I am back in the land of the United States of America, locked down in the middle of the country on the tail end of a 4-hour layover in Mineapolis-St. Paul. We left Israel at 1 a.m. Tel Aviv time, arrived at JFK at 5 a.m. New York time, and made our way to our domestic flight plans.

Mine just happened to include two 4-hour layovers. In about an hour, I'll hopefully boarding this NWA flight to Portland, getting me back to my homeland at 7 p.m. and putting me back in Corvallis around 9. At which point I have so much to do but have very little energy.

And because I'm so drained, I cannot offer anymore depth on the trip at this time. I hope to write more later on and post it here.

Good day,
Dan

From the Mt. Zion hotel in Jerusalem, we made for the Dead Sea (known here as the Salty Sea), leaving at the mysterious hour of 6 a.m. First, we stopped at Mt. Masada nearby, where instead of walking up the winding trail, we took the tourist option via the tram. At the top you find the ruins of a huge estate built at the order of King Herod, who never actually made it there before he lost power.

Then we trammed down and drove to a point where you can float in the dead sea. Swim is not the right word. You float, effortlessly. I sugguest you try it. Because there is a large amount of salt there, along with other minerals, humans float. It's like flying, walkinging space, or crawling through a room filled with whipped ceam with an abnormally boyant consistancy. Then, goes the tradition, you get dead sea mud, rub it all over your body, sit around for a while, and then, according to our tour guide Ofer, you'll be eaten by mud-seeking Dead Sea sharks.

Actually, there are no sharks in the Dead Sea. This is, of course, because the sharks are loyal to Jordan, which looms in the hills in the distance, and Israeli Defence forces patrol the waters wiht floating submarines.

Of course, that's not true. In fact, the sea contains many minerals which are good for your skin, according to Ofer, but it contans no life. Water comes to the Dead Sea but doesn't go anywhere. The minerals and things make certain Israelis very rich. At the gift shop back at the very modern Masada tourist-money-grabbing center, an all inclusive line of Dead Sea creams and lotions and soaps and shampoos and of course, evening wear.

The ancient Israeli tradition, of course, is to go there and spend large amounts of money on the creams, go into the Dead Sea, realize that such an activity makes your skin dry, apply liberal amounts of lotion, and return to the gift shop to spend another large amount of money because you need to give the cream to your friends, relatives and U.S. customs agents.

After that, exhausted and cranky, we arrived at a tourist version of a Bedouin camp, where we were promptly allowed to ride camels. I have photos to prove this. It is very hard labor. For the people, I mean, who have to withstand a short period of general discomfort as the camel ackwardly walks through the desert for 10 minutes. The camels seam to enjoy it. I interpreted the constant whining and general sour demeanor to the second-hand smoke billowing into their paths courtesey of the man pulling the camels along.

We spent the night at the "Bedouin village," which is actually a tourist location dressed up kind of sort of like modern-day Israeli Bedouins live. Which is actually kind of cool. It's a little like camping. We started off by learning about the history of the Bedouins, hearing some Bedouin music, playing some group games in the "tend" area (which was a huge, open area with a roof and some walls featuring large gaps open to the outside world.

As we played one game that probably comes easy to small children but was difficult for me to master, one of the other students broke rank and pointed out that over there, by the tent entrance, there was a fox.

He was in no way a menacing fox. If anything, he probably wanted to cuddle up with us or play our funny games. But as humans, we could not tolerate this fox, so the men in the group lunged toward the beast and scared it back out into the wild.

The beast, I would estimate, was about as large as a toaster. The women were scared, of course, so we men took charge and began setting up a perimeter. And by that, I mean, a couple of us went to get more water.

Later, instead of going to sleep, a few of us went outside of the tent, looked at stars, and were surprised by a moon rise that wasn't on our official schedule.

