Volume 2 - New Zealand

I was sick as a dog last night.  The kind of sick that if you get it once every few years you start to gain a reputation as “the guy who’s sick all the time.”  Luckily there were three figure skaters in residence at the hostel with me, one who’s writing a dissertation on opossum vaginal mucus secretion.  As can be expected from someone who would write a thesis on such a topic, she took care of me well and made me some nice cranberry juice and eggs.  But with every ying, there’s a yang, and the upside to this little predicament is the ability to slow down for a day and catch up on this long overdue journal. 

I’m in a remote corner of southeast NZ, called the Catlins, at a farm overlooking upwards of 200 sheep.  NZ has lots of sheep.  I mean lots.  Like 9 for every person.  I’d think it’s more with all the sheep here.  There’s only half a dozen of us and 200 sheep.  But no squirrels.  It’s odd walking through the forest and not seeing squirrels.  There are little birds that hop around, but no squirrels.  Unlike its neighbor Australian killer beasts, NZ animals are tragically shy.  Except the little blue penguins.  They’re the smallest in the world, about the size of your foot.  They make an awful racket and can roost right up in towns and parking lots.  No ice, just concrete and noisy penguins.  NZ is in fact quite different from Australia in many ways I didn’t quite realize at first.  While Ozzies are proud and rambunctious, Kiwis are perpetually self-loathing.  There’s a chronic case of cultural self-depreciation.  I suppose it stems from the fact (as I so often here) that they’re “just a little country with only 4 million people.”  Why is food so expensive?  Just a little country.  Why don’t you recycle?  Just a little country.  But they do have the genius to mix kiwis and habaneros for an awesome hot sauce.  What more do you need?

I’ve noticed a number of funny cultural oddities here.  On the surface, the culture seems very similar to America.  But what they call sherbet has nothing to do with fruity ice cream.  It’s Pixie Stix dust that you dip licorice into.  And “candy floss” means “cotton candy.”  The most common weather description is “fine.”  And “supper” means not dinner but savouries (mini meat pies) and tea.  Where Americans learn to play the recorder as the easy instrument, Kiwis learn the ukulele.  That’s right, the Hawaiian ukulele.  And NZ still has video stores.  There’s no Netflix or Redbox, so it’s $5 rentals all the way.  And there are very few chain coffee shops.  Instead of a Starbucks on one corner and a Dunkin Dounuts on the other they have independent coffee shops that also sell cakes and meat pies.  And outside every one is a sign advertising the brand of coffee they brew.  It’s like ice cream shops at home.  You go in and find they’re serving Hersheys of Ede’s ice cream.  It’s an independent shop that sells branded food.  Same with coffee here.  Speaking of ice cream, I ate some and did not add to my reputation as “the guy who’s always sick” recently.  This is a marvelous improvement.  So long lactose intolerance, it’s been real.  Unfortunately, they don’t eat ice cream in cones here too much.  It’s all about popsicles.  And despite the fact that the average fish n’ chips portion in NZ has tripled over the past few years, all-you-can-eat buffets have remained scarce.  I found one last week and treated myself to the necessary gorging that Thanksgiving requires.  It was heavenly.  I swore I’d never eat ramen noodles again.  Then they were on sale for 50 cents.  After the buffet, I could physically feel the bulge in my stomach.  I miss that bulge.  In NZ, wealthy city residents give gifts of clock towers and phone booths.  Clocks are still popular gifts.  Our class gave one to Etown as a graduation gift.  Phone booths, especially big beautiful stone ones, have fallen out of favor though.  These particular ones were gifted to the city of Christchurch by Mr. Edmonds, the baking powder magnate who started the cookbook that has become the best-selling book in NZ history…and yet impossible to find in stores!  It was near this phone booth that I met my first real live hooker.  I wanted the city life, but I forgot that along with culture, theatre, and the arts comes questions like, “would you like to have sex for money?”  She was amazingly polite about it.  I said no.  Kiwis in general are incredibly polite.  They always say please and cheers (thank you is uncommon).  Even the rowdy drunks who came into my work, were immaculately polite when they ordered.  See how much they have to be proud of?

Church here has also been a learning experience.  The evangelical church as I know it at home by all accounts does not exist here.  It’s mainline or charismatic with no middle ground.  I had my second experience of stumbling into a Pentecostal church in Christchurch.  I got to see “the laying on of hands” first hand.  We’re talking about televangelist style here.  It seems odd to me, but in a way, I completely understand the psychology behind it.  Think about the power of touch.  Every study on human development talks about its importance, especially as children.  Yet we live in a culture that thanks to the proliferation of inappropriate touching, has backlashed so strongly that physical contact is completely absent from most of our lives.  Why do girls go back to guys who continue to mistreat them?  Perhaps it’s the power of the physical touch that outshines the pain of the emotional abuse.  So imagine going to church and being completely overwhelmed by the feeling that someone genuinely cares for you.  Combine this intensity with the power of touch and you have a situation that can be so emotionally overpowering that it causes you to fall on the floor shaking when the preacher touches you.  The power of God, the power of love, the power of touch, the power of the mind.  One or all of the above, it makes for an interesting scene.  I didn’t go back though.  A common theme in the churches I’ve been to is a strident bashing of other churches that aren’t as “full of the spirit.”  The end goal seems to be not lovejoypeacepatiencekindnessgoodnessfaithfulnessgentlenessandselfcontrol, but being loud.  During one worship song, the place erupted and people were literally dancing and moshing and going nuts in the front of the sanctuary.  It was passionate and exciting and fun, but was it thoughtful?  The Salvation Army has awesome churches here.  They run thrift stores of course and may or may not ring bells at Christmas, but here they’re an actual denomination, and an awesome one at that.  People wear uniforms to church and music is provided by a full brass band.  Totally unique.  I’ve been most impressed with the Anglican church though.  The big cathedral downtown blew my mind with a “Blessing of the Animals” service, which is a yearly event at all Anglican churches here.  The pastor dressed up as a teddy bear and the message was given by the national head of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, dressed as a cat, who talked about the love for animals tought by St. Francis of Assisi.  Attendees were encouraged to bring animals into the Cathedral with them, so the place was filled with dogs, a horse, and a rat.  They emphasized that the Biblical privilege of “dominion” over animals, means not using them for our selfish desires but compassion and caring for them.  It was brilliant and one of the most unique and thoughtful things I’ve seen in a long time.  I went to another church that is considered a “high” church, as in they’re almost Catholic.  I loved it.  This is a marked departure from my high school days, but it’s been a steady progression helped along by the growing desire to go deeper in my faith than the seeker-oriented nature of many evangelical churches.  The building was gorgeous, they had incense (which is awesome at the time but always gives me a headache afterwards), candles (which need to become a bigger part of my life), and a meaningful and challenging message.  And tradition.  I probably sound like an old man, but I’ve realized how much I enjoy tradition.  I missed Thanksgiving this year.  It was hard, because every year we do the same thing in my family for Thanksgiving.  And departure from that feels unfulfilling.  This church service made me reflect on what may have been my ultimate take-home lesson from my trip to Israel and the key to why I believe it’s such an important pilgrimage for every Christian to make.  When in Israel as a part of the religious community there, you begin to grasp the enormity of the Christian faith and the enormity of world spirituality.  It connects you to the larger church in a way that returning missionaries from Africa never did for me.  You realize that Christianity is bigger than your individual congregation.  It’s bigger than your denomination.  It’s bigger than your country.  And it’s bigger than your era, your point in history.  God just can’t be boxed.  And also, for anyone who has the fortune to outlive me, please please get a group of bagpipers to play “Amazing Grace” at my funeral.  It almost moves me to tears every time I hear it.

Christchurch was an interesting place to be for a few months.  It’s a bizarre place, really.  Most buildings in NZ look exactly the same because they all have the exact same awnings and signs.  Variations of architecture are virtually nonexistent (which made places like the Victorian city of Oamaru even more incredible).  Christchurch, however, was a bit disjointed.  It really solidified in my mind the importance of good architecture in creating a “feel” and sense of place.  A place like New Haven, CT, exudes a certain type of character because it has a cohesive architectural style.  Even new buildings are built with sensitivity to the older ones.  They didn’t do that in Christchurch, they just tore down old buildings and put new ones up.  What results is this hodgepodge of randomness that lacks any defining features.  It also seemed to lack the thriving underground and arts culture that cities tend to lend to their residents.  Maybe it’s part and parcel with the underachieving mentality of most Kiwis, but people just didn’t seem to get fired up about much of anything.  There were a lot of goths though!

