!Yo Diggity!

I enjoy writing this blog to share my travel experiences - I hope to share something perhaps out-of-the-ordinary or something which you would not see in a guidebook or magazine. As I was thumbing through the 300-some odd pictures of my recent trip to Israel it was hard for me to think of what to share. It was really such a cool trip and I could probably write a novel about it… but another goal of mine is not to bore you to death. So, I’ll blog this in peace-meal fashion - as I think of something, I’ll blog it. Forget about chronilogical order or anything like that.

So, two friends of mine from Houston, Mike & Adam, met up with me in Israel.

The trip came about a bit randomly and tured out to be a bit random all along the way. Those are the best kind, in my opinion, anyway! So we flew in, rented a car, and we were off.

Our first stop was Jerusalem. What a strange and wonderful city. Well, in all of Israel, you have extremely strict Jewish people living right to extremely strict Muslim people. But in the old city of Jerusalem, you’ve got both these groups, along with a few other extreme groups, all living within confining walls. It’s so weird. So every so often, when crossing from one quarter to the next, you need to go through metal detectors and security lines. This area has been fought over for centuries and centuries… and now the people must learn to live peacefully in every day life. It’s crazy to me. They don’t mix or mingle… but they are literally walking next to each other every single day.

As we were on the Mount of Olives one day, we saw something in the distance which looked like a wall. Hmm… what is that? So, we jumped in our little blue car and drove towards it. When we got up close, we could see that there were guards with machine guns at each crossing.

It seemed to be mostly a Muslim/Arab area that we were in (see, very tiny at the bottom of this picture you can see the Muslim women).

We didn’t really know what it was at the time… but we could see this wasn’t maybe the most popular wall by the graffiti which was on it…

… and that does look really like the ‘fun’ graffiti that you see normally - like what you see in Budapest. This is like graffiti with a purpose or some definition behind it. Luckily for us, the internet (and wikipedi specifically) is amazing. I found an article about this wall and it’s purpose. In short, this is a wall that is supposed to separate the Israeli’s from the Palestinians. The wall is a controversal one (thus the graffiti) as it is putting up quite a definate barrier which is a barrier that is not necessarily representative or reflective of the true state. However, the number of terrorist incidents since 2002 when it was erected. So that was an interesting find… and another symbol of what ‘living in peace’ right next to your enemy is like. As I said… this is a very, very interesting place. If you pay attention to international news at all, I’m sure you are up-to-speed on what is going on in this area of the world because something controversial is happening there nearly every day. It’s got such a long, long history… and a long, long way to go.

More later…