March 20, 2003

Trying to make the best of our new situation.

Our flight was at 7:00 am. Tel Aviv security requires arriving three hours early before departure, and staying in Jerusalem meant another hour even earlier. So the taxi picked us up, weary and bleary-eyed, at 3 am. War was scheduled to start as soon as we arrived at Ben Gurion. Yay.

This is our first time flying out of Tel Aviv. We've always flown out of Amman, largely because the security hassle here has quite the reputation, particularly for people who live in the West Bank. One friend lost her laptop to them, another had hers broken. We were anxious, but it couldn't have been more streamlined. We sat waiting for our flight near a group of young Jewish men with a guitar singing praise songs and watching others carrying their hat boxes - haberdashery is a lucrative business in this country.

Our flight took off a bit early - mostly full, but not as full as we had expected. Many airlines had canceled flights for today, but not Cyprus Airways. Marthame was excited to read the Greek - a leftover present from his seminary days. Our theological and biblical language is very infused with Greek. For example, the word for thank you, efcharisto, is where we get the word eucharist in English. The sign for "Operation of Emergency Exit" had both liturgy (operation) and exodus (exit) in the Greek translation. When the pilot announced the landing, we half-expected an analysis of Paul's view of grace.

We arrived in Larnaca and began sizing up the situation. We're expecting to arrive at the Church of Scotland guesthouse in Pafos tomorrow, so we split the difference and arrived in Limassol, about halfway down the coast. Our guidebook suggested a relatively cheap hotel - $12/night with breakfast and a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean. Not bad. It certainly helps ease the sense of dread we've had about leaving.

We got a Cypriot chip to put in our cellphone - again, for about $12 - and began sending text messages to everyone back home. The replies came almost right away. They were quite varied, everything from, "we have no school just 2day 2 have the occasion 2 watch the war," to "erplans al the time everyone fear." Except for no school, sounds like life is normal back there.

After spending some time at the internet cafe (and catching up on sleep - why would we need to do that?), we wandered out for dinner - man, is this place cheap! - and an early night.