May 27th (Arbel Synagogue, Arbel Cliffs, Ruins of Ancient Tiberius, Jordan River Jeep Trek)

So we discovered that the people who were sick were actually not dehydrated. It was definitely a virus and it hit most of them really hard. Anyone who was sick was given the option to sleep in today and miss the morning stuff and we picked them up again at 1pm for the rest of the day. Our morning group had 33 people in it...out of our normal 72. So we all hopped on to one bus which was eventually named the "Not sick" bus. Then when we picked up everyone else they just had to get on the "quarantine" bus. Haha. From what I could tell most of them are feeling pretty good today. But yesterday and part of the day before were not very fun. Thank goodness I didn't get it.

It is like a hurricane here right now...there is no rain but the wind is completely insane. I feel like all of the trees are going to fall over. It is cloudy for once though. So maybe there is a possibility of rain...I dunno. Someone actually told me that we are expecting a thunderstorm tomorrow...which will be interesting if it holds of until tomorrow night because tomorrow night we are going on a night boat ride on the sea of Galilee...

Today was a pretty good day. The morning was nice because the group was so small. We started off at the ruins of Arbel Synagogue. It was a pretty small location. The synagogue is from the Byzantine Era. Mark launched into a "sermon" about prayer and we were given some more devotional time to think about two phrases "Give us TODAY our daily bread" so basically about not worrying and "How am i sanctifying the name of God". It was nice to have some devotional time because we are constantly just go go go that it's hard to get that on our own.

After that we did something really cool. It was good the sick people didn't come because they would've had trouble. We went on a downhill hike. And when I say downhill...I mean DOWN hill. I will let the pictures do the talking. I'm sure I will be feeling it in the morning!

 This is towards the top.

 At one point the cliff was basically flat and they had added in hand ropes that we could hold on to too help get us down. I feel very good about myself for actually doing it.

 I am at the bottom. They are coming down.

 They are in the middle.

 These are some caves at the top that were blocked off for safety reasons. Otherwise we would've hiked up to them.

At the bottom there were these two horses that weren't pinned in. Mark was trying to give us a "lecture" but they kept interrupting by getting in everyones faces. It was pretty funny.

After that we stopped at some more ruins. I wasn't to thrilled with the last place we went, ancient Tiberius because it looked just like a lot of what we had already seen and Yosi played his flute for us again, which was nice. But it was kind of a boring site. Here are some pictures:

After that we went back to Ohalo and picked up all of the sick people and headed to lunch. The place we stopped had many option and I went for the Israel version of Burger King. Not sure what it was called because it was written in Hebrew but it was tasty. They had really cool superman toys and I really wish I had gotten a kids meal but I wasn't thinking straight :)

After that we piled into some jeeps again for another jeep trek. This one was totally different because unlike the first which was in a vacant dessert this one went through the wilderness. I got whipped in the face and back by multiple branches at times when I wasn't paying attention. We even drove through parts of the Jordan River at times. People were also given the opportunity to be baptized in the Jordan River. As good of an opportunity as that is I decided not to give in to Tourist baptism, but it was cool to watch everyone else. I was covered in a layer of dust afterwards. I'm still not even sure taking a shower got it all off. I have one really blood shot eye now too because I think I got to much dust in it...but anyways, here are some pictures to tell the story :)

 The crew in our jeep!

 The jeep behind us!

 I think these are ruins of Beth-Saida? I could be wrong.. I was so hot I kinda wasn't paying attention to what was being said. That usually happens in the afternoon...haha

 This kinda gives you an idea of what we were driving through.

Baptisms in the Jordan River!!

Now we are back at the hotel chilling. Tomorrow we don't have to get up as early!!!!!!! You have no idea ho exciting that is. We have been waking up at 6:30am basically every day since we have gotten here. Tomorrow we get to sleep in until 7:30! Woot! Haha :)

Oh and I forgot. On the ride on the bus home from the jeep track I sat next to 4 year old Ellie. I'm glad she's here on this trip. She's such a little bundle of energy and makes me not miss home as much. I gotta get some kiddo time here somehow. :)

I just had the most amazing ice cream EVER. Though people are saying it is Gillato (spelling?). I don't care it was amazing!! I wanted more. It tasted like mangos!

That is all! Hope everyone at home is good :)

-Wendi

May 26th (Nazareth, Sepphoris, Mt. Precipice, Kafar Kadam)

Our group seems to be having a rough time. Today a bunch of people stayed at the hotel because they were sick. Amy made a list of everyone who was sick and it tallied up to 20 people. They are having the doctor come to the hotel tonight to check them all out and see if it's dehydration or a bug. If it's some type of flu I really hope I don't get it, and I have been drinking a ton of water so I don't think dehydration will happen to me. I feel great!

Today was a bummer of a day to miss too! We finally started to do stuff that was different then just hiking to a bunch of rocks that form something. We started off the day in Nazareth. The population of Nazareth is 100,000 people. So it was a pretty big "city". Our main stop was the synagogue which also had some ruins of houses that are very similar to the houses in Bethlehem.

 The city of Nazareth as we drove in.