And then, without warning and in an unprovoked attack on our soverign land, the beast-fox returend. Or had two come? In a split second, we lunged toward the pack of creatures and again secured safety for our group. Bear in mind that this was something like 3 in the morning, and today we might remember the details in a way slightly divergent from reality.

But the long story cut short is that the foxes continued to come back, sometimes in the tent, other times walking around outside of it, other times darting around in the distance. This was in additon to passing wild dogs and feral cats, as well as the donkeys and/or mules and camels hanging out nearby.

We considered going hunting, but considering that camels go for somewhere betwene $5,000 and $15,000, we opted to remain unarmed and avoid escalating the conflict in this peaceful part of Israel.

My battery is near death ... I'll write more later after dinner.

Shabat Shalom!

Dan

Now it's time for random thoughts ...

- I forgot to mention one detail about the flight from Poland to Israel. Because of the recent terror bust in Great Britain, security is extra tight, even for El Al. For all flights going into the U.S. GB, Israel, and I think Canada, you cannot bring ANY carryon luggage. Instead, they give you a clear plastic bag usually reserved for hosting a few apples from the grocery store. Inside, they allow you to place travel documents, your passport, your wallet and your money. Nothing else. Not a pen. Not a book. Not a newspaper. I'm not sure how long this will last, but our Aug. 20 flight from Tel Aviv to JFK might feature the same security level. Fortunately, El Al is allowing a third checked bag to make up for the rule. In addition to advising people to visit Israel some day, I reccoment trying out El Al, just for the experience.

- The food here, so far, is fantastic. Also healthy. I know, it's un-American to spin "health" in a positive way. For breakfast we had scrambled eggs, a variety of fresh fruit, multi-grain rolls and an array of mystery items I couldn't fit on the plate. For lunch, we stopped at a falafel shop in the Old City of Jerusalem. Warning: The following statement is both un-American and anti-OSU ... the gyro/falafel/pita was far better than anything you can get at Pita Pit. Dinner was hosted at a fancy and festive reataurant, where we had a private backroom and talked with a group of Israeli college students as we ate an amazing salad, some ravioli, and a variety of other things. There was no "main" dish -- in America this would be the giant steak or the plate of ribs -- instead, you just keep loading up on the healthy and light items until you're happy. And you hardly notice that havn't eaten a large portion of a cow. Now, I'm not saying I advocate vegitarianism -- I do not -- but one can enjoy food here and not be a fat-ass.

- ... my turn for the shower has arrived ... and rom 572's Internet Cafe de la Dan has customers in the waiting. So I'll yield to Marshall and Argenes and clean mysef up, get some sleep, and wake up for another awesome breakfast.

(OK ... and in case I sound too optomistic about everything, note that mysel and many of the other editors are very concerned about the inhearant confict of interst in us accepting this free trip ... I'll offer a full discussion on this matter at a later time on this blog.)

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MT. ZION HOTEL, JERUSALEM, ISRAEL -- Finally, a free hour. Myself and two roommates, in a dome-roofed room in this hotel facing Mt. Zion, are getting our first rest of the day after a very interesting tour of the Old City of Jerusalem. We walked the path Jesus Christ himself was said to walk when he arrived in Jerusalem, and then we walked the path he walked to his death with a cross attached to his back.

Visiting Japan in recent years, I've been amazed by the age of many of the things you can see. America's just a baby nation. As we began our day, we looked at the wall hosting Damascus Gate, and our Israeli guide Ofer pointed out dryly that it is "only 450 years old." Right. I'm only 23 years old. Christianity itself is only somewhere around 2,000 years old. The things we're seeing here go back even further.

We took in so much information today, so many dates and names I might have learned in church -- had I been paying attention -- that frankly I'm overloaded and struggling to digest it all. The feeling began from the moment the bus left the airport in Tel Aviv after our 3 a.m. arrival from Poland. Looking out the window at the night, I thought to myself ... "I'm really in Israel?"

