Counting Down to Israel: T Minus One Month

Before I begin with the topic of this post, Happy New Year! Yes I know, the calendar year is coming upon one-half gone, but it’s actually my first blog post of 2012. Oops! Now that the spring semester is long gone, perhaps I should try to rectify that by recounting my recent studies and other things I’ve been working on.

But as the title alludes, it is now one month to the day until I depart the familiarity of the United States for the adventure and exploration of Israel. In the past weeks I have finalized a number of plans that have made the trip begin to feel real. For those interested, here is a rough outline of my plans:

June 20-21: One-day vacation in Chicago with Lauren.
June 21: Depart from Chicago for Warsaw, Poland.
June 22: Thirteen hour layover (and mini-vacation!) in Warsaw; depart for Tel Aviv in the p.m.
June 23: Arrive in Tel Aviv in the wee hours of the morning, spend night nearby.
June 24: Travel north to Hazor and report to kibbutz (camp) for the dig to begin the following morning.
June 25-July 13: Excavation begins at 5:00 a.m. and lasts until 1:00 p.m. every weekday. On the weekends, I’ll have the opportunity to plan some day trips with my compatriots.
July 14-25: The dig will continue, but I will begin the recreation and sightseeing portion of my trip. I’ve booked accommodations deep within the Old City of Jerusalem, in a convent run by French nuns! So I’ll spend my nights in Jerusalem, but during the daytime I’ll travel around Israel, from Capernaum and other sites in the Galilee to Beersheba in the south, and hopefully everywhere in between.
July 26: Early flight home retracing my earlier route, from Tel Aviv to Warsaw and back to Chicago.

So, my trip will be jam-packed with adventure and new experiences (and I will certainly add more details to those rough plans in the near future, including what I’ll be digging for, who I’ll be working with, etc.!). I plan to chronicle as much of the trip as humanly possible on the blog, using written articles, photos and perhaps even videos, so if the trip sounds interesting to you, it might behoove you to subscribe to the blog for the next few months! You can do so by scrolling down along the right sidebar of this page, submitting your email address, and clicking on the “Sign me up!” button. If you do so, you will receive an email from my blog each time I publish a new post! You can unsubscribe at any time, so what do you have to lose?

One more thing: you might recall that last year I attempted to raise funds from friends and family for this trip (which would have then taken place in summer 2011), before ultimately deciding that I would not have a sufficient amount. This year, since I was awarded a fellowship in archaeology from my school’s Jeeninga Museum for Bible and Near Eastern Studies, I determined that running a dedicated fundraising effort would not be necessary, since the fellowship more than covers the costs of my flight, dig program, etc. However, some family and friends have sent me contributions anyway, and I am very thankful for them!

That’s all for now, thanks for reading!