I’m glad you asked! Or, if you didn’t, then allow me to put a few choice words into your mouth — in particular the above words.
Although a bit of this information is already covered on the About page, I wanted to give a bit of an intro here, explaining why I am writing this blog now. And also perhaps tell you a bit about what you can expect to see in these “pages” in the future.
Within the next few weeks I will begin taking a course to become a tour guide here in Israel. This is a two-year course (not full time), with about 4 hours of class each week and a tiyul (trip) one day each week. Additionally, about 4-5 times a year,the tiyul will be longer — 2-3 days.
The course is designed to give us all of the information and knowledge we’d need to pass the licensing exam from the Ministry of Tourism. This is an intense and challenging exam, but one that I’m confident I’ll be able to pass when the time comes! To reach this end, the course takes us all over Israel, seeing the whole of the land, and giving us hands-on training. And the classroom material is taught by a collection of experts in their fields, covering topics as diverse and comprehensive as history, religion (all 3 major monotheistic religions that are tied to Israel), geography, geology, botany, first aid, politics, etc.
Presumably, once I complete the course and (hopefully) become a licensed tour guide on my own, I will set up a website for myself. So I assume that this blog will then migrate onto the site and continue to live on as a part of my business identity. But until then, I decided to document the process of my learning in this course. I hope it will serve as a resource to those who simply want to learn more about this beautiful country and to those who may be interested in embarking on a tour guide course here in the future.
I plan to include lots of pictures, documenting many of the places I visit, both during the course and on my own. Israeli tourism-related news will probably pop up as well. I may blog about interesting things I learn in class. Who knows? This will, first and foremost, be a living and growing blog, and I look forward to seeing where it takes me. But I hope you’ll keep coming back to see what’s new (and old) in Israel.