Le Septième Jour, Lundi. (The seventh day, Monday 5/23)

 Monday began with a bang. Literally. We went to the Golan Heights, where we could see mountains that still had snow on the top of them! It was crazy, considering all the heat we've been melting in. It turned out that the mountain we were on was a monument to Israeli soldiers, I think from the Six Day War. Honestly though, I'm not really sure. See, there was all of this really cool commemorative statue art on this hill, which I think was a real functional bunker in the past, and I was posing for a picture with someone, pretending to launch a grenade, when I went flailing to the ground. I don't know exactly what happened, but it felt like my kneecap popped out the side of my knee and the popped back in again. It was pretty much as painful as it sounds. This has happened before too, a couple of years ago. When it happened that time, my knee was swollen and painful for several days, but ended up alright. I'm hoping that's the case this time, too.

We then went on to the ruins of a castle that was built around 1229 called Nimrod. It was neat because it really was like a castle, with arches between rooms and some of the downstairs rooms have a pond in them now, which was sweet, if a little nasty looking.

Our next stop of the day was a place called Banias, right by Caesarea Philippi, which is close to where Jesus was when Peter realized that Jesus was Messiah. The town itself was apparently totally pagan, so it is extremely unlikely that Jesus was actually there. According to our trip leader, it was one thing for Jesus to associate with tax collectors, but he wouldn't have held company with the total pagan community of the city. Anyway, the water in this area was really pretty, lots of little pools and streams with lush trees coming out of them.

After lunch and a quick bus ride, we made our way to the area that is the headwaters of the Jordan. This was the place that David would likely have been as he wrote Psalm 42 "As the deer pants for streams water, so my soul pants for you, my God". We first passed a rushing, raging area on a bridge (picture of it below), and then made our way on the forest trails to the very beginning, where the water just barely trickled along. We got to sit and reflect and then go drink from the clear, cold water. It was really powerful. 

Further along the woods, we came to Tel Dan, an archaeological site that has a gate which is one of the oldest arched gateways ever excavated. Tel Dan is the place that the Tel Dan Stele was found (duh). A stele is the archaeological term for an inscription, and the Tel Dan Stele is significant because it makes reference to the House of David, which is the only archaeological evidence of the line of David that has been discovered to date.

The last stop of the day was Omrit, a site that is currently in the process of being excavated. It was pretty cool to see a work in progress, and we actually got there as the team was packing up and heading out. There was one middle aged man, and four or so college aged looking people who were also there, I'm assuming it was a professional and then some interns or something. I think that helpers are usually college students... Pastor Paul calls those trips "move my dirt" ministry.

By the time I had completed the 15 minute walk up to the site of Omrit though, I was totally exhausted and in quite a bit of pain. I had iced my knee a couple of times during the day, but we didn't have an ace bandage or anything so I was just dealing with it as best as I could. I left the site about ten minutes before everyone else, accompanied by the two older Turnage children, and we walked back at a nice easy pace. We only arrived at the buses about two minutes sooner than the first of the other arrivals. Sheesh.