L'onzième Jour, Vendredi. (The eleventh day, Friday 5/27)

--Sorry people, I had this post done days ago and when I tried to put it up everything got deleted. It took me a couple days to get the time to re-write it!--

Our Friday began at the ruins of yet another synagogue. This one was pretty cool because it was tucked into a little nook of a hill and there were no other people around at all. We got to have some time of reflection and prayer to start off our morning.

We then proceeded to our hike of the morning (the reason the sick kids stayed at the hotel until afternoon) which was pretty legit. Now, it wasn't a particularly physically exerting experience, but it was pretty scary, because there were some really narrow parts where you had to hold onto cords along the side of the path and also parts where you had to climb down ladder-like pegs. All in all it was my kind of a hike because once we got done with it we felt super accomplished even though we didn't really do that much :) Below is a picture I took of some of the other people on the scariest part. Pictures of me doing the same exist too, but I don't have copies of them yet.

After the scary part of the hike, we just had sort of a gradual descent of gravelly trails. There were really cool canyons and mountains with caves in them all around us. The caves were homes or something from ancient times, and there was even a three story palace carved into the cliff in this manner, but we weren't allowed to go up there because it's dangerous with unstable rocks.

After our hike we returned to the hotel to regroup and pick up those who had recovered enough for the afternoon, which consisted of a Jeep trek and the Jordan River. Unlike the Jeep trek in the desert, this trek had real name brand Jeeps. I took a picture just to prove it. Unfortunately, the Jeep pictured wasn't the vehicle I actually rode in, which was in fact NOT a Jeep. LAME. It's okay though; our driver kept pulling up beside other vehicles so that we could throw cups of water on them. The ride was crazy!

When we got to the river, the first order of business was baptizing people. Though I was baptized in my sophomore year of high school, I've wanted to be re-baptized since  about senior year, so I took this opportunity to do just that in the Jordan River, just like Jesus did. It was kind of sad that none of the Zion kids had any home pastor or teacher to baptize us, but I had a cool guy named Pastor Phil perform mine. (Side note: he's here with his son whose name is Kramer. hahahaha!) Again, pictures of this exist, I just don't have them yet. I'll try to add some in later when I get them.