israel. Livnot purchased its internet security through an Israeli company, which just happened to specifically block open-source websites such as Tumblr and Flickr. So outside of Livnot I was able to access Tumblr, but I felt it would be unfair to write unless I could reflect on all of my experiences at the end.

Thus I was able to access Gmail, Facebook, ESPN and my other essential sites at Livnot, but was unable to deliver upon my Tumblr promise. I’ll do my best to be more consistent over the coming five weeks plus, so I’ll start with how I ended up frustrated as all hell in Bucharest, Romania.

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I’m here safely now in Kiryat Ekron, Israel. This is my temporary home for the day as I will be journeying by bus over to Tzfat in the morning tomorrow.

I left my home in Akron around 8:30 a.m. EST Friday and then arrived at this house around 12:30 p.m. Israel time. The time difference is seven hours ahead, so that was a total of 21 hours of traveling to make it here today.

Tomorrow’s Lag Ba’omer which means a giant celebration throughout the country. I’ll post some more pictures of my travels through Newark and Ben-Gurion airports tomorrow hopefully when I can get an Israeli outlet converter for my laptop. Until then!