Kyoto Springtime

Two weekends ago at the beginning of April, I found myself in Kyoto, Japan.  It is an absolutely marvelous place to be in the springtime.

The flight from Seoul was delightfully short -- only an hour and a half until we landed in Osaka.  Kyoto is rather far from Kansai Airport, about 60 miles (100 km), but with Japan's rapid trains getting into the city is no problem at all.  I was traveling with my Samsung colleague Dave and my friend Eddie from back in the USA, who works now in Vietnam and made the long flight up from Ho Chi Minh City to see the famous Kyoto cherry blossoms!  The blossoms are prominent in many parts of Japan during the early spring, I have read, and they are commonly found in Korea as well, but I had heard that they were legendary in Kyoto, which is quite beautiful in its own right.

My first surprising impression of Kyoto, actually, was how hard we had to work to find the beauty of the city.  Though dotted with all sorts of old temples, shrines, and palaces, upon arriving at Kyoto Station one only sees the bland, concrete, modern architecture that has replaced much of the ancient stuff in the center city.  I had expected something more like Florence, Italy -- a preserved masterpiece where one wanders from plaza to plaza and tries to avoid being consumed by too much of the place too quickly.

But if you arm yourself with a map and board one of Kyoto's convenient buses, you can reach almost any site worth seeing quite easily.  Our first stop on a warm Friday was Ginkakuji Temple.  The walk from the bus stop had all sorts of cherry blossoms hanging over the sidewalk.  I think we missed the well-known Philosopher's Path, instead darting into the temple and breathing in the calm of the large Zen garden inside.  Even full of tourists, I felt like I could walk at ease around the grounds and loved breathing in the clean Japan air (Korea, you need to fix the haze that hangs over Seoul).  Riding the Kyoto bus was peaceful too, with a driver who seemed to have perfected the art of driving his vehicle smoothly.

We took a long ride across town towards Kinkakuji Temple but missed out once the sun went down.  No worries, there was more to see.  We migrated to the Nijo Castle, originally the shogun's residence in Kyoto.  At nighttime the cherry blossoms inside were lit up inside the large grounds.  Spectacular!!!  Unfortunately I didn't know how to make best use of my new DSLR camera to take the finest photos, but the visual memory I have will be one of my best from Kyoto.  We ate a late dinner at a noodle restaurant, then wandered to our capsule hotel for an early bedtime.  The capsule hotel was like a glorified hostel.  Beds were larger than I expected but you were definitely in tight quarters and a semi-enclosed space.  It felt like sleeping on a spaceship!

We woke up early on Saturday because rain was in the forecast.  We stopped at Hirano Shrine on our way back towards Kinkakuji.  Also known as the Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Kinkakuji was short of the picturesque blossoms but equally Zen as our temple visit the day before.  Unfortunately, the forecasted rain arrived on time and umbrellas were out the rest of the day.  We viewed Ninnaji Temple on our way towards Arashiyama, a hilly area in the western part of the city.  We found more blossoms here and the Tenryuji Temple, which contained a splendid bamboo forest.  The Arashiyama area had nice shopping too but the rain had tired us out a bit and we accomplished less sightseeing than one would have hoped.  At night, Eddie introduced us to a Japanese gentleman from Harvard who introduced us to a fine traditional Japanese bar in the posh Gion district, followed by a karaoke session!

On Sunday morning, the rain had mostly stopped and we wandered back through Gion's small streets.  This is what we had pictured Kyoto looking like!!  We moved south and wandered through a large residential district full of temples on our way to the Fushimi Inari Shrine.  How amazing it must be to live around so many wonderful temples!  The shrine is dedicated to Inari, the Japanese fox goddess.  One sees dozens of stone foxes and hundreds of bright orange torii gates inscribed with Japanese stories.  The grounds are so large that one could wander here all day!  But we didn't have such time, sadly.  My weekend in Japan passed far too quickly.

The dangerous part about traveling to Japan is that the more I visit, the more I yearn to return!  Japan is such a harmonious and peaceful country.  It is quite different from any other place I have ever visited and it is wonderful in an inimitable, unique way.  Given how close it lies to the Korean peninsula, I am bound to return again to Japan soon.

Niseko -- The Land of Endless, Powdery Snow

Can't believe that two weeks have gone by already since I visited Niseko, Japan over the Lunar New Year holiday.  Wanted to put together a quick wrapup of my memories for an amazing trip!

The trip was a ski adventure organized with my Samsung colleagues.  We got off for the Lunar New Year holiday, and since all Koreans go home to see their families it wasn't very sensible to stay in the country.  Unfortunately the new moon fell on a Sunday this year so we only got Monday off from work, but thankfully I had a couple vacation days saved up.

