Le Treizième Jour, Dimanche. (The thirteenth day, Sunday 5/29)

 Sunday started off with Tel Jezreel, which hasn't even been very excavated, so we didn't really do much there. It was a good lookout over the area, but there weren't even any signs in English, which proves that it's not a commonly visited place for Christians or anything. Any big tourist place has signs in Hebrew, English, and usually Arabic.

Our next stop of the day was at Meggido, which is the ruins of a Solomonic city. We got to climb down into the water well thing and walked all the way through it down at the bottom and up and out the other side. It was pretty cool, and was well lit and everything, so it worked out well.

We then headed off to Mt. Carmel, which had excellent views all around from the top of the cathedral. It was pretty sweet. Below is a picture of me standing on it, with the patchworked land of Israel as my background.

 We finished off the day with Caesarea, Herod the Great's city. The place was magnificent, though we had to rush through it which was a bummer. Started in the amphitheater and then made our way out to the place where his palace would have been. Although Herod was pretty much a total sicko/madman, I've gotta give the guy credit for having a really good eye for scenery. He really chose the best places EVER for his palaces to be! It was a gorgeous lookout over the Mediterranean Sea. That's right, people. I've now been in the Mediterranean Sea! Be jealous- it was wonderful. It felt so cultured after that experience :)

After the aqueduct at Caesarea, we loaded back into the bus and made our journey to Jerusalem, the Beit Yehudah (youth hostel) which is the last place we're staying on this trip. The place is totally sweet, probably my favorite place we've stayed yet :)


P.S. I finally found a picture of my head scarf at the Bedouin camp

Le Douzième Jour, Samedi. (The twelfth day, Saturday 5/28)

 Honestly, the start of Saturday was a little bit boring. We went to yet another ancient synagogue. They really kind of are all the same. But the day improved greatly from that point on!

We went and saw the "Jesus Boat" which is a boat that was discovered completely buried in mud and totally preserved. It is basically a first century boat similar to the kind that Jesus would have been in for the calming of the sea and walking on water and all those Sea of Galilee stories. The short video in the museum that gives brief documentation of the excavation (which was a realllly elaborate process!) was really fun because the woman in charge of the excavation was so excited throughout the whole video. She was just bubbling with energy while telling the story.

Realllly bad quality haha

Next, we went to the Greek Orthodox site for the Mt. of Beatitudes. Now, it is quite likely that this wasn't the real site, but nevertheless it was beautiful there! They have this gorgeous cathedral and magnificent gardens and the views all around are just breathtaking. It was easy to picture Jesus in a place like that.  Granted, it wasn't groomed like that at the time. But still.

 Our next stop was.....some other cathedral. It also had beautiful artwork inside. Everything was so super ornate, and it just totally blew my mind. It also led to a conversation about what Jesus defeated with the cross and empty tomb (Because the empty tomb -not the cross- is the important part really, when we really think of what He defeated). It was not sin but rather death. One of the pictures in this second cathedral showed Jesus drawing forth Adam and Eve from the tomb, because He redeemed us from the death we inherited from them. That was a really cool realization we got from it.



Our final stop of the tour day was at Capernaum, a city that Jesus was in. The story of Jairus' daughter takes place in this city. We also saw the home of Peter. Which is AWESOME! It's unfortunately under some other modern structure, but you can still kind of see what's going on there. And I guess if things have gotten their reputation as a sight before the crusaders came through, then there's a good chance that it is the real site of what happened. If it wasn't until after the crusaders came through that we find a place getting famous, then it's probably a hoax.


After we got back to the hotel and grabbed a quick dinner, we headed back to the location of the museum where the Jesus boat was and grabbed a ride on our own Jesus boat! Well, ours was quite a bit bigger, since we had 80 people on it rather than 13, but still! We were on the only tourist boat owned by believers on the whole Sea of Galilee. The captain is also a musician and has been translating worship songs into Hebrew, so we got to sing the Hebrew versions of songs we've always known in English. That was pretty cool. Not to mention we were out on the Sea that Jesus was on. Looking all around, it was the same place! Talk about legit.

Our boat dropped us off in Tiberias, and we walked around for a bit. I got french fries and a McFlurry, and we grabbed the bus and headed back to the hotel.

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.