And as always, everything’s a learning experience.  I saw incredible compassion in Christchurch when I was waiting to cross the street.  There was a lady on the other side who seemed to be crying and wailing inconsolably.  Having become more of a jaded cityfolk than I’m happy to admit, I just thought she was a little loony.  It’s sad that my first thought was to think ill of her.  Another young lady took the time to stop and talk to her and it turned out she was upset because she had checked her bank account at the ATM and realized money was missing.  It was touching and humbling to see someone with genuine compassion that I myself did not have.  I did redeem myself once though.  I had a suitor of sorts, a strange situation by all accounts.  As with most travelers I meet, she was younger and was strangely interested in me.  But she had a boyfriend.  Though she clearly didn’t care too much for this poor boy back home, I couldn’t let anything happen.  I’ve been on the other side of that raw deal and it’s not a fate I would dole out to even the most heinous of criminals.  It’s an incredibly liberating feeling of freedom and power to make a difficult decision to do the right thing.  It’s a wonder we don’t do it more often.  I also met a genuinely homeless guy at a church in the cool old city of Dunedin, home of the chocolate factory.  He spent much of his time at the church and amazed me with his knowledge of the Bible.  The service was about hospitality that day.  Me oh my, where would I be on this journey without the hospitality and kindness of strangers?  The number of times I’ve been shown unwarranted generosity is incredible.  Part of the difficulty of being “poor” and traveling around is that I don’t have the means to serve others.  I’m always in a hurry, I’m always low on money, I’m always in a position where I’m the foreigner, the one being served.  It’s lovely to always feel so welcome, but I look longingly for the day when I can pass it forward to others.  It needs to become a habit.  I can do it now, I’m just so used to being the recipient that I forget.  Living alone for so long makes you selfish in a way I’m not fond of.  I had a coupon for 25% off at a café the other day.  It was 25% off the whole order.  I was chatting with some nice young ladies in line and then proceeded to use my 25% off coupon all by my lonesome.  What an incredible opportunity this was to show some unexpected kindness to someone else by saying, “hey let’s share this coupon and we’ll all get 25% off.”  Everyone wins.  But the thought didn’t even cross my mind until after it was too late.  A similar thing happened when I finished work early at the hostel one day.  I could have used that time to help the other cleaner who was still working, but I really wanted to get to the free concert they were having for the city.  I was so caught up in my own agenda that I missed an opportunity to be a true example of Christ’s love for people.  Chalk it up to stress, but that’s a cop out.  It’s hard to build a habit, a character of always doing the unselfish thing, especially when it’s hard and requires genuine sacrifice.  But if we all keep at it and don’t give up, we’ll have a lot of smiles to show for it.  When I return to the old United States I hope to get into the swing of a master’s program focusing on architectural history, historic preservation, or something of that ilk.  Why?  Because I believe so passionately in the power of a sense of place to create genuine community among people.  It creates lives that are consciously intertwined in one another.  So the next time I helped, because I know my life is intertwined with everyone else’s.

I did something this week that was maybe the most incredible thing I’ve done yet in NZ, and yet it felt a bit sacrilegious, disloyal.  I toured the Cadbury’s factory.  Sorry Hershey’s, you’ll always be number one, but I need some time apart.  Part of it is that I am absolutely enthralled with corporate history, with how little mom and pop places become multinational conglomerates, with how they market themselves over time, with package design, with product choices, with how different products are offered to different markets, with how they structure themselves.  I may be stridently anti-capitalist, but I was a Comm major for a reason.  I love this stuff.  And even better if it’s chocolate.  The company was started by a Quaker in Birmingham, England, who began with “drinking chocolate.”  It was years before it became available as a bar.  I had my first drinking chocolate as part of the tour.  I was expecting hot cocoa.  No sir, this was rich thick milky chocolate.  Like fondue but not as runny and snobby.  Just like beautiful melted chocolate.  It was unbelievable.  The tour not only took you into the factory but we saw one ton of chocolate fall down a silo as a waterfall and got 6 pieces of chocolate for free.  Better than Hershey’s no doubt, but also not free, and with a more paltry gift shop.  It was quite informative too.  They source their sugar from Australia instead of the Caribbean and their cocoa from Africa and Malaysia instead of Latin America.  This alone can give the chocolate a different taste.  And I didn’t realize how much Big Chocolate (Mars, Cadbury, Hershey, Nestle) has borrowed from one another.  Cadbury makes Buttons that are just like Hershey Kisses.  And when Herhsey introduced the exciting new Take 5 a few years ago?  It was copied from a failed Cadbury product.  In America, Hershey makes Cadbury chocolate, but it’s only crème eggs around Easter.  There is an actual branch of Cadbury in the US, but they make gum and mints, not chocolate.  And KitKat is not an original Hershey’s either.  It was made by an independent chocolatier in England who sold the US right to Hershey is the ‘70s.  In the ‘80s Nestle bought the company so they now make KitKat the world over…except the US.  And nobody else uses peanut butter but Hershey’s.  That alone might make them the best in my book!   And they’re the only the only major player to just do candy. All the other guys make dog food too.  Yuck.

But spending $50 on chocolate hasn’t been the only big to-do of the past few months.  As a result of the earthquake, we got all kinds of freebies in Christchurch.  The NZ Symphony Orchestra gave a free show and I went with my Japanese roommate who had never been to such a concert.  She loved it and said she’d go in Japan.  Nothing like turning someone on to the joys of culture!  The same night I went out to da club and cemented in my mind that I am officially too old for the club scene.  The punk scene of my high school days faded out a few years back when I realized I was the only person at Warped Tour without a black shirt, tattoos, and glow bracelets, and now the bass beat of my college years is fading as well.  May you rest in peace gyrating hotties, the Rat Pack is calling my name.  The biggest adventure was a hike I was doing along a mountainous ridge on the peninsula south of Christchurch.  I lost the trail somehow and found myself face to face with a barbed wire fence.  I get lost quite often and quite enjoy it as part of the fun.  But hopping barbed wire was a new one.  But I had no choice so over I went, unharmed, and landed in the middle of, you guessed it, a sheep pasture.  I had no idea what was over the next ridge, but before I could find out there appeared on the horizon above me a mammoth specimen of sheepdom.  A beast as regal and majestic as any lion, a ram the size of a football field silhouetted against the blue sky.  And when I climbed the ridge I found the trail.  This is the beauty of New Zealand.

Work was good.  Other than scrubbing bathrooms and making beds at the hostel, I found gainful employment at the only takeaway burrito joint in the city, started by Kiwis who had lived in Belize and San Francisco and were sick of fish n’ chips and meat pies.  It’s been a hard sell here.  Americans eat more Mexican food than anyone else, except possible Mexicans.  Here, they like meat pies.  But I learned to make guacamole, pico de gallo, and sour cream and how to roll a burrito without it falling all over the place (most of the time).  We had some minor celebrities stop in including a few guys who were headed to bases in Antarctica for the southern summer and the band Fear Factor, who acted very much like they were from LA, and had opened for Metallica the night before.  I had an eclectic group of coworkers, including a few Kiwis, a Cuban, a Chilean, and an Iranian.  And of course the kiwi-flavored hotsauce. 

I had the luck to play Pictionary with a group of Germans as well.  I don’t think there are many Germans left in Germany, because at least every other person in NZ is German.  Playing a language-based game with people who speak a different language was loads of fun.  “Tape measure” was a hard one.  I can draw it, but what if the German doesn’t know the English word for it.  How would we know if we got it right?  It was awesome. I went to a few movies too, from an Italian film fest to an old Fred & Ginger dance picture to a silent film with piano accompaniment…and a cartoon of course.  Theatres here can be classy.  They often serve wine and $5 coffeehouse style cakes instead of popcorn.  I remember when popcorn used to be an essential part of my moviegoing experience.  There were three parts to a movie: the popcorn, the previews, and the film itself.  It wasn’t legit without all of them.  I need to bring that back.  Adrenalin Forest was awesome too. It was a high ropes course not for team building or self-discovery or anything like that.  Just for fun. And it was high.  High enough that the trees swayed in the wind.  You’d climb a tree and then traverse your way across various sorts of ropes and swings and barrels up in the sky.  There was one employee on the ground.  You alone were in charge of making sure you were hooked onto your safety rope.  There was an amazing sense of unbridled fun about it. There’s an amusement park in Pennsylvania, Idewild maybe, where attractions are built not around riding something, but experiencing things.  Instead of lots of roller coasters, they had these massive ropes courses with nets and balls high up in the trees.  It was physical challenge not based on competition but on fun, not to win or impress but just to play.  I can’t think of anywhere else where unbridled play is so encouraged in our modern culture.  We consume culture and we interact with it, but we never just play for the sake of play.  This ropes course was so much fun! Almost as cool was the most incredible minigolf course ever.  This was like the minigolf courses you see in cartoons but never in real life.  No tropical/pirate/Western/dinosaur theme here.  This was structured like a city, so holes were based on airports, mountains, downtowns, amusement parks, churches, wharfs, etc.  They had all kinds of models and moving parts, including one where you hit your ball into a hole and it was carried to the top of a roller coaster and rolled down for 40 feet or so before being deposited.  Another one had a gondola ride for your ball.  And at the end you got a lollypop, even if you were 5 over par. 