 This was what houses may have looked like. Inside the cave area is where the animals would be kept. Outside the cave area would be the upper room or living room.

These pieces were excavated in practically perfect form. It was amazing!

The interesting thing we all learned was how different the "Christmas Story" is. The front room of a "house"
 was called the "upper room" and the back of the house would be where the animals were stored. So Jesus wasn't born in a stable he was born in the back of a cave house. There was never an inn or an inn keeper. The greek or hebrew or whatever word Catalima is the word that was used an it means something more like "living room". So the family didn't have room in the normal living area so they had Mary and Joseph go into the room with the animals. Also, Mary was not riding on a donkey 9 months pregnant. It would seem more like she got to Bethlehem and then a month or so later, maybe more, had Jesus.

The Synagogue was also really cool! It had images all around the outside (mostly mosaic) of how different countries see Mary and Jesus. I won't post up all of the pictures but the one for the United States was kind of strange. I'm not really sure what to think of it. Here are some pictures of the synagogue:

 Front of the synagogue.

 Inside, walking up what I thought was the never ending staircase :)

 part of the floor.

This is the US depiction of Mary...not sure what to think of it...

After that we stopped at Mt. Precipice. Which from the top basically has a 360 degree view of the area. We could see the Jezreel Valley, Nazareth, and many other biblical places. It was basically a quick stop for pictures.

After that we drove to Sepphoris which was the capital city of Galilee when Jesus was a boy. It is believed that the Mishnah was written and edited there...I'm not really sure what that is...haha but it was some important Jewish written law. We walked around pretty quick because we had to be at our next place at a certain time.

This is kinda dark but it is a mosaic that would be on the floor of a house.

The last place we stopped was a really fun time! It was called Kafar Kadam and we got to dress like people did way back when, made pita bread, had lunch at some squatty little tables, and got to ride donkeys. The pita bread was super tasty, but the bread we actually had for lunch was even more tasty!! Riding donkeys was...interesting...haha. We decided to name our donkey Jack ;) He was pretty stubborn. Here are some pictures. We spent most of our time there. It was really fun.

 Whoa, this picture is a little blurry...but this is me, Sarah, and Molly in Galilean attire.

 This place had the CUTEST puppy! It was 3 1/2 months old.

 Sarah making some bread.

 The main course of lunch!

 Lauren on a donkey, me guiding the donkey.

Now it's my turn to ride Jack, Sarah took the reigns.

I also tried some snack that Amy bought for all of us...I cannot remember exactly what it was called but it was made with honey, cheese, wheat, and pecans. So delicious! I keep leaving my money on the bus whenever we stop at places that have souvenir shops!! It is so annoying because I want to buy stuff! haha

Another random thing...The money here is so weird. I have 10 sheckels but it's  a coin! I should've  brought a coin purse because I feel like I am going to lose track of all my coins.

It feels so nice to be posting about something on the actual day. It's easier to remember :) That is all I got for you guys today. I hope everything is awesome at home. I do have skype...though it's like 7-11am at home whenever I'm on. But if you ever wanna chat and you have skype lok for me! :)

-Wendi

PS- If you were expecting a postcard don't get your hopes up. I've been trying but this hotel we are at now isn't near a city and they don't sell stamps at the hotel. So I have to wait till Jerusalem and that might be to late...We shall see

May 25th (Katsrin, Gamla, Susita, and Ein Gev- anchor museum)

Well, last night there was another party…this time at least they spoke English. I wasn’t going to have it. I actually tried talking to them, but they ignored my request. So I called the lady in charge of our group and she went out and told them to go away, and they did. Funny thing is I had some guys move all the tables that were in front of my room…and the group brought them all back over!! I don’t know why that spot is so special..At least we stopped them at 12:30am rather then 4:00am so I managed to get more sleep last night. Which was good because we started off today with a nice long hike in the mountains…on not very sturdy ground…

Gamla was where we went first and oh man…they warned us about a strenuous hike…but I still wasn’t ready. The thing that was hard was that we started off going DOWN, so they entire time going down all I could think about was that eventually I was going to have to go back up. And the bummer thing was all we saw down at the bottom of this giant hill was more ruins…which I have seen enough of. Oh and stupid me left my memory card in my computer last night so I have no pictures from today. I stole some pictures from my roomie for ya'all :) 

 The view from the top.

 This kind of gives you the idea of what we had to hike down...but i feel like it looks a lot worse then this picture shows..This must be towards the top.

Our final destination at the bottom of the giant hill.

Next I think was Katnis, it was a cute little town. The people had set it up to make it look just like towns would’ve looked back then. I liked this place because it was something new. We got to go inside models of different houses and see a synagogue and all that stuff, a lot of it was in the shade to which was nice.

 An outside of some random building haha.

 The kitchen

 Climbing up into the bed room!

All of us sitting inside a synagogue.

