Six Months Down!

I apologize for not writing for a few days.  I was up in the northern part of Israel at the beginning of the week and didn't get a chance to get on the computer much while I was there.  I will try to get you updated on my comings and goings in Tel Aviv and up north over the next few days.

Discarded cabbages in the market on our pub crawl

As you my have noticed, I have been making a sincere effort to try to update some of the sections of the blog that had been sorely neglected over the past few months.  The calendar and schedules are now mostly up-to-date as well as the route map and some of the other pages such as the links.  I've been having some issues with the route map in Google Maps because since I have so many locations pinpointed they no longer all fit on one page and thus the map is likewise divided into two sections (which makes absolutely zero sense.)  I have even tried taking out all of the other fun icons like the planes, trains and buses to get the entire location list onto one page, but it is apparently still too long.  If any Google Map experts out there (a.k.a. Kristen Lombardo... I am sending brainwaves your way so you will read this post forthwith) know how to fix this problem, please give me your ideas either in the comments or by e-mail.

Making a funny face on our pub crawl

Unfortunately, I know in spite of all my recent work I still have a long way to go to finish everything.  I am fully aware that I accidentally deleted some photos from previous posts and that I have to go back and add photos to other posts that never had them in the first place.  I also want to try to add captions to ALL the photos, but that will take a chunk of time for me to devote to it.  Please bear with me as I continue to make these long overdue updates.

So as you can see from above it's been just over six months since I officially started traveling when I flew from Korea to China and a bit more than six months since I originally left the U.S.  I still expect to be on the road for about a year so I have just under another half a year to go, but of course unforeseen circumstances could certainly change those plans.  There have clearly been LOTS of ups and downs, but overall I am feeling very good about the whole experience and know that I made the right decision to embark on this adventure.  It may seem as if I'm taking a "gap year" like UK students do between high school and college, but in many ways I feel like I'm getting a condensed four-year liberal arts degree just by traveling.  Along the way, I'm taking "courses" in world history, political science, linguistics, anthropology (culture anthropology and archaeology), art history, marine ecology, zoology, geography, theology, psychology (my own... haha), world literature, photography and on-line "journalism."  Phewwww... what an exhausting course load!

My friend, Dan, with a really drunk German kid

As some of you have mentioned (Kristen, again), I have been in Israel for quite a bit of time now for two main reasons: there is so much to see in such a small country and I'm also waiting for the next part of my trip to begin.  On February 14th, I am scheduled to embark on a container ship en route to Montfalcone, Italy, on the Adriatic Sea.  I will board the boat in Ashdod, Israel, and along the way stop at ports in Haifa, Italy; Gemlick, Turkey; Ravenna, Italy; Koper, Slovenia and finally Montfalcone.  The trip is supposed to take about nine days, but it all depends on if the crew stays on schedule with offloading the containers at each port.  I'm pretty excited about this sail around the Mediterranean because I've never even been on a cruise ship before!  I just really hope I don't get seasick like I used to on my grandfather's sailboat.  I plan to wear one of those pressure point bracelets and bring plenty of Dramamine so hopefully that will do the trick.

Lady and Nuna sleeping

Tomorrow, I will put up a post about an interesting tour I took in Tel Aviv before leaving to go up to Kiryat Shmona and the Golan Heights.  In the meantime here is a cute photo of my host, Carrie's, two dogs as well as some silly pictures of me and my friends in Jerusalem to amuse.  Cute pet photos always score extra points.

Oh, by the way, thank you all for making last month my most successful blog month on record.  Probably because I posted a lot, I had over 1,000 page views for the first time ever, which is about a quarter of the just over 4,000 total views I'd had by the end of January.  I know it seems like a pretty piddly number, but it still makes me feel like all my efforts are worth it since I know at least someone is reading what I write.  By a large margin, the majority of my readers are in the US (surprise, surprise), followed by the UK and then closely behind by South Korea.  Don't worry, I only get generic stats as opposed to details about specific readers so you can all continue to surf over here in secret.  Thanks again!