Christchurch has the biggest A&P show in NZ.  A&P stands for agricultural and pastoral, and it means you’re going to a fair.  It was very similar to our fairs.  They sold “American-style hotdogs” (NZ hotdogs are fried hotdog on a stick, not a corndog with cornbread, just fried on a stick) and whitebait patties.  I absolutely love fairs and trade shows.  Something about the air of possibility, the feeling of potential permeating the whole thing.  It’s such an exciting place to be, and you always come home with tons of reading material to think about all the wonderful things that could be a part of your future.  It was different not being able to fully participate since I can’t buy anything as there’s nowhere to put it, I can’t vote so there’s not much to say to the political parties, I’ll never buy a car here, so no use sitting in one to get that new car smell.  They give out less free stuff at NZ fairs though, and as with everything else in this strange land, the whole thing shut down by 5pm.  After leaving the stable, slightly overworked life of Christchurch behind, I went to the amazing little town of Oamaru, built as a wool and grain harbor in the late 1800s and still maintaining an amazing collection of Victorian architecture owing to the fact that the town has been so poor for so long that no one bothered to tear down the old buildings.  They had a big celebration where everyone dressed up in costumes, and which saw me with only the second mustache of my life.  I never got the handlebar I was shooting for, but it was awesome to be around like-minded people nonetheless.  I sat beside the pianist’s husband and lifetime resident of the little town during the silent film I saw and in discussing the changes the town has seen over time, was reminded why I travel – to meet real people living their lives in real ways.  Many of the most incredible friends I meet in my travels aren’t my age at all.  They’re my grandparents age.  And they’re awesome.  Chocolate, good architecture, and sheep.  God save New Zealand.

- Jeremy 

Volume 1 - New Zealand

There were about 100 different ways I was thinking about starting this, the sixth series in my slowly becoming epic collection of travel essays…and then the earthquake happened…and I gotta say, that pretty much takes the cake! In Guatemala, I threw out my back. In Ecuador I got injections in the butt. In Israel, I got attacked by the mystery bug. And now, in New Zealand, I have experienced my first genuine “act of God.” Natural disasters without John Cusack to council me and pretty girls to walk into the sunset with are much less dramatic than I’d like them to be. It wasn’t till I saw the news that I realized how bad it really was, or at least how bad the world must think it was. New Zealand news made it look pretty rough, so I can only imagine what they’re getting in the jewel in the crown of sensationalist news, America. Yes, a few people were injured and many buildings lost walls and pilasters. The downtown is shut down as the fire department assesses its safety, and the water needs to be boiled. My prospects for finding a job may have decreased slightly, unless they need an extra construction worker. The greatest costs, it seems, are financial and emotional. As of yet, I don’t think anyone has died (but there are the coming aftershocks). The last I heard was a cost of about $2 billion NZD (or about $1.5 billion USD). Trouble is, Christchurch is an old, rundown city to begin with. There are lots of old buildings with decorative embellishments of all kinds. It’s these steeples, awnings, and chimneys that fell down. The city is pocked with police tape here blocking off fallen bricks and broken glass, but in reality, it was kind of enjoyable in hindsight. Evacuating the building and standing outside in the bitter ice cold for two hours was far worse that the train ride of an earthquake. The loss of beautiful architecture is a major bummer though, and lots of people were genuinely badly affected. And for the first time in my life, I was on the other side of a soup kitchen.


I actually thought I was on a train. I’ve seen enough of life to not be taken aback by anything anymore, especially after the sun goes down. So at 4:30 in the morning in the middle of a dream when the top bunk on the third floor of the old hostel I was in started to rumble a bit, it blended effortlessly into my dream. In my dazed state, the first thing that happened was that I imagined I was on a train. I had a been on a train for about 5 hours that very day, and the motion of the earthquake on top of a bunk bed is quite literally exactly the same. I could have sworn I had got off the train and checked into a hostel, but I was asleep and the room was shaking, so I just kept on sleeping and assumed I had dreamed the getting off the train part. It slowly dawned on me that I had indeed gotten off the train and checked into a hostel, so my next dazed thought was that my bunk buddy was getting rowdy again. A solid 10% of my adult life has probably been spent dealing with drunk people being drunk late at night. Nothing that happens during these times makes any logical sense, so the idea that my roommate, who had come back this Friday night only a few hours before, would be rustling around in his bed was about the least surprising explanation I could think of. When this appeared not to be the case, I drew on experience. Buildings move in the wind. Many are designed to do so. I knew there was supposed to be bad weather, so naturally I assumed the weather was doing its business on the old building. By this time, I was more or less awake so I got up to answer the call of nature. When I found that I wasn’t the only one out of my room, and that there were no lights on, I became suspicious. But again, I’m quite used to things like this happening in hostels on Friday nights. Then as I’m going to the bathroom, I felt a little wobbly. It seemed like the whole building was shaking…vibrating back and forth. Not up and down, just back and forth. Then it hit me. Holy hole in a doughnut, Batman, we’ve just had an earthquake!

But I get ahead of myself. I was asked recently how long it’s been since I’ve been home. This has become an increasingly difficult question for me to answer. Looking back on my life, it’s hard to find a strain of similarity other than me. Some people question the existence of the soul. Other say the soul is the unity within a series of events undertaken by a physical body. This is kind of like my life. It feels more like a series of lives. There’s Jeremy up to 18, then Etown Jeremy, and Disney Jeremy, and Mojave Jeremy, and admissions Jeremy, and so on. These Jeremys have all been the same Jeremy, but their experiences bear little resemblance to one another and the people from one Jeremy’s life would barely have anything to talk about with the people from another Jeremy’s life. I am the unity among a series of experiences. September 6, 2010 Jeremy is in Christchurch, New Zealand. At about 350,000 people, Christchurch is the largest city on the South Island, the southernmost of two major islands in this tiny anomaly of an island nation. The other island, called the East Island…just kidding, it’s called the North Island, is much more heavily populated but there are only 4 million people in the entire country, which is about the size of California, and 1/3 of them live in one city, Auckland. Four million people is not very many, and there are indeed a lot of really pretty sheep who are hired by the tourism department to stand beautifully in front of rolling hills and mountains nationwide. There are about 9 sheep for every person. If they’re too ugly for pictures, they get served in fancy restaurants. If they don’t smile for the camera, they get shaved at one of the many sheep-shearing shows around the country. “Enzed” as it’s called in its borrowed British alphabet, is somewhat like Australia, except they’re much nicer to their natives and much less 1980s in their fashion. I came here because I missed crumpets and TimTams and couldn’t stand to go another day without them. I seriously had so much fun in Australia those 7 eventful years ago that I had always wanted to visit its neighbor. Anyone who’s ever gone has loved this place, they have a reputation for friendly, relaxed people, a high standard of living, a unique travel-friendly culture, and some of the best scenery and preserved architecture in the world. And I’m flat out of cash after my Year of Living Spontaneously, Authentically, and Peacefully, so I decided to create the Year of Living Off Of More Than Ramen Noodles and get a working holiday visa. The working holiday visa is a foreign concept in America. It’s a special opportunity taken up mostly by Brits and Germans, and a few intrepid Western Hemispherers to work legally in the country for up to a year, not taking any one job for more than 6 months. Most people, in typical backpacker fashion, work at bars. The most desperate are sucked into the slick advertising of the fruit orchards who promise mucho dinero and sunny days. Americans know fruit picking is one of the most physically demanding jobs out there. Mostly immigrant workers doing this work in the US often compare it to indentured servitude and it’s been at the forefront of the organized labor movement since its inception. I was all set to spend my first few months as a sort of British gondolier on the punt boats (native to Oxford and Cambridge) of Christchurch’s River Avon. But a series of unfortunate events (not as funny without Lemony Snicket) have transpired to prevent that from happening. So three weeks in, I’m reacquainting myself with my disdain for looking for jobs and realizing most retail managers are unsatisfied with people whose life ambitions aim farther than their local Starbucks. We all know nothing works out exactly how we plan, but it’s always a bummer to be reminded.

Christchurch is a unique city. I fought with whether to come here of NZ’s other big city, Wellington, the arts and culture (and political) capital of the country. I decided against it because of the punt boat job, Wellington’s awful weather, and the uniqueness of Christchurch. There are lots of artsy cities in the world, but there’s only one faux-British, garden-filled, low rise, crumbling (too soon?) underground cultural mishmash. My first stop was Auckland, universally despised by just about everyone, for no good reason I’ve found. Auckland, in fact is a delightful city that suffers from being in a country people come to visit for “not cities,” for vast expanses of nothingness. And it gets compared to its much larger Tasman neighbor, Sydney, an unfair comparison indeed. It’s like putting Akron up against Chicago. It is sprawling, the fourth-largest sprawl in the world in fact, behind Sydney, LA, and blue ribbon winner Tokyo. It has an interesting and fascinating mixture of old and new architecture in the city center and is very tidy. There seem to be more Asians than anything else, though it also has the largest Polynesian population in the world. The customs agent at the airport was friendlier than anyone working at any airport anywhere in America, and they welcome you with a marae façade (a traditional Maori community building) complete with what my formerly uninitiated self would call “tiki” figures.

