First of all, yes I blog at 4am...I write when the words come, and often it's in the stillness of the night, when my cluttered mind has begun to rest, allowing space for ideas to emerge.  This morning my mind is troubled by Egypt's announcement that it has closed the Rafah border into Gaza, barring all 1300 activists from entering in a few short days.  But a troubled mind is not the same as a dissuaded mind.  In fact, I will board the plane with even greater conviction than before.

We left Cairo this morning around 9:30a.m. for Al Arish, Egypt. This is no easy task since our numbers now total 59. The energy of the group is really quite fascinating. The group is diverse in ages, backgrounds and nationalities. The group is mostly American and Canadian and more women than men. We are make quite a scene wherever we go with all the pink, the noise and the craziness.

CODEPINK has raised enough money for 1,000 gift baskets so we have 1,000 pink baskets, pink scarves and then soaps and candies and so on. Gifts to just brighten the life of a woman in Gaza on International Women's Day.

Last night delegates met for the first time. Growing in size throughout the evening, eventually nearly the full 60 delegates -- from the U.S., Canada, Australia and Pakistan -- squeezed into a room at the Arabesque Hotel in Cairo. CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin explained that they have had wonderful support from locals in Egypt. For example, when they learned the nature of the delegation, the company renting the buses to drive us to the border offered to donate them.

I was so excited when I received an email from a friend about joining a delegation of women to travel to the Gaza Strip for International Women's Day. I felt it would be a wonderful opportunity for me to be able to meet Palestinian women and peace activists from different cultures and different religions. It would also be an excellent opportunity to share, in a very different way, the suffering of many women, children and families who saw their houses destroyed, their loved ones disappeared under the bombs and the rubbles.

The recent three-week war on Gaza, in which more than 1,300 Palestinians were killed, including at least 346 children, was covered daily in the media and the passion and feeling ran high.