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As soon as the El Al Airlines checkin counter prepared to open for bussiness at Warsaw's airport yesterday, Polish police officers with large guns began roaming around. One to the left. Another to the right. One more on the balcony overlooking the checkin area. El Al takes security incredibly seriously.

And why not. Some people in the world would die to blow up an El Al flight. So they make sure it doesn't happen. Once they let you in to the fenced off security area, an agent starts asking all kinds of questions. "How did you get into the editor's group?" "Do you know anyone in Israel?" "Do you know anyone from Arab countries? -- Did any of them know you were coming to Israel?" Then, because we told them that we hadn't watched our bags for every moment of the day before checkin, we had to look through them in front of an agent to make sure nobody put a bomb in there.

Then, once the hard part was over, the agent said my new Komodo sandals are very, very popular in Israel. This morning, walking down the hallway of the hotel, we saw two people with matching sandals.

...

Like I said, we arrived in Israel at 3 a.m. Monday. Three hours later, a U.N. authored cease-fire took effect. There's no telling if it will last, and there's already been violence in the region. This morning, our first speaker was Gill Hoffman of The Jerusalem Post, an English language daily with an audience made up mostly of people outside of Israel, more Christians than Jews. He said that the cease-fire also will signal an end to unitity among Israeli politicians and the people, who so far have expressed strong support for the government's course of action in the current conflict. In the Israeli parliament, he said, it's a rare occurence when the prime minister doesn't get heckled. Now that the IDF has stopped its campaign, the fireworks in the halls of government are ready to begin.

And a quick note on the war and its effects -- while we havn't left Jerusalem, we're far enough away from the war zone that things are running pretty much as normal as they can in Israel. There are no air-raid sirens, no bomb-shelter briefings, not even an armed guard somebody told me there would be (either they were joking about that, the guard comes along for only certain parts of the trip, or they no longer have a guard). We're safe, but of course, we're always in a group and we can't leave the hotel. So this isn't exaclty a standard vacation.

...

At the end of our walk through the Old City of Jerusalem, we had a few moments to do some shopping in an Arab shopping district. We walked through a crowded space between buildings, with shop after shop on both sides, salesmen begging you to come into their store, handing you things to look at, pushing for you to buy, buy, buy.

Our guides warned us that you absolutely must try to bargain in this kind of market. They say something is 20 Shekels (about $4), you might counter with an offer of 15 Shekels. Maybe you settle somewhere in the middle. This is not a skill I have in the arsenel. I'm used to shopping in places where the price is the price and there's no deal to be made. At McDonald's, I don't try to haggle them down to 49 cents for a cheeseburger, though I think we could agree, that's a reasonable price.

I probably got hosed to today. As I looked at an item I wanted to buy as a gift, I asked the salesman for its price. He stalled. He didn't tell me. He wanted to know about how much money I had. I didn't outright tell him, but I pulled out my cash to look myself. I broke a rule. I should have known how much I have, how much I'm willing to spend, and how much I'm going to pretend I have. Eventually, after he'd probably had a nice look at my wad of cash, he told me the item is $35. Yeah. Right. I had about $15 left in a combination of currency (almost anywhere here accepts U.S. Dollars) and he accepted it and wrapped up the item. Did I get hosed? I'll never know. But I learned a few thigns about the Arab street. (Yes, this is Israel, but about 20 percnet of the population here are Israeli Arabs.)

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That's all I have for now -- more to come when I can -- e-mail dantraylor@gmail.com if you want to hear more specific info or just want to chat -- good day!

*A note on photos -- I've taken many but cannot post them. Check back after the 20th when I'm back in the states.

Just a quick check-in tonight before bed. It's already 2 a.m. and yet again we have to be up early. I'm trying really hard to avoid complaining though, because yet again, we don't have to pay for this trip.

This is our first of two nights at the Sheraton in Krakow, Poland. Krakow is a beautiful city that was spared in the war. It's downtown is still the old city. Since Poland joined the EU a few years, ago, tourists have begun to pour into the city.