New Zealand customs have begun to intrigue me. They love peeing in troughs rather than urinals. They’re so concerned about the environment that some showers only stay on for 5 seconds at a time, requiring you to push the button about 30 times by the time you’ve washed the conditioner out. It’s the anti-Vegas. They serve burgers with eggs and beets (called beetroot here). Burger Kings all look like diners. But they love to nickel and dime you as well. It costs money to check DVDs out of the library. Paying for a library seems to defeat the entire purpose of a library. It is actually quite surprising in a very left-leaning country and reminds me once again of the little things I like about the US. The banks do the same thing. My new Kiwi bank (called Kiwibank and owned by the government…and housed in post offices so that every postal worker is also a banker…how’s that for cost savings?) has won awards for having the fewest extra costs, and they charge you for everything from taking money out of ATMs to writing checks. Transport is cheap though. I flew across the country for the equivalent of $60 USD and realized that I could have got it for $45 if I hadn’t been in such a rush.

They are interesting people, the Kiwis. I met an awesome John Deere enthusiast with an Amish beard who had come to America for a John Deere conference. He wasn’t even a farmer; he was an electrician. This bloke was in my favorite town yet, Greymouth, on the west coast of the South Island. People here are known for being rugged, hard-working outdoorsy people. It felt like West Virginia, very authentic. Lots of gold and coal mining history. My shuttle ride away from Greymouth to the “sunniest place in NZ,” Nelson, was accompanied by a driver who was a tree enthusiast. Many backpackers travel with the “backpacker busses,” a unique budget travel/sightseeing combo that really doesn’t exist anywhere else. You pay more than you would for a bus and less than you would for an organized tour and you get little stop-offs along the way, but no food or lodging or more than a couple activities. I struggled and struggled to see why I would pay more for this than the bus fares, which are always $1 no matter how far you’re going if you book them early enough, and I just couldn’t do it. I felt vindicated when this awesome shuttle driver filled my head with loads and loads of info on NZ and stopped for sightseeing breaks along the way. As usual, getting as far off the tourist track as possible has proven to be the only way to experience actual culture. New Zealand is also peculiar in their lack of centralized heating. It just doesn’t exist very much here. So most places are heated with individual space heaters, making for very cold nights. Individual homes often use coal, since there is an abundance of good coal in the country. Walking through suburbia smelling like a campfire is a memorable experience. There are also zero dangerous animals here. None. Not one. In fact, there are no native mammals in the whole country. There are tons of birds, a few lizards, and a handful of insects, but everything else is introduced (meaning it was brought from outside NZ). It’s so completely opposite of Australia, where even the cuddly platypus is poisonous, that it’s funny. It’s a bizarre feeling to hike through the woods knowing that there is no danger of animals of any kind. I’ve done a lot of hiking, as can be expected. I love it. I decided a few weeks ago to dispense with the handful of Kleenex required to deal with cold weather and get all outdoorsy and work on my farmer snot rocket. Still a little messy, but improving. Food is also interesting. Asian food is king. In downtown Auckland, it’s hard to find anything else. Typical Kiwi food is fish & chips and meat pies/sausage rolls. Every supermarket (or dairy as they’re called here) has “pies” for sale. No apple filling here, just mincemeat. I’ve eaten some local specialties including whitebait omelets (fish used primarily for…you guessed it…bait for catching other fish), fried pineapple with cinnamon, fried mussels, and even (gasp) Marmite. Marmite is the next step down from drinking your own urine, and consuming an entire piece of toast spread with this yeast extract is scarier than asking a girl to prom. But I had to do it. I couldn’t stomach Vegemite in Australia, not even a bite. I had the same luck with British Marmite. So here I forced myself through about a half hour of torture to down an entire slice of Marmite-spread toast. I am victorious!

I’ve taken some awesome trips here. The west coast looks a lot like America’s west coast, rugged and majestic, with awesome mountains running right up to the sea. I also took the TranzAlpine scenic train. I like trains; there’s something romantic about them. This is considered one of the world’s most scenic train journeys, and it goes straight across the Southern Alps, the mountain range NZ is famous for, which rises from the length of the entire South Island. You go from farmland to alpine snow through a 15 minute tunnel and out into West Virginia on the other side. The contrast between the snow-covered rocky eastern slope and the wet rainforest of the other side is quite dramatic. I met a vacationing family from Brisbane on the train who gave me an Entertainment Book for Christchurch filled with coupons. Yea! My hostel in Greymouth was called Noah’s Ark. The rooms were decorated with animals galore and there was a resident dog who sat at the bottom of the stairs all day. It was an old presbytery and aptly named since the town has been flooded about 6 times, and the presbytery was used as a place of refuge during many of these floods. I went to a Pentecostal church there. There was speaking in tongues galore, and not just the Kiwi accent. Anglicans are the dominant religious group where there is religion in New Zealand, and I hope to take in some of that too. I took out a bike from the hostel and cycled about 10 miles out to an old mine sight. It was the sight of the largest mining disaster in NZ history, killing about 350 people in 1898. Today it’s a cool park with loads of information. My Mojave days came streaming back to me as I remembered the myriad ways going into abandoned mines can kill you. Industrial history is so interesting to me. I think I’m interested in the history of work because I like the notion of a time when people actually did something for a living, an agricultural/industrial economy and not a service one. Before marketing people worked. Up in Nelson, I went to the World of WearableArt & Classic Car Museum. What a combo, eh? Housed in an old Triumph (a British car) factory, this museum celebrated both old cars and costume design. Wellington hosts this “wearable art” show every year, but it started here in the much smaller city of Nelson (officially a city and not a town because they have a cathedral…an odd duck that’s a mishmash of architectural styles because it took so long to complete). The show is the costume equivalent of the Oscars and there some bizarre creations mostly made by middle aged women. Isn’t it surprising to realize that people over 30 are involved in entertainment? Watching American TV, you’d think fashion was strictly the domain of women in leggings and men with hair gel and wide-rimmed glasses. Here I learned how a 4-stroke engine works. Engineering and other technical mumbo jumbo has always been a downfall of mine. But I’ve always loved cars, and it was interesting to have something actually explain something that it seems either you know or you don’t. People either know engines inside and out or they have no clue. Now I can happily be somewhere in the middle. I also learned the difference between a fjord (carved by a glacier) and a sound (a river that flooded as the land around it sunk) on a rainy mail run cruise of the Marlborough Sounds at the top of the South Island. It’s a cool concept, getting tourists to pay to ride along on the mail route to houses inaccessible to roads. NZ indeed has mastered the art of tourism.

I also went to New Zealand’s only IMAX theatre in Auckland and reveled in the last giant screen glory I’ll have for a year. The stale corporate hostel I stayed at there had one big plus though…I won bingo! They advertised free pizza at their bar, so I went only to find that it’s free if you buy a drink. But bingo was genuinely free, and while the winner of the first game won 3 free drinks, I won 10 free nights at their corporate brethren around the country. It was at this brother where I felt the ground move two night ago in Christchurch. I may be hooked on bingo now. It’s amazing to actually win something you’ve played so many times and lost. Hostels here are interesting. There are the big corporate hostels where the backpacker busses stop, then there are the YHAs (a worldwide chain of safe hostels), a few other random international chains, and then BBH, the collection of independently-owned hostels. I don’t think I have to tell you my choice. Trouble is, while the corporate hostels have all the party animals, the indies have many people who go to bed at 8:00 and sit around all day doing nothing but reading. I like reading, but I also like talking to other people occasionally. I know the middle ground will be here somewhere. And I lost my Brand New hoodie. The hoodie that introduced me to one of my favorite movies, Say Anything, that I bought at the Brand New show so many years ago. Another lesson in relieving myself of attachment to material things. May its new owner, whoever it is, enjoy its amazing graphics and poignant song lyrics.

And of course women. They’ve been surprisingly absent from my thoughts here, but that hasn’t stopped me from reflecting that most people begin the dating adventure based strictly on looks, not matter what we tell ourselves. I think it was one of the 5 movies I watched on my 24 journey here that put this notion into my head. In doing so, we align ourselves with someone we ultimately know nothing about, except that our id likes what it sees. This creates a bit of universal confusion that leads to issues when the human condition of being awful communicators comes to light. How do we know if we really like someone if we don’t get to know the first? What happens when the looks stop looking so good or are overshadowed by incompatible personalities? What if one person ends up feeling differently about the relationship that they jumped into than the other, when one is into it and the other is not? Of course this exact situation happens to everyone at least a hundred times during the course of their dating life, but it seems so easy to avoid. Just date people who are your friends. Then you know you want to date each other. We start dating before we know we want to date. Bad idea. Just another reason why the “friend zone” needs to be re-categorized as the “dating zone” and the “hey good looking” zone needs to be re-categorized as the “let’s have a conversation first” zone.

