Le Dixième Jour, Jeudi. (The tenth day, Thursday 5/26)

On Thursday, our first stop was the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth. It's this big old cathedral that you had to be dressed modestly to enter. Now, I thought that my group leaders were exaggerating when they kept reiterating the whole modesty thing because it seemed like nobody paid it any mind at any other sites. But at this cathedral I watched people getting kicked out because their knees and shoulders were showing. Yikes! In other note, there were images of the Virgin Mary from every country exhibited all over the walls. I took pictures of some of the really cool ones. When we finally found America though, I almost burst out laughing because it reminded me so much of Lady Gaga. Bahahaha!

Also at that stop, we got to see a house typical of the time that Jesus was born. Now, Jesus was born in Bethlehem and not Nazareth. But the excavated houses at Bethlehem aren't available for us to see. (I'm not sure why, maybe they were destroyed?) So we kind of get in Nazareth what we don't get to see in Bethlehem.






We also saw the ruins of a synagogue with yet another mosaic on the floor. This one is unique because it has a picture of Aphrodite in it which remains completely intact and is called the Mona Lisa of the Middle East. Impressive! One of my questions regarding mosaics from an earlier post was answered at this stop, too. I was wondering how they get all of the different stones for everything. We were told that mosaics are measured in value in rather the same way that the quality of a picture is based upon how many pixels it has. The more pieces there are in a mosaic, the more valuable it is. Also, the pieces have to come from all over the place to get the right colors. So I guess it wasn't answered directly, but I'm guessing that means the artist wasn't walking around and picking up rock fragments...


Our last stop of the day was for a late lunch at a place that lives in community and does things similar to the ways of ancient Jews. They still keep all of the modern technology, but they are very into keeping up with all of the law, observing Sabbath and all of that. The guy who is the leader/performer is absolutely hilarious! He kind of reminded me of Robin Williams because of his eyes and his personality and also because Robin Williams has all his crazy accents and even though the guy spoke english almost perfectly, he still had an accent. It was one of my favorite parts of the trip so far.

We got to wear traditional (men's, not actually women's) clothing of the Patriarchs, practice separating wheat from chaff, and making pitas. After that, we got to ride donkeys for a little bit! We rotated one donkey between three people, and I shared with the two Turnage boys. We named our donkey Applesauce. And when it was time for me to ride, the ten year old was leading. I'm not sure if he just wasn't a strong enough personality or what, but Applesauce kept dragging us over and off the side of the road. As in the donkey was pushing the kid out of the way and the kid couldn't do anything to steer us back to the road. Yikes! All in all it was pretty good, though.