More later ... I simply have to try to get some sleep.

I've come a long way since Gate E8 at PDX, and unfortunately, I have not found the Internet and a block of free time join forces until now.

It's 11:08 p.m. in Warsaw, Poland. I'm sitting in my "Go Beavs" T-shirt and my plaid blue pajama pants on the 31st floor of the 5-star Marriot Hotel in the heart of the city. My shoulders ache from lugging too much luggage from Portland to New York to Poland. My legs are sore from a 30 minute walk from the old city back to the hotel.

But finally we're here, and we can sleep. Until 7 a.m., when a wake-up call will jolt us from our slumber and force us into motion in order to be on the Giant Bus by 8 a.m. with breakfast down the hatch. And then it's off to Krakow, where we'll spend the day at two concentration camps -- Auschwitz and Birkenau.

But like I said ... a lot has happened up to this point, and it would be a shame to leave it there. So here we roll:

NEW YORK

Don't ever allow yourself to go to New York City for only one night, and don't let the night feature an 8 a.m. wakeup call. I arrived at LaGuardia airport at about 5:45, and made it to Grand Central Station by about 6:30 or so, where I made a stupid decision in waking four-plus blocks to the hotel with a backpack and two other bags instead of hailing a cab for a ride that wouldn't have been too expensive. But I made it, encased in sweat. So I showered, changed, had a sandwich, and rode the subway uptown to visit Uncle Rob and Rose.

THE FLIGHT

I had a feeling she might be an interesting person to ride to Warsaw with. I was right.

The plane from JFK airport had seats set up like this-- {} {} {}{}{} {}{} -- I was in the middle section of 3 seats on an aisle, and a young woman from Poland was on the other aisle. Nobody had the middle seat, and we both knew we lucked out. In my imagination, the vacant space meant I could spread out in any direction without causing any sort of problem. If I wanted, I thought to myself, I could bring down the unused tray table and go wild by putting my warm Pepsi there. Really though, in the beginning, the vacant seat was nothing more than a palce to put our free headphones. We shraed a glance as we both set them down in the vacant seat at the same time as if to say to each other, "Wow, what amazing seats we have ... look at all this space!" We both surely were surveying the others on the plane, those poor bastards who had to have a person right next to them, breathing, moving, sleeping, drooling, talking in foreign languages. "Yes," we said to each other with that quick glance that didn't quite qualify as a smile, "We're flying like kings today."

Thath was the end of our interaction. Partially because I was trying to get some sleep and partially because she was busy talking with her two friends in the seats in the other direction. She even turned her whole body toward them, talking to them in Polish, completely ignoring that fact that I might want to make small talk and show off my knowledge of world affairs.

I started drifting off into sleep, but flashes of consciousness move the story foward:

Flash: The girl gets up, heads toward the restroom, and the guy friend from the other seat takes hers.

Flash: "Excuse me" she says, waking me. "Would you like to sit here?" I was groggy and not quite sure what she was talking about. But then it made sense ... the three friends wanted to sit together. Sure enough, that was the case. I gave up my seat for a window seat and a buffer aisle seat, all to myself. It was perfect. This was right before the in-flight movie came on -- "Lassie" -- and I went right to sleep.

Flash: The three Polish friends, the one girl I met originally, a guy, and another girl, share a drink of hard liquor mixed into orange juice. They get a little festive, a litte loud. And even during "Lassie." More sleep.

Flash: I glance over at the three Polish friends and the girl and the guy are cuddling together. Oh, I realized, they're a couple. And they have another female friend who was sitting and looking straight ahead as the other two may or may not have been fiercely making out. I go back to sleep.