Back to an earlier topic. Jobs. I hate looking for jobs. It reeks of competition. Another reason why the days of people actually doing things instead of selling things is so romantic. We worked for ourselves, not for other people. You didn’t have to convince anyone of anything, you just did something and continued doing it. But I know no trades, so I thought it’d be fun to steer a punt boat around a beautiful British garden here in Christchurch. I got the job, but I’ve been so used to fixed-term volunteer programs that when the bossman mentioned not getting off for Valentine’s Day, my mind started saying “I need to be in Napier in February for the art deco festival!” which eventually made its way in one form or another to my words. So I forgot the cardinal rule of applying for part-time jobs – always pretend like you want nothing else in life other than to diligently work for that company till your dying days. But I’d already spilled the beans, and talked myself into a corner of honesty that meant that when I found out there was no way I could work there without either working through February or taking the job and leaving earlier with the direct lie that I would stay for longer. It occurred to me many times that I’m the only person on the planet who would have an ethical issue with doing this, and yet I can’t back away from my convictions, no matter how unpopular or countercultural they may be. This is how I ended up with bumper stickers all over my van in college. Here’s an instance where lying would directly benefit me and telling the truth would directly hurt me. But part-time jobs have become so difficult to come by if you don’t want to give them your whole life, that taking jobs under false pretenses has become commonly accepted practice, so much so that the very idea of questioning the ethical merits of this practice has ceased to be a viable option for most people. It’s a perfect example of rationalizing potentially unethical behavior as a concession to “the real world.” But we all know in reality that the real world is nothing more than what we make it. So here I am, slowly making a more ethical world and refusing to perpetuate a system I disagree with. Finding a job may be tough. Thinking outside the bartender/fruit-picker box is tricky. I’d really like to work at a movie theatre. I’d love to learn the ins and outs of this side of the movie business, and I’ve even emailed some places. Trouble is, I’m now at the opposite extreme. I care too much. Businesses don’t want people who want to learn the trade, they want minions to diligently follow orders. Learning requires thinking and thinking means you can question the way things are done. Here’s hoping for someone who isn’t afraid of the minions. There are plenty of job descriptions I’ve seen online for jobs selling “valuable lifestyle products” (hawking soap at the mall) or “joining a team of self-motivated individuals in a fast-paced, exciting work environment.” America is not the only country to have fought its way out of poverty enough to pay people to write completely meaningless assemblages of letters and claim they have some merit. It’s still shocking to me that we live in a world where people will sign up to sell something or work for someone when they have absolutely no idea what they’re signing up for, and even more so, that they don’t care. This is how capitalism stays afloat – the confidence of the powerful that the weak will always and forever remain apathetic.

So I continue on my journey. To make things interesting, I’m trying my best to be as authentically Kiwi as possible. I want to learn the lingo (zed instead of z, match instead of game, cashpoint instead of ATM), buy NZ-owned, and stay away from American chains. But I do hereby vow in front of everyone to *gasp* abstain from that most Kiwi of experiences, alcohol. Despite the cries of impossibility from my backpacker and American collegiate brethren, it really ain’t that tough, and it saves a lot of money. If I save enough airplane toothpaste toobs, take enough free food and shampoo from travelers who vacate their hostel and offer it to me (even if it smells girly), and learn to love sausage rolls and meat pies, I may just make it out of this country with more money than I came with. And maybe one or two packs of ramen.

Jeremy

Volume 8 - Vagabond

This may be the toughest journal I’ve had to write. I have seen the Promised Land and lived to tell about it. But what is there to tell? For as long as I could think I’ve been a Christian. I’ve wrestled with the faith for almost as long, questioning whether any of it could actually be true, why so many of my brethren are so fond of violence and consumerism, and how on earth to reconcile the two testaments. I’ve studied other religions and investigated what I believe to be both factually true and the most beneficial to the future of mankind. God has seen me through it all and given me the faith to persevere through all the stumbling blocks. I consider myself very blessed for all this. And He has seen me through again. So going to a place with so much potential impact as a pilgrim, as a vagabond, as an amateur archaeologist, how do you possibly begin to comprehend your experience? The beauty is that you don’t. So nothing in here will attempt to explain anything in one fell swoop. It’s the process that is important. I went to Israel…and this is what happened.


My first day was spent in the ancient port city of Jaffa, just south of modern Tel Aviv. It’s one of the oldest cities in the world, and from its Arab loins sprang forth the first all-Jewish settlement in Israel in 1909 (Tel Aviv). I saw the first of many “oldest thing I’ve ever seen” at the first of many archaeological sites when I found the remains of an Egyptian fortress (I didn’t really find them, I just happened upon the fence and sign surrounding them) that was at least 3000 years old. 3000 year old buildings would become commonplace very quickly, but they never ceased to amaze me. In America we tear down schools and baseball stadiums built in the ‘70s. That’s less than 40 years ago. Millions of dollars go into new buildings that will be torn down in 40 years just like the last ones. The Middle East is literally covered with the remains of 5000 years of habitation. True that these buildings aren’t “standing” anymore (the oldest buildings still standing are only around 2000 years old), but there is something mystical about seeing something that was put in place by man that long ago. When I was in Europe I was amazed by the walled cities and castles still standing from the Middle Ages. But Israel makes the Middle Ages look like yesterday.

The site where I was digging was called Tel Rehov. It was a pretty large hill in the middle of a scorching arid valley. Each morning I started digging at 5:00 am, I looked out over a giant ball of fire rising over olive fields in the Jordan Valley and the Jordan River and the country of Jordan (I’m surprised they didn’t name the sun after Jordan too). History has not uncovered much about Rehov yet. We know it was an outpost for the Egyptians and that the last major period of habitation ended in 730 BC with the Assyrians, with a few folks returning in the Middle Ages between 700 and 1100 AD. There’s been no one there since then. This begins with part of the problem of writing this journal. There is just SO much information I picked up on this trip about all these different empires and kingdoms and history and everything that is so important to understanding this place, and there’s really no way to remember to write all of it down. So much of this won’t make sense, but don’t worry, I’m still trying to grasp all of it too. The important piece is this, Israel is smack in the middle of every important trade route of the ancient world. Therefore, since the beginning of time, people have wanted to be there, and is history is thus the chronicle of people group after people group conquering, killing, and inhabiting the land one after another. We think of it as the traditional homeland of the Jews, which it is, but lots and lots of other people have lived there too, including the people the Jews kicked out. In fact, Rehov is one of those cities that the Israelites never got. It was a Canaanite city begun in the Bronze Age.

It’s an interesting feeling digging up the remains of the “bad guys” of the Bible. As I’ve discovered over and over again in all my travels, there’s really no such things as bad guys. There are just people. There was nothing about Rehov that screamed “evil heathen” at me. It was a just a city made of mud, with the remains of pottery…and beehives. This is the biggest deal about Rehov so far. A few years ago, they unearthed what were confirmed by all accounts to be the oldest beehives ever found. There is definitive evidence that the people of Rehov raised bees earlier than anyone else we know of. Until this find, in fact, there had been no evidence of bees being raised in Israel at all at the time of the Israelite conquest of the land. Scholars, therefore, had assumed that the “land of milk and honey” promised to Moses was talking about the “honey” of fruit. In fact in many languages, the word for bee honey and the gooey juice surrounding the seed of fruits is the same word. These hives were the first indication that there may have actually been bee honey in the Promised Land. And this calls to note an important point about archaeology. I had no experience with it before, and now I have just a little, but seeing an expert (and the professor who led our dig turned out to be about the most famous in Israel) work and how the whole process is done, I can say with confidence that it’s possible that everything we know is wrong. The great thing is that no one in the field would disagree with me. We commoners have a tendency to take everything we hear as gospel. We hear that so and so discovered such and such and it tells us whatever about history, and that’s a fact. But no archaeologist would ever say anything is a fact. Archaeology gives us the best, most scientific guesses possible given the facts that we have. We have things that we have discovered and we use the scientific method to assume certain things based on those facts, but 1) those assumptions based on the facts could easily be wrong and 2) new facts can completely alter our interpretation. And even with the best methods, it is very easy to miss a lot. Thus, when explaining what we were finding, the archaeologists with us would never say this is “blank;” they would say I think this is “blank.” There is a sizable debate going on now about the existence of the massive Biblical kingdom of David and Solomon. Currently, there is no convincing evidence that these two kings ever existed, so some people think they don’t and other think it’s yet to be found. In the end, archaeology is a lot of for a lot of reasons, one of which is the fact you’re simply never done. It never ends, and you never know if you’re right about anything. The mystery!

It is exciting to find things too. You practically walk all over pottery. It’s everywhere. Much of it is significant (if it’s a complete vessel, if it’s in a locus or area that is identifiable as a room, if all the pottery from a locus is from the same time period, etc.) but most of it isn’t. So we dig and dig and dig and throw out 90% of what we find onto a big pile. Depressing at first but all part of the process. My personal “big” finds were a perfectly round stone that may have been used as a weight or a grinding ball and a spindle whirl used for weaving fabric. And I had learned enough by my fourth week that I was an “assistant square supervisor” (ahem, acronyms) when a new volunteer found a stamp used for making impressions on pottery or “wax” seals. The stamp had some kind of writing on it which no one could decipher but hopefully someone can. Writing is a huge discovery because it tells archaeologists volumes more than you can learn from simple pottery and architecture. I even discovered a massive stash of broken pottery that turned out to be a trash pile of sorts, though I was moved away from that area just after finding the pottery (much to my chagrin). In all, the actual digging aspect of the trip was enjoyable and very informative, but as always the actual work is never the most important part.