Niseko lies on Hokkaido Island, the northernmost of the Japanese archipelago.  As the island lies quite a bit further north than Seoul, about even with the eastern tip of Russia, it has a wintry climate this time of year.  Niseko's location, on the southern part of the island near Sapporo, lies at the perfect confluence of chilly air plus sea humidity, meaning that it gets inundated with a seemingly endless bit of light, powdery snow.  By the time we arrived, the resort had already reported 540" (1371 cm) of snow for the season!!

I've never skied in so much fresh powder, and I actually had difficulty adjusting on the first day.  I was a disaster, falling all over the place.  Thankfully, when you fall in that much snow, you have about zero chance of hurting yourself, but then you have the difficulty of pulling yourself out!!  In fact, on my first fall I nearly lost my right ski in a snowdrift and, once found, I had the extraordinarily difficult task of figuring out how to stand up and put the ski back on in waist-deep powder.  Talk about a challenge!  I did a little backcountry skiing my first day with more advanced people than me and was exhausted (and scared) as I tried to dodge trees and keep my balance.  By the end of the day I was defeated by the mountain.

Down in my spirits, I anted up for an expensive two-hour private lesson the next day.  Given how much this trip was costing me anyway, I didn't want my last two days of skiing ruined by my inability to navigate such unnatural terrain.  The lesson gave me significantly more confidence, and by the third day I was back in the woods.  Such an incredible experience back there.  You're in seemingly virgin ski territory, just you and your ski buddies, just making your own path down the mountain.

This Japanese mountain, mostly uncrowded and massive, totally made Korean skiing look amateur.  We were staying in a town near the Grand Hirafu gondola but the mountain actually has 4 resorts total that you can ski with an all-resort pass.  Besides my trip to Utah last year, this was the only mountain I had done where the bottom lifts only take you to intermediate parts of the mountain, then additional lifts climb you closer and closer to the top.  The very top was almost always foggy and windy and rather difficult due to the extremely low visibility.  There was almost always snow falling, so good goggles and a face mask are essential.  When the mountain occasionally clears up you might get a view of nearby Mount Yotei, an almost perfect volcanic cone.  I'm told it's the second-most photographed object in Japan, after Mount Fuji.  Absolutely breathtaking!

My colleagues were great to hang out with both during skiing and apres, and we dined very well in the Hirafu town.  We ate delicious ramen, barbequed meat skewers at an izakaya, and sukiyaki hot pot.  Yum yum yum!!  Even convenience store seaweed rice rolls were quite tasty.  About the only thing missing was sobe noodles, as you see from Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations episode in Niseko.  We also could have used a hot tub near our cabins, given how sore we were at the end of long ski days!  Though Japan can be notoriously difficult for foreigners to navigate the Hirafu town is full of Australians so all the establishments have learned how to cope with English speakers :)

And there were cool animated figures at Sapporo Airport...I love Japan!!

Though it's only a 2.5 hour flight from Seoul I don't know if I will ever make it back to Hokkaido, but I sure hope I do.  The countryside outside of Sapporo is so empty and so not like the crowded Japan I imagined.  I do hope to make it back one day.

Shanghai Fever

Just spent the past weekend in Shanghai, China and had a great time. This was my second visit to the city, having visited for the world expo in 2010, and I came away from this trip with a distinctly different impression than my first visit.

The nicest HoJo ever!

I left work a little early on Friday and the flight from Seoul was short, only an hour and forty minutes away. My Samsung colleague Matt was traveling with me and had booked a Howard Johnson hotel in the stylish area along Nanjing Road near People's Square. It was, without question, the nicest HoJo I could imagine!

We settled ourselves around 10:30pm, the perfect time to get out and explore the Shanghai nightlife. Matt's friend invited us to join her at the Craft bar in the French Concession district. The place was full of foreigners! There couldn't have been more than a half dozen Chinese in this crowded, edgy club. It felt strange to find so many white people in this Asian enclave...a bar like this simply doesn't exist in Seoul. After a few drinks, Matt and I relocated to Club 88 to find some Chinese people for a more "authentic" experience. Even here, there were more foreigners than I would have expected, and some of the Chinese women here were clearly looking to earn a nightly stipend, if you know what I mean ;-). I didn't see this racy, dangerous side to Shanghai when I first visited!

