Should I worry that I can't really remember yesterday that well, and that today passed in a blur?

Israel is a country that in some ways seems so familiar to me (that NY Jewish thing) and in other ways so completely mysterious and new (an amazing melting pot of different backgrounds, cultures, histories, agendas).  I find myself trying to make sense of it all, but not really having enough context to feel like any of my assumptions are true.

What I do know so far: There is something about both the landscape and the people that is compelling. For a place that is basically hot, dry and arid, there is much beauty. The sea, the desert, the cities have amazing visual richness.JD and I walked through Jaffa yesterday and it was beautiful--broken in some places, refurbished in others, and very interesting and diverse.

And the people here are compelling as well. I've been meeting tons of amazingly smart high tech folks, entrepreneurs, and bloggers--but also people from outside my little trans-continental bubble, like Ish Khalidi , a Bedouin and former shepard who is the Vice Consult in San Francisco at the Israeli consulate, who is also on this trip, and the student activists from One Voice who met with me, Craig and JD today (more on that later).

Today was The Marker COM.Vention, then back to the hotel, then falafels and soda at the Garage Geek party in Holon, again thanks to Yossi Vardi.

Some pictures of what I've seen so far:

Is this a reality show in the making or what? 

Robert Scoble, Craig Newmark, JD Lasica, Cathy Brooks, Deborah Schultz, Jeff Saperstein, Brad Reddersen, Renee Blodgett, BizWeek columnist Sarah Lacy and myself are about to spend a week in Israel touring around the country as the Consulate General of Israel to the Pacific Northwest's  experiment in inviting Bay area tech bloggers and digerati to get a look at Israeli innovation? The deal, we can write whatever we want; share impressions freely, but the trip's a junket (they're covering airfare and most expenses).

Travelling Geeks in Israel, we're calling it, and we've even got an aggregate blog, courtsey of JD Lasica, with much valued assist to my webmaster Chad Capellman (no, he didn't get to go).

Would you be surprised if I told you I said yes as much because I thought spending a week on a very small bus with this crew would be at least as interesting as touring the country?

We're going to have total media junkie access to all sort of people, from tech's best and brightest to peace leaders. Because of security, I can't share the schedule, but there's going to be alot to read, listen to and watch--and what I can't imagine will be anything but joyous tumult Real-World style when this many bloggers, many addicted to their digital cameras, video set-ups and 5,000 words per day are all crowded together with lots of stimulation and lots of ideas and opinions to share

In other words, brilliant mayhem (I hope), or what a slice of the blogging community might look like if you flew some of the brightest and most obsessive bloggers I know into a country smaller than New York, bound them together with computer cables and wifi, and then set them free to explore everything, all at once.

So, the party's starting, the geeks are getting together, and, whether I love every minute or not, I am so ready for this wonderful, long, strange trip..

Packing up in the hotel before hitting the road. You know you are a geek when:
You blog when you should be taking a shower
You read email when you should be packing
You read blogs when you should be changing money and getting fruit and water and...
Yep, I am a geek.

So, tomorrow afternoon, I'm finally taking that post-leaving Yahoo! take a trip somewhere journey. Only it's a blogging trip and vacation, and there's going to be lots of amazing things happening along the way--Renee Blodgett, myself and a host of bloggers I'm not going to yet name will be meeting up and exploring the country.