The big scare of my trip came in the form of the “mystery bug.” I had my physical injury in Guatemala and my illness in Galapagos, so I was due for an animal attack. We came across all kinds of centipedes, stink bugs, scorpions, and a few snakes in our digging and our squares were right on top of porcupine boroughs. The culprit in my case will never be known. I was sitting in our square working with a trowel when we found another scorpion. He was a tiny baby, and since there’s no reason to kill a scorpion or any animal unless you’re in real immediate danger, I began to move him outside like all the other ones we’d found. Well he was too small and slipped off the trowel before disappearing into the dirt. Had it not been or this occurrence, I may have assumed my forthcoming attack was just a bee sting (bee hives, remember ) and it quite possibly was. But being that I had just seen a scorpion, I was quite scared when I stood up and felt an instant throbbing, tingling pain shoot through my leg under my shorts. There is no mistaking that is was the bite or sting of some small critter. There’s no way I can see the area without stripping down to me bare bum in front of all my new friends. Despite the intense pain I was in, my American Puritanism held sway and I kept my clothes on. I was eventually taken in the car to a remote location where I did end up wearing the birthday suit and rubbing tomatoes on the bite. So here I am naked in the desert rubbing hot tomatoes on the bite of a mysterious bug. Oh and it got me again in the car…straight on my butt. We never found it. I shook my clothes, I examined them, I scoured the earth, but this thing was gone. I put some Tiger Balm (a miraculous and addictive little Asian rub) on it, took a Benadryl, and the next day it was better. And as usual, I had made a wonderful first impression on everyone.

Some other interesting things happened at the kibbutz. When I was in Guatemala, one of the vet students there took it upon herself to take some ticks of the horribly sick dogs who spent their days at ARCAS. I found this terribly admirable of her, especially considering the 100% surety of getting some of those ticks on herself at the same time. I always wanted to help out, but never did for fear of the ticks. Well, what better time than to throw off your fears than during a round the world trip? I got another chance at the kibbutz. Most dogs in Israel were well taken care of, but a few wandered around just covered in the little bloodsuckers. They were everywhere man. And when there were more than one leeching off the same hole, ugh. It’s not their fault, it’s what they do. A tick needs to suck blood to survive; it just stinks that they have to harm something else to do it. I was feeling particularly bad because just a few days ago there was a woman who wanted to get on the bus I was on who didn’t make it on time. She was close and was beating on the side of the bus. It was totally not her fault. The bus stopped, she got up, but she was old and by the time she made it the bus had pulled away already. Thing is, I could have stopped the bus driver. I could have said something and he would have stopped and she would have got on. Just like when the little lizard in Costa Rica was getting manhandled by dogs, I had the power to help someone and didn’t. Given the time to think through what I was doing, of course I would have stopped the bus, but I didn’t have time to think, I had to just react. And my gut reaction was not to do good, but to be safe. I didn’t know if the driver would understand me, I thought, or if he’d listen. I made it a point that day to make my initial reaction one of doing good rather than being safe. So, with the generous help of some friends, I took a few hours and pulled ticks off a little puppy. It was emotionally and physically quite draining, and the ticks were back the next day, but I felt good knowing that I had given that poor little gal a few hours of peace. It followed me around everywhere for the next week, even sleeping outside my door that night and greeting me at the usual 4:30 wake-up.

The group at the kibbutz was quite different from those at my volunteer programs in Latin America. They were almost all American. And thus they came armed to the brim with technology. The mercury in the thermostat of my disdain for computers and cellphones continues to creep toward the tipping point. I love the people, of course, which is why I hate the technology. Sitting outside my room looking out at a dozen people in the same space right next to each other, none talking to one another, but consumed in their phone conversations with people who weren’t there or Internet browsing and I thought of the Jack’s Mannequin song that asks, “have you ever been alone in a crowded room?” If you ever wonder why we as a culture are so awful at relationships, why we’re so lonely, look no further. It’s not the only culprit to be sure, but never has it been so easy to completely disconnect from our surroundings anywhere in the world. Here we were in Israel, a land completely foreign to us, a land ripe with opportunity to grow, to know each other and to know ourselves. But were we present in the moment? Were we engaging with one another? No, we were disconnected from one another. Safe.

Another peculiar thing my American brethren do is appropriate other cultures for their own use very well. We are really nothing but a fairly new (given the history of civilization) mishmash of other cultures, so I don’t completely blame us for it. But I find it striking when I see Americans walking around with towels wrapped around their heads (this is not at all a hint of racism, they really use towels). Would these same folks walk around the States with “pants on the ground, pants on the, actin like a fool wit yo pants on the ground?” Maybe, maybe not. But it’s considered culturally sensitive to relate to some people groups by adopting their traditional dress and offensive to others to do the same. Many people do these things out of a genuine interest or desire to show solidarity with another culture; many do it because it’s trendy. It seems we ought to be what we are. I’m not from New York, and I don’t like the Yankees, so I don’t wear Yankees hats. I have never been to China and I can’t read Chinese so I don’t have a tattoo in Chinese anywhere on my body. What a beast fashion has become. Who wants to join a nudist colony with me?

My first excursion was a weekend trip to meet up with a good friend in the coastal city (Mediterranean) of Haifa at the Biblical Mt. Carmel. Aside from the fact that the city was on a massive hill and had a wicked sculpture garden full of oddly naked little brass girls, there was nothing terribly fascinating about Haifa. I did get my first taste of the Shabbat Shutdown, though. They take the day of rest seriously in Israel. Whether anyone rests or not I don’t know, but the bus drivers certainly don’t drive anywhere, and the restaurants certainly don’t serve food. (Later on my trip I would end up eating 3 meals in a row at a gas station and paying ridiculous amounts of money to take cabs around.) Kosher rules also reared their head when I found a distinct absence of meat on any of the pizza in Israel. Rabbinical teaching interprets aspects of the Biblical kosher law to ban the eating of meat and cheese together. This of course also rid the menus of cheeseburgers. They supplement the lack of meat/cheese combos by eating astronomical amounts of sesame seeds and cucumbers (though not together). Cucumbers were a part of every meal and sesame seeds popped up on chicken fingers and even in a strange but yummy bar of smashed sesame seeds called halva. If there is an official food of Israel, it’s the sesame seed. I asked one of my tour guides in a later trip how sesame seeds got to be so popular here and he told me to look it up on Wikipedia…hence the reason I almost never take organized tours. (There was also the other tour that rushed us through the sites so they could stop to gas up the van before we were dropped off.) And there wasn’t a moment I was out without my water bottle (which was all the time) when I wouldn’t get strange looks from one and all for this bizarre contraption I was carrying. Somewhere there is a cultural divide that I never figured out. It seems quite natural to always carry water with you when you’re in a desert (which all of Israel is), and yet every metal detector I went through (in front of all public buildings), every restaurant I entered, every conversation I had included the question “what is that thing you’re carrying.” This was not the last time I would be utterly confused by this country, but more on that later.

The main attraction in Haifa was the Baha’i Gardens. I learned a bit about Baha’i, which I knew little about before, from the free tour of the gardens, though as usual the tour was less than informative. What I gathered is that the religion was essentially started in Persia not too long ago in the grand scheme of things. Both founders were eventually kicked out of the country or killed for their beliefs and they moved the center of the religion to Israel, mainly because this is where other religions are located. In fact, the Baha’i Gardens are on Mt. Carmel precisely because the area was already holy to the Big Three. The basic teaching of Baha’i I believe is that all religions are more modern revelations of God’s will. God reveled his will to many prophets over time, with the most recent one being the founders of Baha’i. The point of this is that we’re all the same, so peace is the most important thing in the world. That is very true, and I like the faith for that. It does seem to me, however, that there’s not much new here, and that the religion doesn’t actually say anything. Other things I found odd were the lack of symbolism (maybe that’s because of my Christian background). There were beautiful stars and peacock statues and Greek architecture all over the gardens, but our guide said none of it means anything. In fact, there is no such thing as symbolism in Baha’i, it’s all just done to look pretty. And there aren’t really “churches” or regular meetings or believers, just country councils. And there is none in Israel. And if you don’t live in a country with a council you can’t be Baha’i. So it’s impossible to be a part of the religion if you live in its spiritual heart. And though they consider all religions to be equal, you can’t go in many of the buildings unless you’re Baha’i. There must be something I’m misunderstanding in all of this, eh?

I actually preferred the Japanese gardens at the base of Mt. Gilboa on the kibbutz where we stayed. It had fish and turtles (which all look like toys now that I’ve seen the Galapagos version) and a path to an amazing private outcrop that gave a spectacular view of the valley. At first, I wasn’t impressed with it, but then I realized that’s the point. Formal English gardens, which we’re more familiar with, are designed to wow you. They’re supposed to be impressive. Japanese gardens work the opposite way. It’s not the grand scale and accomplishment of created beauty that gets you, it’s the minute detail. The way the little individual details are beautiful on their own and fit together to create a cohesive whole…that’s the charm of a Japanese garden. It’s designed to encourage careful, slow reflection. You can’t rush through a Japanese garden. You have to sit with it, be one with it, let it envelop you. It turns out to be a very moving experience.

