Eliat Day 2 (May 20th)

Today we spent the entire day in Israel. It was awesome to stay at a hotel for more then one night. It’s really annoying to have to pack up every morning. Sadly, we have to pack up everything tomorrow morning to head to our next location. But our week long stays are coming soon. That will be nice. Today had two different activities. We went down to Timna Park which included a temple replica, the mines, and more mountains and cliffs, and we also went snorkeling in the Red Sea.

It was extremely hot, like I thought it was kind of hot in Jordan but it is REALLY hot in Israel. I am sucking down water like nobody’s business because I really really do not want to get dehydrated. We started off the day at Timna park. They sat us in a rotating theater to show us an intro movie. It’s a lot like a ride at Disneyland where it rotates to each different part of the story. It was telling us about the importance of Timna Park. Which takes a lot of its culture from Egypt. The video talked about how “copper is the hero of the story” haha we all were quoting that afterwards.

I absolutely LOVED the temple replica. It really brought the Bible to life for me. I thought it would be fun to post pictures of the temple replica stuff and put the verse in Exodus that applies to each picture but then I realized that would take me FOREVER. The verses are found in Exodus 36:8-39:43

Inside "the Ark".

The Cherubim at the entrance of  the temple.

The basin for washing in the front courtyard.

The altar for burnt offerings.

 The temple.

 Elements for communion.

The lamp stand.

 The altar. I think...

The Priestly garments.

The breast piece. 

Cherubbim painted on the walls on the oustide (well the inside of the oustide...but that probably doesn't make much sense)

We also walked to some mines and saw other cliffs and mountains. It was really hot and sandy. It almost looked like we were in Arizona haha I decided not to go into the mines because I’m slightly claustrophobic and that probably wouldn’t be a good idea.

After Timna Park came snorkeling which is something that I was the most excited for. I think I was a little to excited actually. I didn’t think about the fact that snorkeling involves plugging my nose in a mask and breathing through a tiny snorkel. I barely lasted five minutes. I couldn’t hand the breathing. So I just ended up sitting on the stairs of the dock and dipping my head with the goggles into the water to see what fish I could see. There was surprisingly a lot of wildlife under the stairs so I saw a lot of good stuff. Another downside was how extremely salty that water was!!! I got a lot in my mouth and in my eyes and it was extremely uncomforble. My eyes and lips were burning for awhile.

We left our stuff back on the beach while we were snorkeling and we walked along the beach barefoot to get to the dock and snorkel. Well, we all soon realized that walking barefoot in the sand in Israel was a HUGE mistake. It was burning hot, and I mean burning. Some girls have blisters on their feet from the heat. My feet still hurt a little bit and we were sprinting as fast as we could on sand. It was funny because we were sitting on the dock complaining about having to run back and a local looked at us while we were talking about our sandals and the hot sand and said “Tourist?” Yep…haha we weren’t expecting hot sand.

I would also like to add that I have seen enough old men in Speedos to last me a life time…..

Then after snorkeling we had more free time. Apparently starting tomorrow we won’t have as much free time and it’s going to be pretty intense and a lot more work, not sure I’m ready for that but here we go haha. I’m pretty sure though that every night will have free time at the hotel for dinner and any time between dinner and bed.

I hope everything at home is going good. Miss everyone a lot J