Dylan and I at the "marriage market"

On Saturday, my Darden colleague "Dylan" (Zhibin in Chinese) met Matt and I at our hotel. We walked through the Saturday marriage market in People's Square Park (a favorite!) and strolled to the Xintiandi neighborhood for a dumpling lunch. Xintiandi looks newly remodeled and is super nice. We ate a delicious xiǎo​lóng​bāo lunch at the famous Din Tai Fung restaurant and then visited a museum designed as a traditional Shanghai house. The museum felt a little strange given Shanghai's stunning modernity now. I enjoyed reuniting with Dylan and hearing his views on Shanghai's rapid transformation and Chinese politics. Also, like most people I met this weekend in Shanghai, Dylan has never visited Seoul, and I felt a bit like a Korean ambassador on this trip!

I took an obligatory trip to the Bund in the early evening but the view was totally obstructed by fog. Unfortunately we picked a misty, cloudy weekend to visit Shanghai, though it was considerably warmer than Seoul.

Saturday night consisted of a birthday dinner with Matt's expat friends in a trendy Western-style restaurant. The drinks were flowing and we had a lovely time, but again I felt rather unusual being surrounded by so many Westerners. It almost feels like Shanghai has returned back to its 1930s colonial heyday.

We relocated to the Dakota club, another French Concession expat hangout. I got into a long conversation with one expat who has lived in Shanghai for 3.5 years – she said that Shanghai has become considerably trendier for foreigners since the 2010 expo and that she has seen a rapid influx over the past two years. Certainly, Shanghai has far more expats than Seoul, and I would not have predicted on my first visit that life would have changed for the foreigner community so rapidly here. Then again, change comes to Shanghai faster than almost anywhere else!

Rachael and Matt dig into some "North" Korean BBQ

Sunday, Matt and I had a most unusual experience – we visited a North Korean restaurant in Shanghai! The Pyongyang Restaurant in Xuhui is quite delicious, actually. Matt and I introduced another Shanghai expat friend to our new Korean comfort foods -- grilled pork belly (samgyeopsal), seafood pancakes (hameul pajeon), kimchi, and all the assorted side dishes. The waitresses were certainly selected for their pretty looks and political loyalty.  I didn't get into any conversations with them and didn't dare take their pictures (though that may have been allowed), but they were happy to indulge me by letting me order in my broken Korean.

After a therapeutic massage and a ridiculously swift train ride to Pudong Airport (430 km/hour!!!), we were back to our home city of Seoul. A great way to spend a weekend!

Tokyo Calm

I took my first-ever visit to Japan in mid-October, checking out Tokyo for the weekend while my friends Charlotte and Alex were visiting. I didn't want to travel out of Seoul again so soon (5 days) after my trip to China, but when your friends from America say they will be hanging out a two-hour flight away from you and you live in Asia, you go!

My health wasn't at its best when I arrived in Tokyo as I was battling one of the worst colds I have faced in years (I blame the awful Chinese air pollution for weakening my immune system). But I was comforted by the fact that I wouldn't need to worry about any of the nasty surprises to my health (drinking water, dubious food, etc.) that one finds in China. Tokyo has smog but nowhere close to the level of Chinese cities. I had heard that the language barrier was difficult to navigate so I hoped I wouldn't get too lost.

Those quirky maid cafes

I didn't have much time on the ground and Narita Airport is far away from the center of this massive city.  Charlotte invited to sneak me in to her Friday night fancy dinner sponsored by the The Institute of International Finance (IIF), a group of bankers responsible for doing important things like renegotiating Greek debt. I had very specific instructions from Charlotte to pack a tie and work attire, but I packed in a rush and totally forgot to pack these.

Though I thought this meant I would need to find dinner on my own, it unexpectedly led to my first Japanese cultural experience – the convenience store. Now in Seoul, convenience stores are ubiquitous and generally awesome. In addition to snacks and drinks they usually carry items like fruit, vegetables, milk, umbrellas. So when I'm too lazy to walk the 6 minutes to my local grocery store, I can walk 2 minutes to 7-Eleven and get my basic essentials. The Japanese convenience store takes this concept to another level – you can buy ties and dress shirts!! Granted, this is not runway fashion we're talking about here. I bought the largest shirt I could find but the arms were still too short...I guess I am a little bit bigger than the average Japanese man. However, convenience store shirt and tie paired with khakis I had packed turned out to work great and I greatly enjoyed my fine steak dinner and wine as I listened to boring bankers speak about monetary policy!

Tokyo Imperial Gardens. Clearly I wasn't feeling my best, but it was a lovely day.

Charlotte was working on Saturday so I headed with Alex to Akihabara, Tokyo's electronics mecca. The area is quirky and ridiculous – quintessentially Japanese. You can find comic books and DVDs of every anime character that has ever existed or crawl into one of the "maid cafes" that dot the neighborhood. If you need stimulation you can queue up for the Pachinko Slot rooms, massive floors with nothing but Japanese men and women of all ages watching spinning slot wheels and smoking. It's colorful and busy and everything I pictured Japan being.