The next trip was to the center of the world, Jerusalem. Jerusalem is…unique. Today’s Jerusalem bears little resemblance to the Jerusalem of the Bible. In a way, I think I (and many people who go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land), despite knowing better, expect to see places “where Jesus walked” and be overwhelmed by this intense spiritual presence. Like being in Jerusalem would allow me to see exactly what Jesus saw. Truth be told, Jerusalem is a chaotic, crowded, fiercely cultural commercial marketplace weighed down by centuries of history and conquest and has been rebuilt so many times it’s hard to imagine what it looked like even a few years ago. That said, it is a deeply impactful place. It did not impact me in the way I thought it would at all, but the positive influence it had on me is probably more profound than I expected. Today, everywhere where something interesting in the history of Christianity happened, there has been a church built. In fact, there are usually many churches. At least two at every site, one where the Catholics believe it happened and one where the Orthodox believed it happened. And most of these churches have been rebuilt over and over. Where’s America’s lovely evangelical church or Europe’s beloved Protestants? Well, think of how old Jerusalem is. Christianity split into Catholic and Orthodox sects pretty early on, but Protestants and Evangelicals didn’t come around until at least the 1500s, which was, well 1500 years later. An example of how things work: Catholics and Orthodox agree on the site of Christ’s crucifixion, a hill called Golgatha meaning “place of the skull.” Protestants disagree. They have found a hill outside the current Old City walls (which are much newer than the walls there during Jesus’ time) that looks like a skull. It’s in a garden and has an old tomb nearby. Everything matches the Biblical account perfectly. Catholics and Orthodox have another site, inside the current walls but likely outside the older walls where they believe Adam (the very first person) is buried, thus making it the place of the skull. We could argue about which one is more likely, but ultimately it’s all faith. The Orthodox church controls this site, and in fact many of the biggest sites in the Holy Land because they were aligned with the Byzantine Empire that ruled the area when all of this was being figured out. (The Catholic Roman Empire was ousted and the Byzantines took over more recently before the modern state of Israel, plus a bunch of other people.) Many of the Orthodox priests running these sites were pretty darn rude, but then again, I imagine it’s a pretty stressful job, eh?

Most of the holy sites were discovered by Helena, mother of the Roman emperor Constantine, who depending on who you talk to was either the best or the worst thing to ever happen to Christianity. She came and “found” the holy sites and started building the churches on them. It was her who really turned Christianity into a major world power from the little sect it was before the conversion of the Roman Empire. So clearly, none of this looks anything like it did in Jesus time. What to Jesus was a rock is now an enormous church filled with icons and mosaics and murals and chandeliers and altars and all the trappings of holiness or money (again depending on who you talk to). It was very foreign to me. We don’t have much regular interaction with the Orthodox church (which is really just the Eastern or Greek Orthodox church, though there are many more branches of Orthodoxy) here in America. Their churches are completely different experiences from a Catholic, Protestant, or Evangelical church. Where Baha’i eschews symbolism altogether, everything, and I mean everything in an Orthodox church is symbolic. There are always big domes in the ceiling, murals on the walls, tons of hanging lamps/incense burners/chandeliers, gold and silver bas reliefs, and a big iconostasis or backdrop behind the altar. And they are unbelievably gorgeous, but very very different. In general, everything about Israel made it the most foreign place I’ve ever been. Nowhere else have I been so thoroughly confused by everything and felt so out of place as I did in Israel.

I left Jerusalem a bit disillusioned the first time (I went back later). The most meaningful place for me was the church built on the Mount of Olives where Jesus looked out over Jerusalem and wept because he had tried so hard to show the people a different way of life and they just didn’t get it (immortalized as well in Jesus Christ Superstar’s “Poor Jerusalem” song; it was amazing to me how often I kept thinking about that musical when I was in Jerusalem). After my weekend in Jerusalem I was in about the same place. Poor, poor Jerusalem hasn’t learned a thing in 2000 years. The same commercialism, violence, and rigid legalism that Jesus decried then is overwhelming in its abundance to this day. There’s nothing inherently holy about this city. Christianity has made it a holy place, but Jesus himself wept for this city. Expecting this major spiritual impact by seeing things like the site of Christ’s crucifixion (which like everywhere else is only a guess) and feeling none of it left me bummed. This did change with time, but I am more convinced than ever that God’s creation, nature and people, is inherently more holy than anything man has ever made. Any transcendent, spiritual experience I’ve ever had has been either during times I felt in touch with nature and in touch with another person. That is where God resides. Which is not to say that churches are buildings are not important. But God is not in a building. God simply is. In this dirty, crowded city I felt drawn to the “nothingness” of the East. Continuing my growing interest in Eastern culture, the simplicity and yin yang understanding of the world is increasingly appealing. Where I was surrounded by throngs of tourists and icons everywhere I just wanted a big open space. I wanted the Japanese garden. I found a bit of respite in Christ Church, the first Protestant church built in Jerusalem in the 1800s. It was the first bit of familiarity I had seen since my arrival (minus the 3 hour service) and was just what I needed just when I needed it.

Jerusalem is split into four Quarters – Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Armenian. Which one seems like it doesn’t belong? The Armenians get their own quarter because they were the first nation to make Christianity the official religion and agreed to stay on after the Crusaders left to watch the place.

In stark contrast to Jerusalem is Tel Aviv, which is a lot like LA. It’s on the beach and driven by the pleasures of modern life. In truth I think the gap between the two cities is as much self-perpetuated by people’s minds as reality. There was a beautiful dog park I found where dogs just hung out without leashes sniffing around and having fun. It had the appearance of some strange social experiment until one of them started barking and the fun ended. I love architecture, so it is with a heavy heart that I say the world-renowned architecture of Tel Aviv makes it one of the ugliest cities I’ve ever seen. The city is characterized by Bauhaus architecture, created by Germans after WWI as a bare-bones “people’s movement.” The idea was to be completely rid of frills and create absolute artistic equality; less is more. It was also closely aligned with socialism. These are all good things…it’s just really ugly. Maybe part of my disdain is because it was a direct reaction against Art Deco, which I love so much. Hitler didn’t like all that equality nonsense so he had anyone involved with the movement tossed out. Many of them were Jewish so they came to Israel as the Zionist movement was getting stronger and stronger and built up this little seaside village of Tel Aviv into a metropolis. People were coming so fast at the time, however, that buildings had to go up quickly and cheaply. So now most of these buildings look like they’re going to collapse at any second, but more in a Communist USSR sort of way than a picturesque “let’s shoot a band photo here” kind of way. It took UNESCO World Heritage recognition to get the city to start taking care of the few buildings that remain. To give incentive to rebuild some of these buildings, the city let developers build expensive penthouses at top floors (almost all Bauhaus buildings were an equal three floors). One thing I liked about Tel Aviv is a requirement that any company with lots of money and big pieces of land must build some kind of public art on their property. This does what it can to salvage the rest of the city. The beach is a hodgepodge of American chain hotels. The Hilton is built on top of an ancient Muslim cemetery. I did have an excellent city tour where I learned that modern Hebrew, the language of the majority or Israelis, was only invented in the 1950s. When Israel became a country in 1948, Jews from around the world came to settle there. But they all spoke different languages. It was decided to revive the language of the Old Testament which had been dead for centuries. If the word already existed, it was reused, but things like “refrigerator” simply weren’t a part of ancient discourse so new words had to be invented. What a crazy social experiment!

I also visited the Dead Sea. I was silly enough to shave that morning…ouch! That much salt makes you hurt in places you didn’t know you had. It’s the lowest place on Earth at almost 1400 feet below sea level (Death Valley, the lowest in America is only 300 feet below…in fact our kibbutz and dig site were much lower than Death Valley) and 10 times saltier than the ocean (though the saltiest body of water on Earth is an Antarctic pond about twice as salty as that). It’s awesome and you really do float without even trying. They also say you can’t sunburn there, but they don’t know the awesome whiteness of Jeremy Ebersole. Next we went to Jericho, one of a handful of cities claiming to be the oldest city on Earth. This was in the West Bank of Palestine, which I can’t stress enough did not seem at all to be a dangerous place. The poverty level compared with Israel was staggering, but my limited experience found the people to be very friendly. I won’t even begin to pick a side in this ancient war, but I can tell you from the other side of that very big, very imposing wall, it’s not hard to see why some Palestinians claim victim status. Ultimately I think it’s all very complicated. On the way to Jericho, we ran into a goat herd that we had to wait for. This was about the most authentic Middle Eastern experience I had. Much of what I saw around Israel felt very forced, but those goats were the real deal.