After this it was LUNCH TIME! I always love lunch time…we all finally get a break from all the walking. Today the hotel didn’t have any breakfast stuff that worked to pack for lunch so I had to buy lunch. We stopped in a little town. The first place I went to kind of just ignored me…it was like a falafel/schwarma place but it was like Subway where you tell them what you want on it…and they didn’t understand that all I wanted was the chicken! So I got really frustrated and left. But luckily I found a pizza place that gave us one largish piece of pizza for 10 sheckels! Which is a great deal! Then to add to that we found a place that sold popsicles for 2 sheckles!! 2 sheckles is less then a dollar! We are all so excited and they were super tasty. It totally made my day.

Then we went to Susita. It was another place that had a little it of a walk…and it was the hottest part of the day…and there was minimal shade. It was slightly miserable…I guess I should be happy I am getting some exercise though. It was another city of ruins, so it was pretty much just like everything else we had seen. Apparently though we could see the cliff that Jesus sent the demon-possessed pigs running down. Which was cool, finally something to connect to Jesus again.

 The "view" from the beginning of the trek.

 My eyes have become trained to find shade ;) My legs look awkwardly long in this picture

Yay for more walking...

We ended at Ein Gev and a tiny little museum. I expected the museum to be something that we walked through but it was a room that we sat in that had stuff all over the walls. Then the curator talked to us for about 20 minutes. I guess it was interesting. Did all of you know that fisherman in Jesus time fished naked? Haha. That was an interesting fact to me. :) It looks like Sarah didn't take any pictures of this though sorry! 

Now we are back at the hotel and it is about time for dinner! I’m very happy to that now my blog is all caught up!! Hopefully now I can just post once every day and have it be a post from the exact day.

-Wendi

May 24th (Belvior, Galboa Range, Ein Herod (Herod Spring), Sakne)

For some reason today was really frustrating for me. Part of it may have been my lack of sleep because of the party that went on outside our room from 12am to 4am. Apparently another group that is here spent that four hours yelling, screaming, smoking hooka, and getting drunk. Then some of them ended up in the room next to us. I am not sure what they were doing but my ipod could block out the voices but not the loud pounding and crashes. It sounded like they were throwing furniture. All that was quite loud and I slept horribly which may have been the reason for my bad mood.

But I felt that today was kind of pointless…Belvoir was pretty cool. It was a crusader castle that included a moat, a cool entrance, a dining hall, and the usual arches. But it looked just like all the other castles we had seen and other then that it involved the Crusaders I didn’t find any biblical importance behind it. I think I was expecting more connections to Jesus at most places, but like I said earlier I don’t think that will come until Jerusalem. But nonetheless here are some pictures of the castle. At one point one of the guides played his flute for us! It was really cool! I wish I had recorded the song.

One random thing I would like to note is that on this trip I have noticed that sunscreen is like gum. You don’t want people to see that you have it because then they want some. I’m actually quite annoyed by how many people didn’t bring their own sunscreen. I actually bought more sunscreen in Eliat because I knew I would run out. Just a random note…

After Belvoir we went on this random hike that I really had trouble finding meaning behind. I think we looked at the Jezreel Valley where Saul and his sons were killed but other then that it is like we were hiking to random places so that we could here more information that we could’ve heard anywhere else. It was like the locations didn’t have anything to do with what was being said. This hike also included a Japanese Garden…ya…not sure what that had to do with anything. I was so annoyed and I had to pee really bad so I didn't take any pictures haha. Sorry :)

After that we drove down to the Bet Alfa Synagogue. This was pretty cool. It was inside a building which was different…it had a lot of murals on the bottom and they showed a video with it. But as soon as they turned off the lights to show the video I knew it was a bad idea…I almost fell asleep. Haha. I was so tired that turning of the lights got to me J Here are some pics of the Synagogue:

After that we went to Ein Herod (Herod’s Spring). This wasn’t a spring…or what I thought a spring would be…It almost felt like a giant puddle…apparently it is where Gideon took his army to decide who would continue on by how they drank the water. That was the only biblical significance to the site…so once again I was confused by the time taken out of our day to stop there, but it was nice to just sit in the grass for awhile.

The way we ended the day though was incredible! We went to a place called Sakne. It was a bunch of fresh water pools that people could swim in! I hadn’t brought my bathing suit because it was still covered in Dead Sea grime but it was still a fun experience. Some people even jumped off cliffs into the water. Here are some pictures of Sakne:

 The "kiddie" pool.

 Yes. You can swim here. And yes there are fish!

Molly jumping of the highest cliff!

I got to put my feet in the water and get a “pedicure”. Basically these little fish swam up to my feet and ate all of the dead skin off of them. I was laughing hysterically because it tickled so much. It was probably really funny to watch. My feet felt pretty good afterwards though. I also finally tried a falafel for lunch. Not a huge fan of that, but now I can say that I tried.

Look really really closely at my feet! You can see the little fish!

Then tonight we actually got back to the hotel around 5pm. It was really nice because that gave us 2 hours to relax before dinner and then the usual time after dinner to relax. I spent most of the night just talking with people, getting to know them. It’s fun to be around people that are a lot like some of you at home, it makes it easier. It’s hard to want to get to know people though because I know as soon as I get home I will probably never see most of them again. Oh well. Haha. I hope things at home are going well!

-Wendi