Israel

Wow! Sorry, I've been terrible this trip at keeping my blog up to date! So, I have now been in Israel for over a week. During this time, we've been able to see a lot of this small, but versatile country.

We've been up North to the Golan Heights, past the Sea of Galilee, where we went water hiking. Which was super beautiful and it happened to be on the hottest day of the year. Water hiking, for those of you who don't know, cause I didn't, is when you go hiking in a river. So for a long, long time, we went hiking thru a tunnel of greeness, with spotted pink flowers hanging over our heads. It was a great way to spend a hot day and even better when we got to the end, we were able to hitch a ride back to the car with some other people and have coffee and cookies at the end. While being up North, we were right on the Syrian border. That night we camped at a beautiful, old Syrian military pool, where natural water just filled it up and ran in and out of it. It was so nice! I also got to brushen up my camp fire making skills. Also on the way home from the North, we stopped at a little town that is super religious called Safad, where lots of artists are, little children running around with long sideburns and old men in tall black hats. The archeitecture here is wonderful and I have lots of great shots of doorways and lamposts and the buildings are these beautiful golds and blues.

A couple days later, we headed to Jerusalem. Here we went to an all night concert. Some very popular Israeli artists and Macey Gray. Well, I enjoyed the first two bands and by the time Macey came on I was a bit too tired and the beer had really kicked in, so I wasn't too much fun at that point, but after some sushi, I was ready to go. By 4:30 AM though, Noam and I were both so happy to find Amit and stay with him and his freinds! Yay! No sleeping in the car! The next day, we woke up at about two and headed to do the typical sight seeing. It happened to be Jersaleum day, so there was lots of action on the streets. We went to the Wailing Wall, which was super interesting. To me, it was amazing to see how devoted people are. The praying and devotion these people were showing was something far beyond my eyes have ever seen. The energy in that place is like a magnet, it just sucks you in and is super powerful.

From there we decided to go and try and find the Church of the Holy Sepuclur, which is where it is said that Jesus's cross was put into the ground and where they whipped him and gave him his crown of thorns. But before we found it, an old Arabic religious man started randomly talking to me in the little bit of English he knew. He kept inviting me in for coffee and his house telling me "It's free, it's free!" So, knowing that I love these types of random meetings we took him up on his offer. He was a very passionate man who use to run a tea/gambling house, which is what we were sitting in, though, you would never know it from the dust that caked the walls, chairs and kitchen. David was his name and he was a very passionate old man. Noam had to try real hard to decipher is Arabic/Hebrew mix of language being spoken. I just sat there, drank some yummy tea and took it all in. Jerusaleum, to me is a beautiful city. Once again the architecture is amazing and I love all the old stones and shades of blue everywhere! When we finally eneded up finding the church of Jesus, it was quite a sight. I would say it's the most beautiful church I've ever been in, even compared to the ones in Europe and Prauge. It was immense! The cielings were as if they could touch the sky. The gold and lights that decorated the place was beautiful! Once again, the people who entered the place were just full of devotion. Such a strange sight to me....I had no idea people still really care about religion this much, especially the Christian aspect.

Some of the things I love best about Israel so far are 1. the bread! It is so delicious to eat tasty gourmet bread. 2. the Olives! So many yummy, salty olives to eat 3. the people, everyday I am shocked by how friendly everyone is! It is so nice!

Well, I am off to the museum right now, so I will update you on the Dead Sea next. Ahhh! Heavenly! Miss ya!