Troy and Jessica Thompson

Our team was provided with a good set of information about how to prepare to travel. Since I have never been outside the USA before, I really appreciated the details.

First off, I needed a passport. This was surprisingly painless, even though it was a government office handling the thing. I feel just a bit more special now that I have a passport, like some sort of privilege granted to a few... though apparently anyone who needs a passport can get one, so that kinda sucks the special right out of it! Still, there's a bit of patriotic pride in having your passport.

Next, inoculations... oh, wait. It appears that Israel requires no inoculations, though most folks recommend a few basics like tetanus booter (done that in the past few years myself) and hepatitis. Whew, glad that's done: don't like needles much.

Although most who know me personally assume I'm on the bleeding edge of all the latest tech toys, in reality I tend to purchase the trailing edge, and keep things alive far beyond their useful tech lifespan. Our 3.2 megapixel still and mini-DV video cameras are both several years old and aren't quite trustworthy enough for this trip.

I picked up a Sanyo Xacti VPN-CG10 camcorder at Fry's; it records standard or hi-def MP4/AVC video, saves to SD flash, can do 10 megapixel still shots, and is tripod mountable. The fact that you hold it like a Star Trek phaser is just icing on the cake. If it ran on AA batteries, it would be perfect.

Saturday, Feb 13: we're all packed, pretty much. More details on that later.