June 4th (Herodium and Bethlehem)

Today wasn't so bad. I'm not sure if I have just been getting more sleep or if now the lectures are shorter at each location but today wasn't so bad. Also we were done after lunch today. I am definitely completely drained by the time lunch time rolls around and it's hard to pay attention the rest of the day.

Today we started off at Herodium. It is the palace that Herod built, and obviously named after himself. Of course it's in ruins but I felt like it had "more" ruins then some of the other places. It was pretty cool. We had to hike up to it. Maybe it was more cool since it had been awhile since we seen ruins of a palace. After we saw the ruins we hiked down into the water cisterns of the palace. These are basically caves. Now I knew I was claustrophobic...but apparently I am more claustrophobic then I thought. It wasn't very fun for me. I immediately hiked through and found the exit while they all stayed in for more of a lecture and some music. I think tomorrow we are doing more cave hiking...I might have to skip it. Here are some pictures:

 View from the top!

 Me and Ellie! :)

 Here we go...into the caves...

Scared...inside the cave.

Happy...outside the caves!! :)

After that we went to Bethlehem. I was excited for this. It wasn't that it was a huge let down...it was more like...it wasn't what I was expecting. We started out going to a souvenir shop. Which was cool. Then we waited in line inside the church of the nativity. They told us that the line was going to take forever so we got out of line and went into some other random cave....I think the original line would've taken us to the more "important" cave. I never really understood what the other cave signified. But I guess it was cool. It smelled HEAVILY of incense...so much so that I got a stomach ache.

After that we had the most AMAZING lunch. For once I was very satisified after lunch time. Which was good because dinner was horrible. It is shabat. Which means none of the Jewish people do any kind of work so dinner was pretty lousy. I had a piece of cake, a piece of bread, and some cheese! Not very satisfying. But right now we are waiting for the pizza that Amy ordered for all of us! She is an awesome trip mom :)

Tomorrow is the city of David! It's supposed to be a busy day! 3 days and I will be back home again with all of you :)

-Wendi

PS- Anyone recognize this place? :) HAHA!

LOL! I guess copyright doesn't apply here!