בסוף הכל מסתדר !

The hebrew announcement will be followed by an English one.
 
הפוסט הזה יהיה באנגלית לכבוד כריסטי. אתם מוזמנים לקרוא, זה באמת סיפור משעשע.
אני אולי ארשום תקציר בסוף הקטע יותר מאוחר.
 

I'm not sure whether to start at the beginning or the end. They are both great opening points for this story, but I think I'll go back in time first. Back to 1988.

When the last of my high school years finally ended, I had some time before I started my army service. What better time is there to travel? After the army, of course, but this was a good opportunity, so I decided to take it.

Since I have so many family members in the US, I decided it will be a good place to fly to. Aside from the trip to Iran with my family at the age of 7, this was my first trip outside the country. It was also my longest trip up to this day, two whole months.

For most of the trip I was in the New York City area. All my relatives live in the vicinity of the big apple, and I spent almost every day traveling by train to Manhattan, walking and exploring, while my evenings were spent on family gatherings and dinners. The hospitality was really great, and Manhattan was overwhelming. I went to all the tourist sites, including the empire state building, the world trade center, central park or the statue of liberty. I also enjoyed walking up and down the streets and avenues, and mostly I enjoyed the Museum of Natural History which displays dinosaur skeletons and a great blue whale.

I even managed to get robbed once, at the times when NYC was considered dangerous, I wound up on 42^nd st. with my cusin. At the entrance of a shoe store, some guy approached us with what I recon was his hand in his jacket pocket, pointing at us. But you don’t take chances in these cases. I looked for a $10 bill to give him, but he grabbed the money out of my hand and ran. He took $24 plus 5 Israeli Shequels, and I got in return a story I can tell again and again. I think it was a fair deal.

Since I didn’t want to spend all of my two months in NY (although I did travel to Atlantic City with another cousin, passed for being 21, and dropped some coins into slot machines), I arranged for a round trip to Florida, California, and then back to NY.

California was nice, I saw Queen Mary (The Biggest Ship Ever built), Spruce Goose (Biggest plane), and Roger Moore (Not the biggest James Bond ever), But I liked Orlando better.

I flew to Orlando, Florida, and immediately planned my four days there: Wet’n’Wild, Disney World (Magic Kingdom), Epcot Center, and Sea World. Since I was alone, and since I had my camera with me, I mostly took a lot of pictures and tried to get on all the rides. I think I managed to do so.

If you have ever been to a big Disney-style amusement park, you probably know that you spend a lot of time waiting in line for the next ride. I know that now you can pay more and not wait in line, but back then, everybody waited. I’m not sure whether it was in one of these lines or just standing and watching the street shows, but somehow I met Cristie.

Since it was almost evening, we went to see the fireworks display. We joked and laughed and generally had fun. She was with her aunt there, and when it was time to go, she gave me her address.

After I came back to Israel, I gave her a phone call, and she sent me a letter with pictures. I think I wrote back, but that was it. I never was much of a letter writer, and no one had heard of the internet back then.

I couple of days ago, and almost 16 years later, I got an email from Cristie. It one hidden between 20 other junk mail messages I got that day, but I hesitated before I deleted it, and then I read it again. It was titled “Old Friend?”, and she had no idea if I’m the person she met back then, but she decided to write after she saw a picture of my 4 month old daughter, Noga, and saw the similarity. It seems the recent news about Israel reminded her of the only Israeli person she ever knew, and she decided to look me up.

I’m glad that I have such an uncommon name.

I just finished chatting with her over the ICQ, she’s married now, lives in Atlantic City, and hopefully reading this now. Even though we spent only a couple of hours in an amusement park, we both have a strong recollection of the events, I’m not sure why.

So I’m glad that the world is getting smaller. It’s so much easier now to keep in touch even though we’re in two different continents. Cristie, it’s great to hear from you again.