Hi from Atlanta, Georgia!

First of all I would like to appologize for writing in English, but unless I find a computer which will be kind enough to support Hebrew, or a "proper" Virtual Keyboard, it seems like my nexts posts are all going to be in English.

You all know how bad I am in telling about myself and about things I do, but I will do my best...

Sooo...

This was my first flight ever, if you don't count the flight from Kiryat Shmona to Tel Aviv, and a couple of flights in military helicopters. My feeling in general was that flying was something like taking a bus or a train with room service. You don't have much room for your legs (I didn't, anyway), everybody is packed up in small tight sits, the plane was jumping up and down as if it was driving on a typical Israeli road, and there was always a line to get into the toilets.

On the flight from Israel to New Ark I was sitting next to Saimon, a Jewish American from Oklahoma. His Hebrew was perfect after having served in Golani many years ago and doing Miluim in Israel for many years, but still - it gave me a good opportunity to get used to the Southern accent... This opportunity continued on the flight from New Ark to Atlanta, since I had the pleasure to sit next to Carol, a nice old Afro-American lady from Chattanooga, Tennessee.

I never fall asleep on buses, and as I mentioned before the flight was very much like a bus, so I passed the flight time talking to Saimon, and while he was asleep, I had the pleasure of watching "Skooby Doo" four times (twice the animated version, and twice the "real" one) and a big part of "Dirty Dancing 2".

No, it wasn't what I would call "My cup of tea".

The plane took off from Israel at 23:55 (Israel Time). When we landed in New Ark it was 04:15 local time, and 11:15 Israeli time.

After about an hour in the line for the immigration department, and another 10 minutes in the custom, we (myself and a bunch of other Amdocs people) were on our way to a different terminal, for the next flight. This flight was scheduled for 09:30, so I pre-arranged a meeting with my uncle which lives about half an hour away from the airport.

On the way from New Ark to Atlanta I constantly tried to get a look at this new country I just got into, but it was so cloudy, that apart from the minutes of taking off and landing, all I got to see was a huge purely white blanket.

I told Carol that at the speed we are flying it would take less than an hour to cross Israel, but she just kept saying "Get outta here!"

With me, going to Alpharetta, was another person from Amdocs, so after getting our cars at the airport, we decided that since he knows the way, I would follow him.

So we decided.

45 seconds after having left the airport, I lost him

I was given directions of how to get from the airport to my destination, but it then took me about 10 minutes of driving round-and-round, to get to the conclusion that there is only one way to get there: "follow mu guts"

I stopped the car at the road side, closed my eyes, took a deep breath and thought of a direction. I then opened my eyes and started driving in that direction.

A minute later I was on the highway I needed

In Israel one of the main problems drivers have is that sometimes there are no signs telling you where to go. In America there are just too much.

It took me some time to learn how to ignore things on the road that are irrelevant to my driving. Other cars, for instance.

I dropped at the hotel at about 13:15, aftering being awake for something like 19.5 hours, and guess what I did? I went to the office, of course

I was in the office until 19:00, trying to catch up what is going here, at the customer's site, andf then went to the room to get some rest. I fell asleep and got up again at 21:00, and then watched tv - I must comment that there was some really interesting programs about the D-day: the invesion to Normandy.

To quickly get rid of the Jet-Lag, I went to bed at 01:00am and got up at 07:15, and it actually did the trick

Now it is Tuesday, 18:45 - Atlanta time, and we recently finished our tasks for today, and will probably soon go "looting" the closest Outlet...

I'm still trying to figure out what do I think about America and Americans.

So far I haven't had much of a chance to explore the area, but it seems like people are very polite.

Very very polite

And that's about it for now, I guess...

This is Ofer Lando, reporting from Cingular, Alpharetta, Georgia.