We took in the Imperial Gardens also that day but I was tired in the evening with my illness and never made it out to see the Tokyo nightlife. Alas, maybe another trip. Sunday morning we walked through the Azakusa area and saw the famous Buddhist temple there, and I took the elevator up Tokyo Tower to get a glimpse of the city from up high, though the city is far too big for you to be able to see all of it.

In my limited time in Tokyo, I was impressed by a few things.

• The quirkiness of Japanese culture – maid cafes and body-pillow girlfriends and Hello Kitty and those crazy slot machines
• The incredible cleanliness of Tokyo – I have never seen a cleaner city. I think one could even eat off the floor of the Tokyo subway in the morning. Seoul is safe and clean too but Tokyo is simply the highest standard.
• The calm and harmony amidst all that activity. At rush hour you find millions of people going every which way but somehow no one bumps into you. I walked quiet sidewalks in the center of one of the most densely populated metropolitan areas on Earth. Incredible.
• The strong attachment to individuality, so different from Korea. The non-businesspeople express themselves through fashion so much more confidently than the conformist Koreans (Japanese businesspeople still conform). You see a lot of people alone in Tokyo...people eating alone, playing slots and video games alone. I imagine Tokyo could be an immensely lonely place for a foreigner (much like was shown in Lost in Translation).

I might go back to Tokyo while I am in Asia but I am definitely going back to Japan. It seems so relaxing.

China – Beijing and Xian

At the end of September, I jumped off the Korean peninsula for the first time since my arrival to travel to China for a week.  The weekend of September 29 - October 1 was a Korean holiday called Chuseok, a mid-autumn festival celebrated on the day of the full moon.  In Korea, this is a time when Koreans hit the roads to go see their families, hence why Americans have dubbed this "Korean Thanksgiving".  With another holiday also scheduled for October 3 (National Foundation Day) and as my vacation was fully usable from day 1 on the job, the opportunity to travel for a week while using only 3 days paid vacation seemed too good to pass up.

One of many delicious roast duck restaurants in Beijing (Quanjude)

I'm writing this long after the fact (it's funny how much you forget so quickly after you travel) but I wanted to jot down some quick thoughts about my 2nd trip to China before it fades into memory even further.

I traveled to China with my business school and Samsung colleague Dave and his wife Mor.  They convinced me that they would be good travel buddies and indeed they were!  Thankfully we had similar travel preferences – my days of hopping around with a backpack through youth hostels are over and the three of us agreed on just about everything in the itinerary.

It was their first time in China and my second, though I had never been to either Beijing or Xi'an before.  Also, unbeknownst to us when we booked the flights from the US, the mid-autumn festival is also celebrated in China, even more intensely than Korea.  Many Chinese take the whole week off to travel and domestic tourism sites are absolutely mobbed.  The weather was wonderful in China at the beginning of October – perfect temperature and no rain – but lesson learned to travel either the week before or the week after!

Inside the crowded Forbidden City (not-so-forbidden these days)

Getting to Beijing from Seoul is not hard, takes less than two hours by plane.  You do need to get the Chinese visa in advance, which is relatively straightforward though does require completing a long application form and paying a stiff fee if you're a US citizen (about $165 for a double-entry visa).  When we landed at Beijing's enormous airport (2nd busiest in the world), the train into the city was easy to find and a helpful Chinese lady helped us figure out the pass system to ride the subway.

We were staying at a hotel near Tiananmen Square and after settling our bags down walked over.  The square is quite large and can hold about 600,000 people.  Chairman Mao's portrait stares at you from the end and you can see all sorts of Chinese people walking around and kids with their rear ends exposed. The Forbidden City is relatively close but we saved that for another day, taking a long walk through a small part of massive Beijing.

On our second morning we weren't quite ready for the Forbidden City just yet, so we toured the Temple of Heaven, a big complex south of where we were staying.  After a few hours there and another scarily cheap meal, we took the subway to Tiananmen and thought we were entering the Forbidden City from there, but ended up in the Working People's Cultural Palace.  We thought it was lovely and surprisingly empty, which given that we weren't in the actual Forbidden City wasn't too surprising!  There were a number of Chinese shooting wedding pictures.

Light moment at the Great Wall. Every bit as good as the hype.

Eventually we found the moat surrounding the Forbidden City but it was too late for us to enter, so instead we got up high into a pagoda on a hill overlooking the City in Jingshan Park.  The perfect place to view the sunset!  Beijing is a very flat city, so being up on a high felt unusual.

