making up for lost time...

today was our last long field trip.

it was a very sad day in the life of jessica ellis.

i'm gonna miss this.

our first stop was to qumran... 

where we were diligent scribes...

and took a bath in a ritual bath...

i don't know if that is actually ok or not. 

;)

i've only been waiting my whole life to see this.

and i think only my dad can really understand my excitement at seeing cave #4.

this is for you dad!

another shot of cave #4

jars that were found inside of the caves, that contained many fragments of scriptures.

i didn't tell you about my eye.

you see the little red blotch there?

i was giving someone an airplane ride...

and my knee made contact with my eye.

you didn't know i was that flexible, huh?

but it sure makes for a good story!

(you also didn't know airplane rides could be dangerous!)

my ariel and i on the bus!

heading toward MASADA!!!

this bus ride was awesome...

we totally made up a song to help us study for our ancient near east class.

 masada

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

:)

at one point, the jc students had to walk up that.

no joke.

i would have died.

luckily, we got to ride the tram up.

this section of masada is called the hanging palace

this is a view looking out from the top level of the hanging palace - you can actually see the bottom of the seige ramp that the romans built in 73 ce...

what no one else saw, was the guy taking a picture of the crazy american chicks.

i saw you buddy.

this was the room where they found the "lots"

this is the room where the remaining 10 zealots wrote their names on pieces of pottery, and one piece was picked. that person was to kill the remaining 9, and then finally take his own life.

this is what happened - they set fire to the fortress, leaving only enough food to show the romans that they died willingly - and not because of starvation.

walking down to other levels of the hanging palace

i don't know why anyone would want to take a hot bath here...

that sounds totally ridiculous to me.

today was a day for songs.

megan and i made up a sababa song.

(sababa means cool in hebrew)

it goes to the tune of hakuna matata.

i know you want to learn it.

so here ya go.

sababa masada

it's a wonderful place

sababa masada

it's a zealot craze!

it means no romans,

for the rest of our days...

it's our live free - die hard philosophy!

sababa masada!

(sababa... masada... sababa... masada...)

have you seen enough cisterns yet?

i didn't think so.

this is jess.

jess likes to pretend to be a bird.

or maybe she's just trying to find an excuse to air out her armpits...

we'll never knowwww...

see the dead sea?

it's way up there in the top left...

the seige ramp as seen from the top

ninja pic.

or maybe we should just call this "zealot stance"

jeffie (haha... jefferson), meg, and i

the synagogue where the leader of the zealot movement probably convinced everyone there to take their lives rather than become slaves to the romans.

the next part of the field trip was to a wadi by the dead sea.

we went to wadi david (the biblical story related to this is when saul and his soldiers fell asleep in the same cave where david and his followers were hiding. david had the opportunity to kill saul, but chose instead to cut a piece of his clothes off. he later used this to prove to saul that he was not trying to kill him)

there were tons of beautiful waterfalls, but considering it was mid-summer, they were probably fairly small.

now, when you read about the "valley of lemuel"

...think of this.

i like ashley's idea.

it was hotttttt.

we look way too nice and composed in this picture...

this is more like it.

holding to the iron rod is a little bit difficult when it burns your fingers off...

the dead sea is back there somewhere...

so i will have to work on getting ahold of some pictures of us in the dead sea. 

but, i didn't trust myself to take my camera anywhere near that water.

i'm so proud.

this is like a rite of passage for me!

anyone that wants to be a part of the sandal-tan club should contact me asap.

so that we can get an awesome tan picture too.

:)