finally caught up. well, kinda.

so i finally caught up with the trip to galilee, but in the process, i managed to get behind on all of the more recent happenings here at the jc.
after getting back from galilee, we came to the BRUtal realization that the summer was almost over.
we don't like to talk about it much.

so it's crunch time!
in other terms, we are all suffering from a serious case of jclds... jerusalem center last-days-syndrome. and i don't think there is a cure.

our first free day back, we decided to go to ein karem. we had tried to plan this like three other times, and it never worked out. but we were determined to make it happen. unfortunately, there isn't a whole lot of information on how to get there. so, i knew what we were doing when we got there... but i'm not sure how happy dan was with my answer to his question of "so, you know how to get there?" ummm yeah! vaguely. 
but get us there i did.
and i made friends on the bus.

we got super lost, ended up in some russian church area (which we did actually want to see, we just didn't know that at the beginning), and then finally made it to the city of ein karem. we just managed to take a little detour in getting there first.

look at the little green picture.

it tells you how to get a concussion. 

that's ein karem. 

we wanted to get over there...

but we were stuck over here.

hmmmm... 

problem!

so we finally figured out the name of the russian-golden-dome-complex that we got completely lost in.

we came all the way to ein karem... the birthplace of john the baptist... to see

wooley mammoths?

the church of the visitation

we barely made it on time to get into the church of st. john... but the nice old monk finally took pity on us and let us run inside and see it... hallelujah!

this was a stone cave... which, like the church of the nativity in bethlehem, is the traditional site of the birth of john the baptist. 

a painting of the baptism of jesus christ

look familiar?

after ein karem, we went to the israel museum... we had four pages of items that we had to find. i usually hit my museum limit after about 2 hours... so by the end of 3 hours, i was loopy... by the end of 4 - i just wanted to sit down on the ground and go to sleep. just carry me home mommy.

i still don't know the purpose of this giant apple core.

but it's cool anyway.

and you gotta have pics with cool things.

the next day was a field trip day! woohoo! (but man oh man... it is getting hot outside!) we have this new plan: huddle in the shade, walk out into the blazing hot sun to take pictures, go back into the shade and listen to the amazing brother mulestein enlighten our understandings.
we went to the burnt house (a house that belonged to a sadduceean priestly family right before the destruction of the 2nd temple in 70 ad)

herodian ashlars. just so you can get a sense of the size of these babies. 

the double gate of the temple. according to jewish law, you would go in the triple gate and out the double gate, except in times of mourning, when you would go the opposite direction.

a miqva.

(a ritual cleansing pool)

the unclean people would go down on the right hand side, and wash themselves, and then come up the left hand side. notice which side i'm on?

;)

this is rubble from when the roman soldiers destroyed the temple walls.

most of it was removed, but the excavators left some of it so that we could see what it looked like before. 

this was the stone where the trumpeter would have stood. 

it is also possibly the "pinnacle of the temple" to which jesus was taken and told to throw himself down onto the street below. 

we all fall down!

i think i'm doing some kind of thriller or lady gaga impersonation.

ariel and i casting the sellers out of the temple.

they look pretty terrified huh?

we are pretty scary.

today, it got to 39 degrees. that's in celcius. basically, anything around 40 is do-not-leave-the-house-because-you-will-melt-like-a-wax-candle-weather... you wanna know what that is in fahrenheit? that's 102 DEGREES! and guess what's even more exciting - we get go to MASADA tomorrow.
talk about wrath of hades.
it's gonna be hottt.

Galilee: Day 9

July 19

Today was BRUtal! (Whenever I hear this word, I will forever think of dear Bashir - our Palestine teacher... who would say it broo-tal! with particular emphasis on the first syllable...) But, it was one of my favorite days! We got two buses, so both classes were going on the field trips together… I was starting to feel like I hadn’t seen any of them in weeks… not just days. We got to see the other six-chambered Solomonic gate today at Hazor, and there were several excavations that were going on while we were there. 

a casemate wall around hazor

One of them was just above a temple that they found at Hazor a few years ago. Today’s field trip was most of the far northern sites in Galilee (we made it up as far as the Syrian border). Hazor was one of the very first cities to fall with the Assyrian invasion and when the Israelites were carried away captive and scattered.

After Hazor, we went to Tell Dan. And lucky for us, we have ancient Dan in our group. 