Day 3 in Beijing was Great Wall time.  We wanted to hike the Mutianyu section because we had read it was less crowded than the other sections, though still well-maintained.  We figured out how to board a 7AM bus to the wall – difficult to find and we had to ignore a Chinese lady trying to trick us into riding her tourist van. The bus was mobbed with Chinese and we stood for almost three hours to get to our destination! But the end result was worth the painful ride. The Wall is very impressive and surrounded by beautiful lush green mountains.  The parts of the wall that weren't packed with Chinese were a relaxing treat and the hiking is good exercise too – some sections are quite steep. And at Mutianyu you can ride a toboggan down! I can't recommend the $1 bus, though.  Mor used some serious Israeli fighting skills to get us seats on the ride back to Beijing.

Thoroughly exhausted after a day of wall-climbing and bus-riding, we treated ourselves to some of Beijing's finest roast duck at DaDong. A culinary masterpiece at an affordable price, less than $50/person!

The Working People's Cultural Palace looks a bit like the Forbidden City, as is unfortunately overlooked.

For our last full day in Beijing, we decided to brave the crowds at the Forbidden City.  On China's crazy, psycho touring week known as Mid-Autumn Festival, this place is to be avoided! A must-see on any person's Beijing itinerary, the city contained an endless stream of people, starting with the 45 minute line to buy an admission ticket. But I can't say I regret going. Even with the outrageous Chinese crowds the Forbidden City was fascinating, which can only mean it must be more incredible without the mobs of people. The City is huge, literally a city within a city, and one of the grandest palaces you will ever visit.

Our last day found us at the Summer Palace, also lovely but far too crowded, and the Beijing Olympic Park, which isn't all that exciting. You can go into the Birds Nest stadium but we were put off by the price to get in, which was almost equal to the Forbidden City.

An overnight bus transported us to Xi'an, one of the four great ancient capitals of China. The city is historic and contains a mix of historic temples and bell towers alongside modernity, and has the largest city wall in the world (though the city now extends far beyond it). Xi'an is overpriced compared with Beijing – less impressive attractions but higher prices. The only tourist attraction begging your attention here are the Terracotta Warriors, uncovered only about 40 years ago about a 90 minute bus ride outside the city. The Warriors are impressive, each with different facial features and some quite well-preserved. That said, I thought the place was disappointing. You don't actually get to walk amongst the warriors...instead you're staring at the pit where the archaeologists did the excavation back in the 1970s. Well, if you're Bill Clinton the Chinese make an exception!

As close as I could get to the Warriors

China was a good trip but it felt really great to return to Korea.  I enjoyed the relatively friendly Chinese people, the outrageously inexpensive prices (for everything except Xi'an tourist sites), the many tourists who took pictures of us, and having all the logistics work out in a difficult-to-figure-out country. However, by the end of a week in China a combination of physical exertion from constantly being on my feet, some dubious Chinese food, and the awful air pollution had me rather worn down. China is like Vegas for me – I can only handle it in small doses – and a full week in China left me exhausted and my immune system weakened. I could have used another vacation to recover from this one!

India!!

I just posted on my MBA blog about my spring break trip to India, a crazy crazy place!  Read more here.

Israel Recap

Hey all! A week ago I returned to the US after a long trip to the Middle East and I have a lot to write about. The last week has been a whirlwind of car travel -- from Richmond to Charlottesville to DC back to Charlottesville and then 1200 miles to Houston. Finally I'm getting settled in one place and have time to recount my travel adventures.

Best thing I think will be to give you a day-by-day view of Israel, which will organize my memories and allow you to take a break if you get tired reading this! Here goes...

Saturday, May 7, 2011: It was a rush to get to this point...Darden classes ended on Wednesday and I needed to cram an exam, a presentation, and a paper into Thursday and Friday, but somehow I was able to get everything done and pack my bags on Friday night for the long trip. I'm always anxious before a big trip because I fear not packing something important.

After leaving a few minutes to jot a quick blog entry :) -- my two Darden roommates and I received a Saturday morning pickup from our classmate Cassidy in her Scion xB, what I like to call her "toaster-mobile". She handled the 90-minute drive to Richmond Airport and we waltzed through security. I really love RIC...the airport always feels empty, and I think the TSA agents outnumbered the passengers in the security line. So much nicer than Dulles airport.

We transferred through New York's Kennedy airport, which is the polar opposite of RIC -- crowded, unwelcoming, almost no natural sunlight...a concrete jungle. The boarding area for Tel Aviv could probably only seat 1/3 of the passengers on our massive double-decker Boeing 747. And we waited over a hour on the tarmac while we waited for all the European red-eye flights to take off ahead of us. Ugh...I hate Kennedy worse than Dulles.

