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.

:)

Galilee: Day 8

July 18

This was the start of a four-day field trip extravaganza. And the final stretch for being in Galilee. We went around the Jezreel Valley, starting at Mt. Tabor, which is one of the possible sites for the Mount of Transfiguration. Getting to the top of the mountain (or very large hill?) was an adventure. The buses would not have made it to the top, so we had to get into vans that would take us up to the top. We soon figured out why the buses couldn’t go. Switchbacks the whole way up. I had seen a weird knob on the steering wheel, and its purpose soon became apparent. Rather than using both hands to turn the steering wheel, the driver just grabbed the knob and used that to turn the wheel when we went careening around the corners. I’m really glad that I don’t get carsick… because that was hard on even me.

Up at the top, we got to go into the church, and all 40 of us crammed into a small chapel off to the side of the main chapel. There was a mural of Moses on the ceiling, and we got to hear the history of the site, and then sang a couple of hymns, all the while dying because the door was shut and 40 kids use up a lot of air really quick. Then they cut us loose, and we got to see the rest of the church and the grounds before we got back on the crazy vans for another exhilarating ride down to the buses.

this was just a photo op that i couldn't pass up.

this is my typical field-trip uniform.

i try so hard to look cute... but practicality has prevailed over looks...

;)

Jael killing Sisera... the first temple worker. (Read Judges 4)

Ha ha ha.

Our next stop was a complete miracle. The pictures I got don’t do it justice, but the fact that we got to go and even see the church at Nain was amazing. They used to be able to go and see it, but the monk that they used to go through passed away, and they never knew what happened to the key. So our amazing director Brother Huntington did some fantastic detective work and managed to find out who had the key! They haven’t opened the church for a while, and one of the windows was broken, so there had been birds inside, but there were some simply beautiful paintings of the Savior raising the young boy in Nain from the dead. The church was very simple, and it may or may not have been the actual city of Nain (that seems to be the consensus here… it may or may not be the right place…) but there definitely was a very sweet spirit there.

On to Megiddo! And six-chambered Solomonic gates!

Megiddo was a very crucial city in history. According to Tutmose III, “the taking of Megiddo was as the taking of a thousand cities.” According to the legend, he wanted to attack the city, but he knew that Megiddo’s army would be waiting for them at either of the large passes leading to the city. However, there was a smaller pass that let out right onto the city, but only one person could go through at a time, and in order to get through, they had to dismantle their chariots and carry them through. The story tells of Tutmose dismantling his own chariot and carrying it on his back, and leading the rest of his army through. They came out, and paraded in front of the city gates, and eventually took the whole city.

Megan and Hollie are Tutmose... 

pickin on poor little Me-giddo.

Archeologically (and bibilically) speaking, we are able to link the city of Megiddo to King Solomon, and the fortifications that he made to the city. In the Bible, it talks about Solomon refortifying the cities of Megiddo, Hazor and Gezer. We got to see 2 of the 3 on this trip. Solomon had a very distinctive style – his gates had 6 chambers, when most others only have 2 or 4. We even got to sing a song about it.

After Megiddo, we went to a kibbutz that has an amazing mosaic “carpet” (tile floor), with a big zodiac in the middle. We then went to Gan Hashelosha, where we got to spend the next few hours swimming in a natural spring. 

They had fish that would eat the calluses off your feet. I decided that I wasn’t a fan. And I stayed away from the shady water after that point. (It wasn’t that bad, but I don’t really like the idea of things nibbling at my feet… especially when I can’t see them.) And I’m barely getting over my fear of sharks in swimming pools.

Back at Ein Gev, we got back with enough time to make one last finale of playing in the water… we learned a new game. It’s kinda like Simon says, only it’s called “Harry says” (In honor of the movie that came out while we were in Galilee). You could apparate cast spells on other people, and each had an action… so much fun! (I think I sense a new pool tradition coming on…)

So we were supposed to go to Tiberias on the 14^th, but we got back so late from our hike that it didn’t make sense for us to go. We went for home evening tonight instead. We didn’t get to spend a whole lot of time there, but we got to see a light show, eat ice cream and walk up and down the boardwalk for a bit before getting back on the bus and heading back. 

i love my roommate.

i know you are jealous about how awesome we are.

(this is kayla, nutmeg and me at megiddo)

dan and i in the water system underneath megiddo

meg, me, brittni, jeehee and dq (dallin)

scary toilet at swimming hole gan hashelosha...