poor neglected blog...

i've been in israel since friday and i'm finding it very hard to write about. me? at a loss for words? i know, right? it *does* happen.

i've been trying to figure out why that is. part of that is because i've spent far too much time in the very non-glam hotel, thanks to an out-of-nowhere bug that i originally mistook for a simple hangover. it seems my body had plain had enough of the jet set-three hours sleep-one meal a day lifestyle i've been leading for about a week and a half now and went on strike. i couldn't stand, i couldn't eat. i could barely drink water. thank heavens for the hallmark channel. it turns out gilmore girls in hebrew is incredibly soothing.

today i felt better. i went out with the group starting very early, with a very packed itinerary. all of the geeks were totally sweet asking how i was feeling and giving me the front seat of the very packed, sweaty van the whole day. i think they mostly felt bad that i missed some *epic* robert scoble dancing in the clubs of tel aviv last night...

but being back among the living, and blogging, today, i've still found it hard to come up with very coherent posts. i think i'm just processing. israel is such a deeply contradictory place. it's incredibly repressed but incredibly liberated. there's an amazing hospitality, but at the same time so much hostility. it's empowering of women-- yet deeply objectifies them. and again-- the thing that i keep marveling at is how similar people are here-- and yet how different.

the absolute highlight of the trip so far was a trip to Ish's-- our tour guide and an Israeli diplomat in San Francisco-- Bedouin village. His parents were amazing. i taped a bunch of video, and hopefully can post it at some point, but you can probably get it quicker from scoble, who was also filming. the experience-- and why it touched me so much-- is hard to put into words. and we're running late for a dinner so i'll get into it later. besides, it really deserves its own post with none of my sick-girl whining mucking it up.

later everyone!