Dinner was a disgusting kosher meal on Delta (they were out of non-kosher), triple-wrapped in plastic by the New York rabbinical mafia. I took a sleeping pill and tried to pass out in my window seat, also giving one to my nosy Israeli seat neighbor.

Sunday, May 8: The sleeping pill worked! I slept about 6.5 hours until the breakfast meal service, another gross triple-wrapped delicacy. We passed through Israeli passport control, which wasn't any more strenuous than entering the US, and hailed a taxi to our hotel in Herzliya, a suburb north of Tel Aviv. Despite my sleep, my mind was still wiped out from the journey, and I wasn't able to make much conversation with our talkative and opinionated taxi driver from the airport. The driver claimed to be a tour guide and insisted on an extra-special gratuity for the service! He told Aaron to write down all his recommendations, which we promptly ignored.

I believe the best remedy for jet lag is to get some natural sunlight. With our hotel on the beach this wasn't going to be difficult! I tossed a frisbee on the Herzliya beach with several of my classmates and enjoyed the sea breeze of the Mediterranean.

The evening was the welcome reception for the Darden school trip. We ate a full dinner at the hotel and observed the 8PM siren which announced the beginning of Israeli Memorial Day (Jewish days run sunset-to-sunset). After dinner we watched a long movie chronicling the Israel-Lebanon conflict in 2000, sort of like an Israeli "Saving Private Ryan". The whole room almost fell asleep.

Monday, May 9: The Israeli Memorial Day meant we would have a light day. Unlike Memorial Day in the US, which is more about going to the beach than remembering soldiers, the Israelis take their Memorial Day seriously. After a morning meeting with an expat venture capitalist, we traveled to Yitzhak Rabin Square in Tel Aviv which was the place of the prime minister's 1995 assassination. There we watched a moment of silence at 11AM. A siren sounded and everyone left their vehicles, standing at attention. A very powerful moment! We then grabbed a long lunch with an Israeli entrepreneur who we had been working with on a US market entry strategy.

A quick nap at our hotel, and then on to Independence Day festivities! Israel has deliberately placed Memorial Day and Independence Day back-to-back to ensure that they remember the fallen who helped create and preserve the Israeli nation state. There was a stark contrast between the somber Memorial Day and the exuberant Independence Day celebration. As a group we went out to see the street music and celebrations in Herzliya. Lots of young Israelis were out, carrying around plastic Israeli hammers and silly string. Our Israeli Darden professor Gal Raz claimed that the hammers had no significance, but I think you could play "hammer an Egyptian" with them :). I was too jet-lagged to stay out for the Tel Aviv "afterparty".

Tuesday, May 10: Independence Day continues with American-like activities -- lots of Israelis out grilling and watching an aerial demonstration by the Israeli Air Force. We went to the Israeli Independence Museum, the Heichal Haatzmaut, to see the place where the Israeli state was declared in 1948. The rest of the day consisted of a HUGE lunch -- Darden made certain we were VERY well-fed -- and walking tours of old Tel Aviv and the port of Jaffa. Not too interesting, but there wasn't much else to do on Tuesday as most businesses were closed.

Wednesday, May 11: Early wakeup as we hopped a 7:30 AM bus to Jerusalem. We had several meetings at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, first with Israel's Accountant General (the CEO of Israel), then with a nutso right-wing wack job in Foreign Affairs who gave us a heavily biased history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and finally an entertaining diplomat who shared a candid view of behind-the-scenes negotiations for peace.

In the afternoon we toured the Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum, not a happy place! Despite living for six years in Washington DC I never visited the American Holocaust Museum, because I didn't want a day in which I would feel totally miserable, and now I knew why! In the evening we had another long dinner and received an entertaining lecture on Israeli business culture following our evening dinner. For those of you who will be doing business with Israelis in the future, just remember that they tend to be impatient, direct, and informal.

Thursday, May 12: Another early wake-up as we were headed to a morning meeting at the Ministry of Trade. We then traveled to the Israeli Parliament (the Knesset), where we received a tour of the building. It was a busy day for the tour guides as the Parliament wasn't in session that day and several packs of elementary school students were passing through.

The afternoon we were touring the Jerusalem Old City. Given the significance of this place to the three major monotheistic world religions, this promised to be intense. We even had an armed security guard for our group of 30. Our tour included the Church of the Holy Sepulchure, believed to have been built atop the hill where Jesus was crucified and buried, and also the Western Wall, one of the holiest sites for Jews. We then toured the City of David, the oldest settled neighborhood of Jerusalem.

