Our First Few Days

A Guest Post from Femi Oluboyede:

After about 24hrs of travelling depending on the country the trip began, all 12 participants of the Global Technology Entrepreneurship Fellowship 2011, at the Technion University in Haifa, Israel arrived at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. Jennifer Birch, our trip coordinator, met most of us at the airport and we eventually began the trip from Tel Aviv to Haifa where we would all be staying for the next 8 weeks of the program.

First impressions of Israel: lots of greenery, lots of high-rise buildings and easily recognized brand name companies such as Microsoft, Intel, Nissan, McDonald’s etc. The highways are quite similar to those in the US and rush hour traffic is a universal unifier. Some of us expected to see a lot of security and a strong military presence at the airport, but other than one security officer asking to see all our passports as we awaited the arrival of two classmates on a delayed flight, this airport could be just like any other around the world.

The house we’re staying in is down a series of steps off Anzo Serini street in Haifa. The women’s part of the house has several bedrooms on two floors, living space and adjacent to the men’s house which has five bedrooms on two floors, a dining and living room space and a really lovely garden area with flowers with a view of Haifa and the Mediterranean sea.

Our first meal was salad and pizza as we gathered together in our new living space to meet one another (except for one of us, finishing off his on-line final exam from Tel Aviv) for the first time. A quick walk around the area after the meal revealed that we were in a fairly quiet residential area. Tomorrow, we would explore the path to the beach after recovering from our trip. We headed home and slowly crept to bed to get some much needed rest and battle the jet-lag setting in.