Tour Changed

July 13th was the day the tour changed. No longer was it just a History tour for college credit. Nor a fun trip for 16 people. It got more serious. Before heading out on our bus tour, Mr. Vivian told me that he wanted me to provide security for the four girls--Sandra, Talula, Judy and Sha. We were to do everything together. If one wanted to do something, we all had to do it. We could vote on doing things, but we were to stay together. He didn't want what happened the night before to happen again. I told the girls about this on the bus. Sandra and Talula were okay with it, but Judy and Sha weren't as much. But, the tour leader had spoken, and we had to abide by his decision. We toured the area around the Dead Sea, including Jericho and Qumran. It was 130 degrees at the Dead Sea, and it was instant sunburn. Even the ice cream machine at the Dead Sea broke. It was the hottest I have ever been. We also heard gunfire and cannons near there. Seemingly, a fact of life in Israel. We also got a taste of how hard it is in Israel to confirm sites. There was a building along the road that said it was the inn that the Good Samaritan took the hurting man according to the Bible story. We went to Bethlehem and saw the Church of the Nativity. That was a moving place. That night, we were having supper in the hotel, when a man came to visit us. He was an American who worked at the US consulate near our hotel. It had come to his attention that we had been hanging around Sam, Omar and Sam. He asked us not to associate with them, because Henry Kissinger was in town trying to negotiate a peace between the Arabs and the Israelis, and this man didn't want us to be friendly with those Arab boys. As it turned out, this man was an intelligence officer. And, if you remember your history, in October of 1973, there was the Yom Kippur War. The US was trying to stop it, and the Arab boys had been trying to find out all about the US by being friends with us. He told us not to associate with the boys. We said that they were our friends, and it would look funny if we just broke off all ties with them. The man said that was true and then told us to find out all we could about them, including where they went and who were their friends. Then, the man would come back at supper each night and we would tell him what we found out. We asked what if we didn't do this, as it sounded like a spy mission. He said that they would send us home and cancel the rest of our trip. Well, our parents had prepaid for everything, so they would lose money. How would we explain that to them? So, we said okay. We didn't think it would be dangerous. Just some harmless information. Wrong.