We stopped to dine at a delicious Arab restaurant on our way back to Tel Aviv -- hummus, falafel, and kabobs. Yum! Our bus ride back had a karaoke competition, and our student group went out to enjoy the nightlife afterwards. I ended with a group of students sampling shisha on the Tel Aviv beach -- life is good :)

Friday, May 13: Yet another Friday the 13th without incident-- I'm starting to become skeptical about this whole bad luck concept. The Darden group traveled north to Kibbutz Magal to visit with Netafim, an Israeli pioneer in a technology called "drip irrigation". This water-conserving irrigation technique has allowed Israel to reclaim much of the desert for growing crops. The kibbutz is an Israeli commune designed during Israel's socialist era to provide jobs through communal living and protect Israel's frontiers -- this kibbutz overlooks the West Bank.

We returned to our Tel Aviv hotel for a late afternoon debate between a reform Jewish rabbi and a follower of Orthodox Judaism. It got heated! I hadn't realized how the Jewish state is largely secular and has an even more intense debate about the role of religion in society than we do in the US. At 6PM we recognized the beginning of Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest. Orthodox Jews don't drive cars or do much of anything besides sit around with their families on that day, but in largely secular Tel Aviv it was plainly visible that this custom is not widely observed, much like you may find businesses open on Sunday morning in the US.

Saturday, May 14: Saturday was a day to work on our group projects for our Sunday presentations. My group needed to get out of hotel, so we looked for an outdoor cafe with WiFi. But then a shower passed through, unusual for Tel Aviv in May, so we found refuge in a much nicer hotel lobby which also had great WiFi (and a nice wine bar). After a productive few hours, we took some break time on the beaches of Tel Aviv -- the sun returned -- and in the evening sampled some African-inspired Israeli music at a local club.

Sunday, May 15: Sunday is a work day in Israel! My internal clock was a bit off when I was told we would be waking up for an 8:30 AM presentation by the head of PR at Better Place, and Israeli electric car startup. The car launches later this year and sounds way cool -- I want one! We then caught the bus to Haifa, Israel's third city. Haifa is a lot like San Francisco...hilly, quiet and sophisticated. Tel Aviv is more like Israeli New York -- the big city and the cultural hub, and Jerusalem is sort of like Israeli Washington -- full of important government figures and a place which takes itself a little too seriously!

In Haifa we visited the Technion, Israel's equivalent of MIT. And indeed it shares MIT's ugly concrete architecture and density of NERDS (albeit happier ones than at MIT). At the Technion each of our student groups made presentations to the startups which we had been working with on US business strategy.

The American news was filled with stories about the Arab border infiltrations on "Nakba Day", the annual day of commemoration for the Palestinian people of the displacement that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948, but in Haifa you wouldn't have been able to tell what was happening. In fact, we all were surprised to read about it in the news while checking email over lunch. Life carried on as usual in Israel -- I was quite surprised.

Monday, May 16: Long day. We drove northeast to the Tefen Industrial Park where we met the highly energized founder of luxury soapmaker Gamila's Secret. "Just sell the f---ing soap!" was his motto. We ate a nice (and again very filling) lunch on the Sea of Galilee, did some brief kayaking on the Jordan River, and toured an army base in the Golan Heights just a few miles from the border with Lebanon. The army base felt like something out of a Vietnam War movie -- all the soldiers were about 19-22 years old. We received a demonstration of firing mortar shells from a tank (which had been purchased from the US) and learned about the compulsory three years that every Israeli man spends in the military.

In the evening we had our final group dinner in Haifa and saw exuberant celebrations outside our hotel afterwards as the Maccabi Haifa soccer team had just captured the Israeli championship, with an afterparty at the club next door to where we were staying.

Tuesday, May 17: Final day of the school trip. After a boring meeting with Qualcomm we visited the Israeli headquarters for Google, which had many of the features of the Googleplex in Mountain View -- cushy seating, free food, and a casual dress code (T-shirts encouraged). Google also had an amazing orange-juice machine which sliced the oranges, squeezed the juice, and discarded the rinds. So much fun to watch!

Following the Google meeting was a visit to the beautiful Baha'i Gardens. I didn't learn anything about their religion, but really enjoyed the view from the immaculately tended grass and palm trees. A group lunch followed and then goodbyes to most of the students on the trip!

This wasn't the end of the trip for me, however. Cassidy, Ronald, Aaron, and I fetched an Avis rental car and set out for a road trip! As Israel is about the size of New Jersey, it would be possible for us to traverse the entire country over a few days.

