I'm on the road again

Hi all,

I guess I'm back from a brief break of a couple of months. Been overseas as a matter of a fact.

I have been traveling around Israel visiting and experiencing the sights and sounds. An amazing place Israel. It is a mix of 3rd world and 1st world, or East and West, tumble down villages and developing cities amidst the country that boasts the highest PhDs per capita and an amazingly advanced Hi-tech industry.

It is one of the few countries in the world where calls to destroy it are met with apathy from the general community and the Israeli's know it. This breeds an unfortunate distaste of the international community, especially institutions such as the UN.

We had an interesting tour along the Lebanon boarder. We met with a local Kibbutz-nik (one who lives on a kibbutz) who showed us around. It was all rather scary. We drove next to the boarder so we could see the blue line (patrolled by the UN) and rather obtrusively there were Hezbollah flags scattered along the blue line despite the Israeli, UN and Lebanese military presence in the area.

We visited Kyriat Shmonah, a city in the north of Israel that was a target of Katushyas throughout the war. Most of the buildings had marks in the walls where shrapnel had hit them and one particular shop looked like a hurricane had hit. Scary stuff.

We also went down south near the Gaza strip. We visited a Pre-school in Sderot, a city within range of rockets from Gaza. The parent we spoke to said that there was at least one air raid siren every 3 days. This freaked most of us out to the point where we basically sat for an hour waiting for a siren. Thankfully this never eventuated.

We went to Jerusalem for a while. It is an amazing city but I don't know how people live there. The tension is thick in the air. One day we were there there were riots due to some excavation near the Temple Mount.

We also went to Tel Aviv where a couple of us hired bikes and went a roaming around. Best way to travel in TA. AUD$10 for a bike for 24 hours and we basically covered the whole touristy part of TA which had taken me a couple of days to walk around previously.

So basically that is what I have been up to. If you are interested to know more about Israel, send me a note and I am happy to talk to you about it.

Yours truly,

Tom/Hiredhelp

PS Everything is Illuminated by John Safran Foer is a fantastic book and I suggest strongly that you read it. There is also a very good movie, but read the book first.