Galilee was a different story. Not only is a bit more green, but as the center of Jesus’ ministry it’s also the center of the Christian presence in Israel. I’m sure this contributed to a higher comfort level for me. It was and still is a bit of a backwater. Not nearly as developed as the rest of the country, mostly rural, and far off the beaten path (busses were tough), Galilee finally offered the peace and tranquility I hoped for when I initially came. It balanced out the chaotic but equally as profound impact of the busier towns. I did, however, have my first encounter with snoring at the hostel in Nazareth. Remarkable considering how many nights I’ve spent in the same room as other people. I guess it’s because snoring often comes with age, and age often doesn’t do hostels. But Jesus loves snorers too, even if they make it tough to sleep. I found the people of Galilee to be light years friendlier than those of the rest of the country. Nazareth, birthplace of Jesus and the largest Arab city in modern day Israel, was a feast. What a wonderful town. In this region I saw Christian pilgrims from all over the world visiting the holy sites. Most were from Africa, a telling fact about their faith considering the amount of money many of them had to do a trip like this compared with their American brethren who were largely absent. In Cana, the site of Jesus’ first miracle of turning water into wine, I met a man who showed me into the Orthodox church he held the keys to. I was looking for the big churches in town and he asked to help me. I was wary, having recognized very quickly during my travels that the only people who initiate help do so only to extract some money by the end of it. This man was different. I was shocked. It is the very first time in my 6 months of traveling that anyone has offered my help without wanting something in return. As I was walking down the Mount of Beatitudes where Jesus gave his most famous sermon (which is now covered with banana trees), a Philippine nun offered to give me a ride to the bus station. And she gave me lemonade. And didn’t try to sell me a thing. Looks like Jesus’ message got through to some people. And that’s what keeps me going. No matter how much we haven’t learned in 2000 years, some people have learned something. As long as there is one good there is hope.

The desert is an interesting place. I had lived in the Mojave in California for a bit and was reassured here that there is something poetic, romantic, and decidedly lonely about these vast starkly beautiful places. The dryness also makes you have to pee just about every 5 minutes. Never in my life have I peed so much. Two thoughts consumed the majority of my thought life during this trip: 1) where can I get more water 2) where can I pee once I drink it. Man, the number of times I was so thirsty and had water but couldn’t drink because there was nowhere to pee. The coolest thing in all of Israel, however, was a series of ancient Jewish burial caves at the base of the Mount of Olives that were simply there. Nothing forced, no visitor interpretation, no entrance fee, no big church, just massive stone pillars outside caves where people were buried 3000 years ago that you climb into and walk around. Needless to say, it was one of the most eerie experiences I’ve ever had. The best things are always, always free!

Which brings me with no attempt at logical transition to the requisite paragraph about women. I continue to like women an awful lot. They’re just great. However, they all tend to be a bit unavailable at the time. Perhaps it’s because when you’re in a relationship, you let your “this guy’s trying to get in my pants” guard down because it doesn’t matter what he’s trying to do, those pants are staying zipped. Thus we’re all more willing to be friends; we can be relaxed. But then there’s the unspoken caveat of modern culture that continues to assert that the last person you’d ever date is a friend. It seems backwards to me that many of us persist in putting physical attraction first, no matter how much we deny it. This myth has been built up through movies and stories about finding someone slightly less virtuous but more hunky than ourselves and turning them into a nice person who loves and cares for us. Then we have it all, a nice person and the satisfaction of knowing that we made them that way. The problem is the basis of the relationship will always and forever be misplaced. Relationships can never start on looks alone. It seems more appropriate to do it the other way around. You meet someone you get along with, you know they care about you, they are a friend first and foremost. Then because of the genuine love you know the person has for you, your physical attraction grows. This way the relationship is always and forever based on love. But that’s a topic for a book, eh?

It got me to thinking about how to react to pushy guys at bars. It happens with predictable regularity every time a pretty girl goes to a public place, especially a bar. An unwritten rule asserts that it’s socially acceptable for guys to not take no for an answer when there is alcohol present within a 10 mile radius. So what do you do when 5 nos just doesn’t seem to be doing the trick? And of course as a guy present, you’re horribly embarrassed by your species and want to do something to help. Macho Man Randy Savage says to come out swinging. Assert your superior manhood by challenging Mr. Pushy to check himself before he wrecks himself. But we should all know by the Iraq war that violence only creates more violence. As this situation presented itself in Israel I was finding myself amused at how silly it all was, I thought it would be really funny hero man took the Jim Carrey approach and just started acting nuts. Just completely bonkers out of her mind crazy. Watch how this works – you completely disarm Mr. Pushy. If you come out looking for trouble, suddenly you’ve put fear in the other person by creating a “situation.” Fear causes to people to react violently and selfishly. By acting loco, you take away any fear and also any motivation. The moment you step in, you turn into two male sea lions battling it out for the harem. It’s no longer about the girl, it’s about the manliness. But if you don’t put the other person on the defensive, there’s no motivation; you’re not a threat. In also uses life’s most powerful motivator to your advantage – the opinions of other people. If you’re loud and crazy enough, other people will start to look and see you…and Mr. Pushy. They might associate him with you, which would diminish his social status. There’s nothing serious about a night on the town. It’s all just a game. And if we treat it as such, everyone has a lot more fun!

Another day I spent the afternoon birdwatching. There are so many beautiful birds in Israel. They make absolutely beautiful noises. As I was doing my morning stretches outside under the moon I had a little bird in the tree above me. It would sing a little song and a bird a distance away would answer him. Then it’s sing another little song, a tad different than the one before, and the other bird would sing back. It was more beautiful than any church. But birdwatching can’t compare with G.I. Joe. There are lots of movies about war. But I’ve never seen a movie about birdwatching. I bet if there were more movies about birdwatching, there’d be less divorce.

Speaking of war, let’s conclude with a chat about the modern day state of Israel. As I said before, Israel felt more foreign to me than anywhere I’ve ever been. I think a big part of that is the unquestioned prevalence of war in the national psyche. America is a pussycat compared to Israel. God’s chosen people are militarized to the teeth. I needed to show my boarding pass and passport to buy a candy bar at the airport. Every Jewish citizen of Israel must serve at least two years in the military. There’s no conscientious objection, no alternative service (that I know of), just a few years of mandatory machine gun-toting, border-patrolling service. Many people in Israel aren’t particularly fond if this, but it seems many more are. I know there are pacifists in Israel, and I feel for them. It’s a tough life. The army changes people; it gives you a different outlook on life. There’s no way around that. Humans are not wired to kill one another. To be in the army, you need to rewire yourself. My first hostel in Jaffa had a newspaper article about Western misperceptions of Israeli rudeness, saying that Israelis aren’t rude, they just live in a high-context culture. What we would call meddling they call looking out for one another. They are involved in one another’s life as opposed to our rugged individualism. They yell at each other all the time but rarely get into physical fights. I absolutely believe all of this is true. But at least as much of that hardness I believe has to come from the army. My square leader at the dig laughed as he shared a story about working under an American once who kept complimenting him on a job well done. Finally he had enough of it and told her to quit wasting time and complimenting him so much. Tell me when I’m messing up so I can fix it, he said, instead of telling me what I already know. This is Israeli culture. It’s a bit rougher than our polished British-influenced politeness. It’s the opposite end of the spectrum.

Many people I met initially told me to go back home and tell people what a wonderful place Israel is, that it’s not dangerous, and is full of life. A security guard had a great conversation with me about this (and another one during the most extensive airport security ever, including removing everything from everyone’s bag and making us all repack it, who was eminently nice about the whole thing). But the prevalence of conflict, or at least perceived conflict is everywhere, even if I did feel safe everywhere I went. Imagine an entire age group of a nation’s population completely removed from normal society. There are no 18 and 19 year olds in Israel walking the streets. They’re all in brown uniforms carrying machine guns. The guard at the checkpoint between Jewish Jerusalem and Arab Bethlehem was chewing bubble gum and wearing oversized Dolce&Gabbana shades. If America’s is an army of the poor, Israel has an army of the young and beautiful. One of the most interesting experiences I had was in Jaffa when I saw a mass of Orthodox Jews in full black garb congregated in an area of the city surrounded by barricades and police. There was yelling and swaying and occasional some chasing and hitting interspersed with moments of peace. Never in my life have I had less idea what was going on.

It’s a country of every nationality. There are no native Israelis. Today’s native Israelis are Arab. Arabs were the only people there outside of kibbutzim and Tel Aviv before the 1940s. It’s a very multicultural place united by its common Jewishness. Where America splashes multiculturalism across every ad and college marketing piece in the country, however, Israel is fiercely proud to be a country where all nationalities are welcome…as long as you’re Jewish.

It makes sense. As I was in Israel, I spent lots of time reading the Old Testament, what to the Jewish faith is the only testament. Jewish life is built around a combination of this collection of books and the rabbinic teachings. I helped dig through a city that was no conquered by the ancient Jewish people. It was one of a few. The Old Testament has pockets of peacefulness, but it is riddled through the core with violence. As Jerusalem’s walls are scarred with bullet holes, so is the Old Testament fraught with tales of sanctioned killing. I don’t question the part these tales play in God’s plan even if I don’t completely understand it. But I do know, more than ever before that there has never been a figure in history quite so radical for his time than Jesus. Stepping into a system and culture created through horrific violence, Jesus preached that we are to love our neighbors and pray for our enemies. We still must. We still must.

Jeremy