We drove our car from Haifa into the Negev Desert, settling down into a hippie tent village just outside the town of Mitzpe Ramon. We were hoping for an amazing view of the stars, but the night sky was clouded up, sadly. Sleeping in a tent was quite the contrast from the hotels we had stayed at on our school tour, though!

Wednesday, May 18: After a filling breakfast in Mitzpe Ramon, we plunged our rental car into the Ramon Crater, the largest "erosion crater" (i.e. not formed by a meteor) on the planet. You could hear a pin drop in the hot desert -- hardly any signs of life but flies and the occasional ibex -- except for the sounds of the Israeli fighter jets. The air force was playing Top Gun above us all afternoon, flying only a couple thousand feet above our heads. From the top of the crater we were almost level with the planes. So cool!

We hiked to a peak inside the crater. Amazing to see nothing but rocky desert extend for miles all around you.

In the late afternoon we arrived in Eilat, a resort town on an inlet extending from the Red Sea. Though we were given high expectations by the Israelis, Eilat definitely looked like the Jersey Shore of Israel. Lots of tattoos, greasy hair, and scandalous cleavage.

Thursday, May 19: Our purpose for being in Eilat was to catch a bus tour to the lost city of Petra in Jordan. Our tour company almost left us behind, but after a border crossing through a barbed-wire demilitarized zone we found our tour bus and went north into the Jordanian mountains.

Jordan was far more accessible to Americans than I had imagined. Road signs were in both Arabic and English and most young Jordanians spoke decent English. The kingdom of Jordan is on good terms with the U.S. and has normalized relations with Israel. Petra has a lot of Western tourists and if you have time you can also stay at one of the many luxury hotels in the nearby town of Wadi Musa.

Petra, for those not familiar, is a 2000-year-old ancient city carved out of sandstone canyons. The canyons made the city defensible from outsiders and the architectural feats are remarkable for people who didn't have modern construction equipment. In fact, it was recently named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, alongside the likes of the Great Wall of China and Machu Picchu.

If you've seen the end of "Indiana Jones and the Last Cruscade", you've seen Petra, which stood in for the temple housing the Holy Grail. The entrance of this temple is Petra's Treasury, the most famous place in the ancient city. The city extends far beyond the Treasury, but we only had a couple hours to walk around so we certainly couldn't take in everything.

Friday, May 20: We hopped in the car again and drove north to Masada, an ancient fortress atop the Dead Sea. Masada was the last stand for a Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire and besieged in 73 AD. The last Jewish survivors, rather than succumb to a life of slavery, committed a mass suicide, and the site today holds great symbolic importance for the Israeli military. "Masada shall never fall again!", their soldiers chant as they are sworn in. A cable car ride to the top saved us from a strenuous hike in the 95 degree heat.

We descended to visit the beach of Ein Bokek, on the shore of the Dead Sea. The sea is actually a salty lake, with nine times the amount of salt as the ocean, and is the lowest point on Earth. With all that salt you couldn't sink in the sea if you wanted too! To float on the Dead Sea, you wade into the water until you can squat, and then your feet let go of the sea floor as the water pulls your whole body to the surface. Such a cool feeling. The salt also leaves your skin feeling slimy so you don't want to sit in it too long.

We ended our day in Tel Aviv, about a two-hour drive from the Dead Sea. It felt great to be out of the desert and back to 70-degree temperatures! We had an easy evening by the beach and dancing in the club Lima Lima, again not thwarted by Shabbat.

Saturday, May 21: Final day in Israel, which we celebrated with a lazy day at the beach. Any remaining pale skin was tanned, and the crowded beach provided ample opportunity for people-watching.

Security at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv was as challenging as we were warned. My bags were fully searched and my passport stamps were heavily scrutinized, particularly mine from the Emirates and Malaysia. But I passed through and ended up in Charlottesville on Sunday afternoon after a long dark flight to Atlanta.

I came away with a view of Israel quite different from what you see on the evening news, a view of a country which lives a rather normal lifestyle, albeit with typical Israeli impatience and informality. The school trip allowed me to get a far deeper understanding of Israeli society than I would have received otherwise from traveling around, and I saw a country of great resilience faced by great challenges, not only from the Arabs but also from Orthodox Jews, a lack of water, and an endless stream of immigration. That Israel continues to survive is a small miracle and a testament to the strength of purpose shared by its people.

For those of you considering a trip to Israel...don't believe what you see on the news! Israel is a safe country and has great weather in the spring. If you're intimidated, than do what I did and sign up for a group tour -- so much easier to visit an unfamiliar land when you have someone else planning everything for you! As long as you can eat mostly kosher for two weeks (no pork, ham, bacon, shellfish) then you will enjoy it immensely!



Many more photos from my trip are on Facebook