Le....twenty-first is too complicated in french. Monday, June 6th

 Monday, our last day of touring, started off at the Mount of Olives. As we all know, Jesus spent a lot of time there. Started at the top and walked our way down the mountain...it was pretty steep!

Roommate picture!

Jennie had a little too much fun with the camera...

We stopped at the garden of Gethsemane and had communion, led by the same pastor who baptized me the day at the Jordan. We then made our way over to the church on the other side of the street that went with it. The place was beautiful! It was designed to show the "darkness of humanity" and all the light that comes in is through the slightly opaque windows. It was dark, but gorgeous.



 Our third stop was at St. Anne's, a church which was next to "one of the most confusing archaeological sites in the Holy Land". We are apparently not really sure what to make of it all. The area is right for the story of the man who was sitting by the well waiting for the angel's wings to stir up the water and to be the first person in the pool so he'd be healed. Well, these pools were way too deep for that story to take place here, although it may have been in a smaller pool in a nearby area.

The last stop of the touring part of our trip was at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This church is absolutely ginormous and houses many different denominations. As with many of our sites, this may or may not have been the location of what they claim it was. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre (or, the Church of the Resurrection) is another potential location of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. According to our teacher, there is no good evidence that it isn't the correct location. But we also don't know for sure that it is. (Whereas the Garden Tomb is almost definitely the wrong location)

People crowd around the stone that Jesus' body was supposedly laid out on. They pray over it and lay their stuff on it. It was a little strange. I mean, I get that it's powerful, but laying your shopping bags on it? That seems a bit odd to me...

 We went into this little corner off of nothing so that we could have access to an area that still had tombs in it. Let me just say that this one little room creeped me out more than anything we've done the whole trip. The leaders talk all about how we might be weirded out by all the idolatry and stuff that these orthodox churches do, but it really hasn't bothered me. I mean, sometimes is flat out gaudy and ugly, but it doesn't seem creepy to me. But this little tomb room gave me the serious willies. I'm not even claustrophobic, but you had to duck into a little doorway and then it was super dark and there was one little candle in there and the little body chambers and I was like "I need to get out of here!" I took this picture and turned right around and left. UGH.



 There was a really long line into this weird little structure, which is supposed to be the tomb (I think?) that they put Jesus in. They've built this strange room around it and you have to wait in the line just to get in there. I didn't bother. But apparently there's just one little piece of rock that still exists in there. But the Sun was shining right down through the window at the top of the arched ceiling in the bigger chamber that the boxed room is in. It had this gorgeous effect in the dark place.



And this is the place that Jesus was crucified (assuming that this is the right location for the whole ordeal). As with everything else in this area, super gaudy and overdone.

We then had the afternoon to walk around and meander in the Old City.

Le Vingtième Jour, Samedi. (The twentieth day, Sunday 6/5)

 The first stop of our Sunday was at Hezekiah's Tunnel, but we did the Canaanite tunnel, which is the dry version of what I'd already done. Basically, it was not as good as what I already did, so I didn't take any pictures.

After that we walked up to the Temple Mount area again. So we've already been there before, but we didn't go to the specific place that we went this time. Because THIS time we went right to where the front gate was, which is the gate that Jesus would have used. And the area directly in front of the arches has been excavated down to the original stone from the second temple. Yea, that means that Jesus stood on this stone. Pretty freaking exciting. Being in this land means that there are all sorts of places that Jesus was near, could have been, is throught to have been, but this is the ONE place that we know Jesus was.

Jesus rock!

Standing on the Jesus rock!

This is just me posing on the steps leading up.

Then we went to lunch, where I went to an Italian restaurant called Mozzarella in the heart of the Jewish quarter of the Old City (??) and had penne with olive oil and garlic. Super tasty! Then I had some delish chocolate gelato. Yum!

Our last stop was a place that had a model of the city and a video about it. The stop ended with an explanation of the ancient alphabet and then an attempt at writing our names...I wasn't very good. When we left that place we walked up on the rooftop of the Old City. It was wild! See, we didn't climb up there, but we simply took a few stairs. It doesn't seem like you're going very far up, but you end up on the roof system. There was a sweet view across the rooftops and also down through a window type thing looking into an alley of the city!

Le Dix-Neuvième Jour, Samedi. (The nineteenth day, Saturday 6/4)

Saturday was only a half day of our touring with only two stops. The first was at Herodium. Herodium was built by Herod the Great because he was superrrr paranoid and felt the need to build several fortresses so that if he ever had to run from his enemies he had places to hide out. Herodium is also the place that Herod was buried and they recently found what they believe is his tomb.

 

It was really difficult to get up there even just sitting down because my knee hurts still and my jeans were so stinking tight. And then I decided to stand up on the pillar with my weight on my bad knee...poor decision. I was wobbling all over the place and though this pillar doesn't look very big, it would've been a painful fall! Luckily the photographers took the picture really quickly before I tumbled!

 The Herodium ruins were really cool, though. I watched a good documentary about the tomb of Herod during my archaeology class, so I actually knew quite a bit about what was there (just like I knew a bit about Masada when we went).

 Our main stop of the day was in Bethlehem at the Church of the Nativity. This is the speculated place where Jesus was born. Now, we're not sure exactly where the birth of Jesus took place, but traditions dating back before the Byzantine period, which this location is, have a much greater chance of being accurate. We didn't actually wait in the hour long line to see the specific cave that they claim is THE CAVE, but really there's no proof that it's that specific cave anyways. Instead, we went around the back of the cave system and saw some on the immediate back of the cave they've selected. Really, just being in that network of caves is good enough. It is highly likely that somewhere in that complex Jesus was brought into the world. WOW.

The gaudiness of the Greek Orthodox Church amazes/disturbs me...

 I lit a candle in the Roman Catholic section of the Church of the Nativity. I would just like to say that when I went to London in 2007 I lit a candle for my mother's surrogate pregnancy to be successful. When I returned from that trip I learned that not only she, but also the biological mother was pregnant. The family now has two adorable daughters. Sooo I decided to light a candle and say a prayer for my future family. A little early, perhaps, but I figured it couldn't do any harm :)

The bright one right in the middle is mine!

 There are no Starbucks in Israel because they've got the Aroma Café going on. However, in Bethlehem there is a Stars & Bucks Café. Cute.

I didn't realize it before we went there, but Bethlehem is not actually controlled by Israel. It's technically Israeli territory, but is controlled by Palestine. Or...something. Anyway, there is a big checkpoint that you have to go through and it takes forever and you have to make it past the wall surrounding Jerusalem. There was some pretty sweet anti-war propaganda graffiti on the wall though :)

And this one kid from my groups was wearing a shirt that instantly reminded me of Charlie. So this one's for you, Chaz.