Dan is one of the headwaters for the Jordan River, and we got to see where the water seems to come nowhere… when it actually is part of a carst system (where snow melts and seeps down through the rock and ends up in fissures, where it comes out from underground in places like this). 

the camera focused on the water... not on me...

the water just appeared out of these rocks...

It was gorgeous – I didn’t realize how much I missed the color green! And forests… I think that I am going to need to do some serious needling when I get home to go camping. (Conspicuous voice – “Mommy? I was wondering something…”)

Tell Dan was huge… in the Bible, it talks about Jeroboam and how he set up “high places” at Dan and Bethel. We got to see the high place. 

a replica of the approximate size of the altar and the high place (on the right) that would have been set up by jeroboam. 

And we got to worship Dan’s not-so-golden calf.

From the high place, we could see the “green line” that used to separate Israel from Lebanon. There isn’t much to see now, but that used to be a major area of fighting. We even got to walk through some bunkers.

There was also an ancient Canaanite gate (which, if it was the main gate into the city, we can be fairly sure that Abraham would have gone through that gate when he went to Dan to rescue Lot.) I would have liked a little shade too…

Our next stop was Banias, or better known as Caesarea Philippi in the New Testament. The evolution of the name was interesting. There used to be a temple to the god Pan there, which is also Panias… but there is no “p” in Arabic, so they call it Banias. With a “b”. I think everyone should just speak English. It would make everything so much simpler. ;)

it felt so nice to dip our feet in the water after a scorching hot day!

Banias is another one of the headwaters for the Jordan River, but it is also where the apostle Peter recognized Jesus Christ as the Messiah and Son of God.

I hope the pictures give you even a tiny sense of the beauty of this place.

We left Caesarea Philippi, and went to the Banias waterfall. Not really that historically significant, but it was still gorgeous.

Our next stop had absolutely no Biblical significance, but we had to storm at least one castle during this trip! I don’t think I can really sum up in words how awesome that was. We warmed up our charging voices by practicing battle cries, and then we received a rousing speech from our fearless leader, General Mulestein. (It sounded almost exactly like the one from Lord of the Rings… oh wait, it was!)

Sons of Gondor, of Rohan. My brothers. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me! A day may come, when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of Fellowship, but it is not this day! An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you, stand, men of the West!

overlooking Nimrod's castle

After storming the castle, we were let loose to pillage and plunder to our little heart’s content.

niffer, ariel, jarom, me, lizzie, meg, wayna, justin, canton, jarret, ashley and jacey (starting at left and circling back)

are you surprise at my outfit?

Some of us even gotten into fights amongst ourselves.

We ended the day by going to an overlook from which you could see what used to be Syrian lands on Mt. Bental. In more modern history, this place is important because you could see the ruins of Quneitra, that used to be a city, but is now just a bunch of empty cement buildings.

hiding in the bunkers

charrrrrrrrrrrrge!

Biblically important is that this is the ancient road to Damascus.

nobody's getting past this angel.

this was at one point used for a gunner...

i think it just looks like something out of star wars.

nooooooooooooooooooo! 

oh wait.

we might have gotten a little bit bored at dinner...

After dinner, we were able to talk to a woman that is a member of the Ein Gev kibbutz. It was a very interesting a enlightening experience, because she explained the origins of the kibbutz as a totally communal effort, and how it has changed in recent years. She had been living there for 30 years, and had raised all of her children there. She told us that during the beginning years of the kibbutz, they had an extremely difficult time, because they were trying to use their previous knowledge and experience to live in a new land. Most of them were immigrants that were coming from European countries, where they would grow things like potatoes… and potatoes don’t grow well in Galilee. Now, the kibbutz has huge banana (orchards? fields? …whatever…), a restaurant, and a hotel among other things. They used to share all jobs equally, but in recent years, with the mechanization of many jobs, they have needed to specially train people for specific jobs. The woman that we talked to worked specifically with the hotel, but she had also worked in the children’s kitchen at the kibbutz, as well just about every job possible within the hotel.

After that discussion, we had a firebon. (Our lovely hosts at the hotel didn’t quite understand the concept of a bon…fire... and we thought it was so cute that we didn’t really feel like correcting them.) I have never loved a s’more so much in my entire life. And I think that the European chocolate made everything better. Mmmmm…