There were palm trees in Israel. I had had no idea what the landscape would look like.

The closest things so far that I've seen it look like is New Mexico.

The first leg of my trip (USA to Belgium) was on an Indian airline (not sure which company exactly). The plane was very big and very fancy (beautiful gold calligraphic logos on the interior walls, flat screen monitors that showed our progress over the ocean along with flight information--altitude, speed, etc--that rotated with other media, all of which was also reflected on personal screens for each seat, etc). I also remember the food, of course. It was Indian, and better than on many American flights I've been on. I think I had curried shrimp...I approve.

They took the batteries out of every single electronic I had, unpacked my entire suitcase, unfolded the convertible cloaks, and then piled everything back together messily, couldn't fit it into the suitcase properly, and bound the entire mess up with special packing tape. It was not the highlight of my trip, but I was just glad the plane didn't leave without me and that they let me continue going to Israel at all.

My flight stopped in Brussels, Belgium at which point I transferred to an El Al Airlines plane. A neat, plainclothes-ed woman asked me questions whose answers she definitely was not satisfied by. My trip was open-ended. I didn't know the address of where I would be staying.

I got strip-searched while they delayed the plane.

In the week that B- was already in Israel, I completed our two convertible cloak packs. They were long, hooded, converted into backpacks, and were decorated with patterns in waterproof reflective tape (for visibility).

I had just gotten a sewing machine for my birthday from B-'s family. I worked for weeks on a prototype of the convertible cloak/pack while we waited for the real fabric to arrive

B- did research about what fabrics would be light-weight, water resistant, flexible, and affordable. I called fabric supply companies and we ordered 7 yards (I think) of a slightly-stretchy denim-looking-finished water-resistant material for what seemed like a reasonable price at the time--I forget now how much.