A bit of summary

It occurred to me that this blog hasn't quite succeeded as a travel blog up to this point. Nobody can quite keep track of where I am and where I've been based on reading it. I feel that, if I am to succeed from now on at updating it, it will become more of a memory blog. An impressionist blog.
It's always been hard for me to summarize. Actually, no- it's hard for me to get myself to summarize. Because it's just plain not my instinct to summarize. It's my instinct to dwell and expand upon little things. That, like many instinct, is both helpful and harmful.



Anyway, I'm going to try to summarize my trip.



With Birthright, I was in a group of about 40 people. I hope to keep in touch with them. I'm often uncomfortable in groups of that size. I can handle bigger groups and smaller ones, but a group of that size just takes me a long time to adjust to. Plus, when I travel in groups, it's harder for me to focus on where I am. Being constantly dropped and picked up sometimes makes me focus more on things like what time we're going to eat than the places we're at... but at the same time, when you're with a group, you're rarely alone and you rarely get lost and you're rarely anywhere long enough for it to get boring.



And we weren't anywhere long enough for it to get boring. We started off at a desert kibbutz called Masabai Sadeh. It had cute, tiny stucco-roof houses, bicycles, animals, gardens, and art made out of junk. I didn't get to meet any of the inhabitants, but they didn't seem too friendly.



In the Negev desert, we also saw the grave and house of David Ben-Gurion and went on a night time hike. The guide, Ran, told us to think about how Abraham walked through this same desert. I thought about that, and it was pretty awesome. I understood why people rave about the desert at night. Being totally in the dark is always cool, but being in the dark in the desert, where there are no trees for the moon to hide behind and no plants to rustle, is a different experience from anything I've known. There was also a unique dark blue in the sky. The dry wind is also pretty unique.

I thought about how people like Abrahah, Jacob, and Lawrence of Arabia may have found themselves in this very spot, and I felt more like them, while at the same time realizing just how different a life a person would lead living in the desert.

I had a conversation with Justin, a guy on the trip. He confessed that, since he lives in New Mexico, the Negev isn't much of a new thing to him. I told him I understood. I quoted Omar Sharif in Lawrence: "No Arab loves the desert. We like water and green trees." If that's true, then I'm a bit of an Arab myself. The desert has its thrills, but the potential for desolation, desperation, and poverty has always been very palpable to me.

We then moved on to Masada and Ein Gedi at the Dead Sea. It rained. Masada was cloudy, which gave the "sunrise" a dufferent quality to it. The cloudy view was nonetheless impressive. At the Dead Sea, more rain came. Some people floated in the cold muddy water but I chickened out. Mudfalls filled the mountains at Ein Gedi. Apparently some people died that day. I hope to go back to the Dead Sea on a better day.

After that, we spent a night in Tel Aviv. It was a Monday and it was cold. I went to an Irish pub- the first of several I would find in Israel. Irish pubs there are very much like Irish pubs in America- asymmetrical, wooden, and with lots of Guinness. Israeli ones just play up the Irish-ness a bit more. Pictures of James Joyce and bouzoukis line the walls, and that sort of thing.

Then I went to Mike's Place. It's owned by Canadians with dual citizenship. Then a friend named Josh and I lead a search for drunken felafel. Coming from America, where drunken pizza walks are possible in any small city, we expected this endeavour to be a cinch in the so-called party capital of Israel. But the search proved to be in vain. Josh and I hoped to go on more successful drunk walks together later on the trip, but it unfortunately never happened.

When I returned to Tel Aviv later on my own, I realized that this first incident was just another example of the city's horrible urban planning. Tel Aviv has several main drags, but none of them are parallel to each other or to the ocean. Some cities have main drags with smaller streets between them. In Tel Aviv, everything criss-crosses everything, like a plate of spaghetti that's suddenly cut off by the ocean.

The next day in Tel Aviv, we met some friendly soldiers in Rabin Square. I got my picture taken in front of the S'licha ("sorry") wall. It was one of the most moving memorials I've seen anywhere. Ran had us sing "Imagine." Later on, when Ran asked for feedback on his activities, several people said they felt weird singing the song because "Imagine there's no countries" runs contrary to the idea of Israel. I figured Ran just chose it because it's about peace, and that's the idea behind Rabin Square. I realized that I agree with John Lennon. Singing the song was indeed awkward, not because of its meaning, but because of the Israelis who walked by. I figured they must be used to this sort of thing, though.

I will continue later (hopeuflly not too much later) because right now I have to catch an overnight train from Luxor to Cairo. I'm not looking forward to it.