Flash: "Excuse me," It's her again. "Do you want to sit ..." I couldn't beleive it, and again I was confused, but I figured that she wanted me to go back to the middle area because she and boyfriend wanted to make out in a slightly move private space. Fair enough. What do I care where I sit. The alternative seat in each case had a buffer ... I didn't have to risk brushing up against anyone. And that's the kind of flight for me.

It's about meal time -- breakfast -- as we prepare for our morning arrival in Poland. The second girl wakes up to find her friends gone and me in their place. We share a "hello" glance. She looks over at her friends -- the girl's feet now resting on the seatback in front of her -- and shakes her head. Girl 1 had plenty to drink. When she asked if I was OK with changing seats a second time, with booze on her breath, she asked where I came from. I answered, "The United States."

After breakfast, Girl 2 -- named Aneta -- and I began to chat, a conversation that began with shared smiles regarding her drunken friend who was beginning to catch the attention of the cabin crew. She's from a city three hours away from Warsaw, and she'd spend the previous three weeks in New York City on vacation. I didn't press for more details, and I didn't get any. We talked about other things ... learning English, where I was going, what to expect in Poland, etc. Then I asked a question I thought I already knew the answer to:

"So the three of you went to New York together?" I asked, gesturing toward the drunk girl and who I assumed was the drunk grils's boyfriend.

"No no ... we met on the plane."

"You met on the plane ... like ... today?"

"Yeah ..." she said, beginning to laugh. "And they make out! They're crazy."

So my entire conception of the situation was way off. The make-out session, possibly fueled by alcohol, appeared to be nothing more than a one-flight stand. That appeared to be the end of the story.

Drunk girl wasn't too drunk to recall that I was the guy she'd asked to move twice to accomodate her makeout session. As we waited to leave the plane, she smiled, and asked, for the second time in two hours "Where do you come from?"

Bravo.

There is no punchy ending to this story ... to make it punchy I'd have to make something up. But Aneta, if you're reading this, next time I'm in Poland we should meet up for a coffee and make fun of Drunk Girl and Mr. Hookup. Or at least we can make sure to be in their wedding.

OH RIGHT, AND IN POLAND ...

We toured what remains of the old Warsaw Ghetto from the 1940s, where Jews were forced to live. They didn't know it at the time, but the Ghetto was just the first step in Hitler's plan to kill them all. Get them in one place. Train them to camps. Muder them all.

Heavy stuff, but as one of the chaperones pointed out, there's more heavy stuff to come as we head to Krakow and stand inside the death camps.

WHEN I HAVE TIME / IF I HAVE TIME

I'll write more about what I've seen and done, but now I really should sleep to avoid another day like today ... where despite being in an amazing city seeing history up close, I wanted nothing more than a bed and a shower. Finally those things have come. Good day.

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Questions about something I wrote? Comment here or e-mail dantraylor@gmail.com

It's just after 6 a.m., and I'm sitting at gate E8 at Portland International Airport, blogging thanks to the free wireless Internet. The day began at 1 p.m. Monday when I woke up back in Corvallis. I spend the day running around the apartment like a small, lost animal, attempting to cram 11 days worth of clothing into a small amount of space. It's like the scene in Apollo 13 where they have to make the square thing fit into the circle thing ... except not at all ... because nobody's life was at risk in my case. That was a bad analogy. I just wanted to mention Apollo 13 cause it's a pretty cool movie.

Gotta go -- they're boarding first class.

Ha ... I actually get on because I'm emergency exit row and therfore get special treatment. Because of that I can blog no more. See you in New York.

A lot of people have been asking me what the time difference is in Poland and Israel. As I write this, at 1:45 p.m. on Monday, the Internet tells me that in Warsaw, it's 10:45 p.m. on Monday. Down in Jerusaelm, it's 11:45 p.m.

So you viewers at home do some math, they can figure out what time it is where I'm roaming around.

How about the weather?

This evening in Jerusalem, it's about 80 degrees. In Warsaw, it's down to 66 degrees.

Should I find any other random facts before I just go over there?