Day 1 - Kibbutz Ginosar.

The sweet scent of spice and I am busy swirling air through my drink. I am on an exotic plane of existence... a foreign land heavy with the spell of the unknown. I am....
...leaning far back in the chair and tipping, nearly falling backwards and cracking my skull open on the chipped asphalt of the dorm porch, exhibiting my classic grace and style.

I stared deeply into my nalgene bottle, 1/4 full of lukewarm coke that I nicked from the dorm fridge and a healthy dollop of duty-free rum which I had to hide beneath my bed. Already the scavengers have prowled forth, looking for treats and alcohol and it is only the first night.

So I sat back, stretched out my legs and pondered the meaning of life and travel as the black flies congregated around my nativity and began to mercilessly chew the skin off my ankles. The dorm is ablaze with the sound of 20 somethings watching an Israeli version of Dancing With the Stars. They have jut returned from swimming in the Sea of Galilee and are clearly not going to sleep anytime soon. My bed (well, let's call it a cot) lies directly in front of the door in the room I will be sharing with three others...that is to say, my drooling scrunched up sleeping face will be seen my anyone who wanders down the hall to the two other dorm rooms since the room averages about 90 degrees and the air conditioner is broken, meaning we keep the door open at all times. Not exactly the evening I had dreamed of...

Chapter 2: Test of Faith, Goodwill and the Bus.

Ah, Tel-Aviv... land of overzealous border control officers who are paid (handsomely I hope) to ignore the snaking lines of tourists acting like Americans. I suppose I expected to see at least one machine gun due to the may reports I had gotten from friends and family visiting Israel, but nary a gun was to be seen. I saw a whole lot of visors, of matching T-shirt groups, of flight manic travelers wandering aimlessly the wrong way on the moving sidewalk...but no guns.

And I got my backpack off the turnstile almost first time around. I nearly started to bawl: never has my luggage been reunited with me with so little drama... in fact it is rarely reintroduced to me until my return home. When I saw it's lovely form glowing its way around the carousel, I was moved to tears of joy... I wouldn't be washing the carry-on underwear I had brought with me over and over again, nor would I have to buy new clothes. I am not one of those people who carries a complete change of clothes in my carry-on. I know the Rules of Travel, I understand their necessity and really I would be the prime candidate for following these guidelines since my luggage has been lost before, often showing up days later, if not at the end of my trip. But seriously, when I am packing my bags (the night before or the morning of) I have that fleeting sense of propriety... which quickly gets washed aside by the nagging fear that I haven't brought enough books. And so clothes fall into the category of non-essentials and more books are crammed into my backpack.

The group met up scraggily... we boarded the waiting bus in a bit of chaotic mess...some people (from the various universities) already knew each other... some, like myself, were interlopers. The trip from Tel-Aviv to Kibbutz Ginosar took a few hours and was dotted with historical facts by EM, most of which we were all far too exhausted to take in. "yeah, yeah, and there's the birthplace of Mary Magdalene and yadayada... when do we get to EAT?".

My seat-mate was the venerable VH and we made much small talk by totally snarking on the American movies she watched on the flight over and we bonded over the peanut butter crackers I brought along. We rumbled through the entry gate of the Kibbutz and, as with any new place one ventures to, it seemed so foreign, scary. We ceremoniously dumped our stuff at the office and all 30 of us plowed into the dining room where a bounty of food presented itself: fish, salads, olives, cheese, fruit, potatoes, coffee...we ate like the vultures we are and tried to ignore the few pitiful bleatings of "I don't know what this IS" and "why don't they just have HAMBURGERS?"... my own inner-bleat professed a desire for beer, but it being the first night and all, I suppressed the need to ask.

We then made our way out to the dock which extends quite a ways into (atop of) the Sea of Galilee, where the Kibbutz was situated. While some hardy souls had a prayer meeting and sang hymns I was oblivious to, I spent my time staring across the sea (lake) trying to discern whether the brilliant orange glow in the general direction of Tiberias was something to be concerned with. The eerie quiet of the place inspired me to start to chatter with the random person next to me who turned out to be A, one of my roommates. Sleep proved to be rather elusive, though time change had little to do with it...almost as soon as I closed my eyes, one of my roommates issued forth the low rumbling that is a precursor to the inevitable snores and another one stumbled into the room, armed with what must have been a military issued flashlight, the illumination of which could have been seen by Venus.

The next morning was all clamberings and rumblings and chaos as people jostled for position in one of the two showers. I had awoken at the lovely hour of 5am and was firmly ensconced on the porch, bleary eyed but happy with the Folgers coffee singles I had thought to bring along. Breakfast was a grandiose buffet of hard-boiled eggs, thick french toast, potato pancakes, vegetable pies, muffins, fruit, cereals, fish, fresh squeezed orange juice and salads. We were not to eat this well for another week...