This last week was our last full week of classes. This week we have a smattering of class and all our finals. But then next week it's on to Jordan and complete vacation!
Eilat was fantastic! The water was so blue it looked turquoise. There are coral reefs lining the shore and lots of fish everywhere. We got there after driving by the Dead Sea and down through the desert. We followed one of the possible routes Lehi and company took to the Red Sea and I understand now why Laman and Lemuel complained so much. It would not be fun travelling through that desert for the 11 days it took to get there. But once we were there, it was beautiful. I hung out on the beach, snorkeled, worked on my tan (which never appeared), walked on the beach and relaxed. For Devin’s birthday, I found him a lion fish, who I named Little Dude, in honor of Devin. After 6 hours of beach time, we packed up and headed to dinner before trekking home.
Monday, after class, a small group of us went back to Hezekiah’s Tunnel because Amy was sick on the day of the field trip and wanted to go. We got there at the same time as a large group of elementary school kids and tried to hurry and get in front of them, but we ended up in between the two classes in the tunnel. I thought my class was loud, but they’ve got nothing on excited, screaming 9 year-olds. It was so loud, but it was also pretty funny. After we got out, we took a different tunnel back to the top instead of walking out and around. It was an ancient road used in the time of Jesus but had been covered up by later building projects. One interesting thing about the Near East is that every generation builds on top of the previous. Things get covered up so fast around here, that the ground kind of levels out enough for the next generation to build a new layer, which is why archaeologists can go find city after city in the same spot and get some kind of timeline. Anyway, we walked through a tunnel that in Jesus’s day was an open street from the Pool of Siloah to the Temple Mount.
Eilat was fantastic! The water was so blue it looked turquoise. There are coral reefs lining the shore and lots of fish everywhere. We got there after driving by the Dead Sea and down through the desert. We followed one of the possible routes Lehi and company took to the Red Sea and I understand now why Laman and Lemuel complained so much. It would not be fun travelling through that desert for the 11 days it took to get there. But once we were there, it was beautiful. I hung out on the beach, snorkeled, worked on my tan (which never appeared), walked on the beach and relaxed. For Devin’s birthday, I found him a lion fish, who I named Little Dude, in honor of Devin. After 6 hours of beach time, we packed up and headed to dinner before trekking home.
Monday, after class, a small group of us went back to Hezekiah’s Tunnel because Amy was sick on the day of the field trip and wanted to go. We got there at the same time as a large group of elementary school kids and tried to hurry and get in front of them, but we ended up in between the two classes in the tunnel. I thought my class was loud, but they’ve got nothing on excited, screaming 9 year-olds. It was so loud, but it was also pretty funny. After we got out, we took a different tunnel back to the top instead of walking out and around. It was an ancient road used in the time of Jesus but had been covered up by later building projects. One interesting thing about the Near East is that every generation builds on top of the previous. Things get covered up so fast around here, that the ground kind of levels out enough for the next generation to build a new layer, which is why archaeologists can go find city after city in the same spot and get some kind of timeline. Anyway, we walked through a tunnel that in Jesus’s day was an open street from the Pool of Siloah to the Temple Mount.
On Wednesday,
we had a field trip to Neot Kedumim, which is a Biblical Nature Reserve. A
group of Jews planted a ton of trees and plants in the area, all found in the
Bible, and set up activities so that people could get a sense of what it was
like in Biblical times. We got a little tour, ground up hyssop, shepherded
sheep, pulled water from a cistern, made pita and lentil soup, and watched a
Torah scribe do his thing. It’s easier than I thought to get sheep moving, but
that might be because we had a lot of people and the only way for the sheep to
move was along the gauntlet we formed for them. The Torah scribe was really
cool. His family’s profession is to write the Tanakh (the Jewish Bible) and the
papers for the Jewish mezuzahs and phylacteries. It’s a painstaking profession
where error is not an option. Depending on the material they’re writing on,
they can carefully scrape off the ink and rewrite, but other materials, they have
to take the error and bury the paper, because it’s forbidden to destroy the
word of God.
Thursday we got
to have another Hebrew class field trip to the city. We got a “Tour Around the
World”, where we went and saw all the different church buildings built by
various nations in the late 19th century: Italy, Ethiopia, Russia,
England, etc. In the middle of our excursion, we were in this courtyard while
Shlomit lectured about when, where and why modern Jerusalem was built as it
was, and this old Jewish man with a long white beard comes over and invites us
into his museum right there off the courtyard. I’ve decided that Jewish old men
are just about the cutest men I’ve ever met, they are all just so happy, funny,
and sweet.
A bunch of
people were invited to one of the olive wood worker’s shop for a brunch on
Sunday morning. We ate the best falafel and humus I’ve ever eaten (a great
breakfast food). After brunch, Ashleigh, Brianne, and I went on a mission to
find the last 2 scarves I needed for my bridesmaids. We found them a lot faster
than we thought, so we wandered around the old city for a long time. We just
kept turning on unfamiliar streets to see where they’d take us. Finally, we had
to face the inevitable and came back to the JC to start the studying for this
week’s tests. So far, 1 test down and 4 more to go!
Hope you all
have a good week!
Love, Kelby
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