The hard drive that almost blew up Israel, but that Israel blew up instead

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a hard drive! It's a Bomb!!!!!! Oh wait...no, it actually is a hard drive.

Leaving Israel, Ben and I spent about an hour and a half in security because of my video gear. They were particularly suspicious of the external hard drive I had brought along for backing up video footage. They took it away (along with my laptop) for about 30 minutes to test it. It turns out later that it appears they broke it somehow. Grrrr. My eyes have definitely been opened towards the Israelis on this trip.

Today is the 2nd to last shooting day of the trip. Tomorrow we have a few more locations we are going to shoot at, and then tomorrow night I begin my journey home. We are in Cappadocia at the moment, and it is beautiful. We took a balloon ride this morning. They picked us up at the hotel at 4:30am! Yeah, that's right. We were up in the air over Cappadocia for about an hour, and I was recording almost the whole time. Got some great footage.

This region is where there are a lot of underground and cave churches. The Christian church began to be persecuted, and literally went underground to avoid it.

Tomorrow night at 11pm we fly to Izmir, Turkey. I'm there for 5 hours, then at 5:30am I go to the Izmir airport and fly Izmir -> Munich -> New York -> Washington D.C. -> Lexington. I'll be getting into Lexington about 11pm. Thanks for all the support from friends and family. I know I have been thought and prayed about. My next adventure will be moving to a new place! My first time living by myself. When I get back I have 4 days to be out of my apartment, so the fun will continue.

Istanbul to Jerusalem....or something like that...

(Meant to post this yesterday...but no dice)

Today is our first full day in Jerusalem, and Ben is not feeling well. We only shot until noon today and Ben's resting now. Hopefully he feels better tomorrow since we only have two days to cover Jerusalem. We got some good footage today though.

Israel has been very interesting. This is our 4^th day in the country. You definitely get a feeling for how oppressed the Palestinian people are. Our 3 drivers/guides are palestinian and they are fine folk. I think my two favorite things so far have been: 1) We rented a boat and went out on the Sea of Galilee to do some shooting 2) We went up in the hills and shot this monastery in the middle of nowhere on the side of a mountain, it was beautiful.

I want to thank everyone who has been praying for the trip. It has gone well until now and is almost over. The end of the trip is definitely feeling closer. A week from tomorrow I will be back in the States. How weird will it be not to be living out of a suitcase after a month? To hear English spoken in public places? To not have a camcorder attached to my right arm? Ha. It will take a little readjustment. I can tell you, one of the first things I'm going to do is go to Burger King and get a whopper. I had a chance to eat at a Burger King about a week ago, and regret not taking the opportunity. I will make up for it though!

Most of the people who read this blog will probably get a call from me at some point on the 27^th. I'll be letting people know when I'm back in the states. I will have 2+ hour layovers in both JFK and D.C. that day.

Thank you for NOT smoking

So, today ends our time in Turkey. Tomorrow we fly to Israel for a week to "Follow in the footsteps of Jesus." Turkey has been interesting, to say the least. Last night, Ben and I tuned to the MGM channel on TV and watched a Tom Selleck movie. At a crucial part of the movie he lights a cigarette and takes a long drag. Imagine my surprise when he lifts up a blurred out oval to his lips. Apparently, Turkey being a muslim country, they are not allowed to show a cigarette on television. Not that there is a lack of smokers in this country...

However, I must apologize. I have fallen a liiiiiiittle behind on this blog. Let's just say it is a combination of spotty internet access and a BAD case of allergies/cold. Fortunately, the allergies seem to be on the way out, and my head/nose are only slightly stuffed now. Hopefully after 1 to 2 more good nights of sleep I will feel back to 100% again. Which would be good, since we will be running everywhere to film in Israel.

My last blog post was about Kavala, which was on the seventh. Since then, a lot has happened. On the seventh, we entered Turkey. Or as they say here "Turkiye." We drove almost the full day of the seventh to get to the border, and we spent the night in Istanbul. Istanbul has a population of approximately 13 million...yeah...that's right. Phew, I've never been in a city that large. They have hills of high rise apartments surrounding the city center. We got caught in a 2+ hour traffic jam entering Istanbul and had a laaaaaate dinner. The Turkish and Greek definitely eat a late dinner, normally around 7:30-9:30. I'm going to have to readjust when I get back :)

The Turkish are very proud of their flag, reminds me of America. You see jumbo sized Turkish flags all over the place almost everywhere. On the eighth, we spent the full day in Istanbul, which was beautiful. We visited several museums, and ended the day on with a boatride on Golden Horn. It was beautiful. Over the last six days we have visited a number of ruins in Turkey, including Ephesus. Ephesus was probably the largest ruin we visited during the two weeks we spent driving around. It was very impressive, with a large stadium that was well preserved.

Well, tomorrow is my birthday :) 25 years old. Now I can rent a car without a daily surcharge...w00t! I should probably end this post though. The next week is going to be a long one heh.

Later!

P.S. Check this out, this is how the hotels in Greece/Turkey work their power in the rooms. You need to put a card in a slot in order to get lights or AC (if the AC works). Very efficient. Here's an example.

Kavala, you are beautiful....

I'm sitting here posting from a beautiful hotel in the seaside town of Kavala, Greece. Today we visited one of the monasteries in Meteora. Very beautiful. Then we drove all afternoon to this town. Tomorrow we go to visit the Biblical town of Phillipi, and then we cross the border to Turkey. Next week we will spend in Turkey, then off to Israel for a week, and then back to Turkey for a week. Days of driving go by slow (seeing as I'm not working as much). Not much to shoot through the glass window of a moving tour bus. XD

Thanks Kurt for the good ideas about the blogging. I will take that to heart, though fortunately tonight we have free wireless internet. Mom, the weather has been excellent. Temperatures have been in the high 70s-low80s and sunshine throughout. We had a hint of rain this morning at the monastery, but we were just leaving, and we were at a high altitude as well.

An observation I made when in Athens. The mindset of the Greeks is very different from Americans. We went to a streetside cafe one day, and even though they charged for the bottled mineral water, the waiter started pouring it in all our glasses. As if it was expected for us to buy it. We then had a streetside ACCORDION player (that's right, God's instrument) come up to our tables and play a few songs for us. Then he went to each table and asked us for money. This idea of preemptively assuming you will make money is very different from the American "I will serve you when I know there is something in it for me" mentality.

I'm going to try to post some pictures to facebook here in a few minutes, we'll see how that goes.

Catching up

Alright, this might be my longest post so far, but apparently I only have ~12 minutes left on this wireless card, so we'll see how long it takes me to type.

We made it to Greece safely and have spent the last 3 days driving/walking (emphasis on walking!) around and shooting video. We visited the acropolis (which was beautiful) and Corinth today. The Greeks are very protective about their ruins and I have been told that I cannot use a tripod (which I'm still missing my locking plate) or do any sound recording while I am in the ruins. I feel like my handheld technique is getting better though, so I'm happy with that. Though, I do need a tripod soon, and will take measures towards that.

Ok, less than 10 minutes on this card. Our long travel day here was exciting, had some delays and almost got put on standby for the Athens flight O.o. But I didn't...phew. Athens has a LOT of vegetation, almost every apartment porch has plants on it which is cool. I found out that we won't be touring with this group for the whole 4 weeks. They are only with us for the first 2 weeks, then it will just be me and Ben for the last 2 weeks (Israel and more Turkey). I think we'll be able to get a lot more shooting done at that point, as we are spending a lot of time doing touristy stuff with them for now...

Well that will be all for tonight, and maybe for a few days. We will say when I get internet access again, and I will let some interesting things to post build up as well. Peace guys!