Trip to the Galilee
Soooooooooo wow this is is really intimidating. There's so much and whatever i say i'll be leaving things out.
To start we went to ALOT of national parks. Let me just list them because i'm not going to be able to remember what went when or necessarily what one was and how it corresponds to where i went so i'll just list them and then talk about the trip generally. I went to (among other none-national park places): Tel Dan (which i now recall had this huge gate/city entrance made of mud brick and miraculously preserved because it was buried for some reason...invasion or a new one i kindof forget. But it was like...4000 years old or something. Impressive. Ok well as long as this is a long parentheses i may as well take the oportunity to talk about the whole "old=impressive" thing. I mean, i've never been one of those people who necessarily think things that are old are necessarily cool or worh looking at. Nor am i really impressed with ruins or basically anything i label "old rocks" including ancient jars, toilets, kitchens and whatnot. I think it's cool we can figure out from them how people lived in a "really? that's cool.." kindof way but that doesn't mean i have to see them myself.Having said that I didn't get bored doing this kind of stuff on this trip. There are two major reasons for this, i think. Number one: I went knowing i was going to be doing this kind of stuff and therefore made a willful effort to put away my natural tendencies and be open minded. Number two (and probably more importantly) Dr. Wright (Ben's dad) would consistently bring the places to life. telling stories or making suppositions or interesting trivia and alot of the times relating them with stories in the bible that suddenly take on new dimensions and realism. So it was actually pretty cool. Ok. On with the list.) Hamat Teverya, Gan Hashelouta, Tel Megiddo or Armageddon (yes, Armageddon, as in where the world is supposed to end. Maybe. Except that if you look at the wording you start having doubts. Do some linguistic juggling and scholarly thinking and for Dr wright that meant him telling us he thought it was actually supposed to be talking about Jerusalem but anyways this tel (which actully means a site where severeal buliding from differnt times were built on top of each other creating layers) is where it's supposed to be.) Bet Alfa, Bet She'an ( I vaguely remember collums and gardens attached to this name but i think that was the day i was half asleep) Kursi, and Caesarea (which was the first place we stopped. ruins, roman theater facing the mediteranian. Built by Kind Herod. Leanred all kinds of stuff but this isn't a term paper so i'll let you guys read up if it interests you.) and that's it for national reserves and parks. Of course we stopped at probably 6 places per day on average so over 4 days that's about 24 so you KNOW i'm missing alot.
Ok. So. For the narrative. After a stressful half week of school i want to the school play "the importance of being Ernest" wednesday night and it was GREAT. Khaled was HILARIOUS and brilliant as were the other leads for the vast majority. twas awesome. Bright and early the next day (after staying up till like 12 packing, waxing and whatevering the night before) i go to ben's and join him, his dad and a busload of college kids for the trip. (i'm not going to talk about the college kids because they're really not that central to my existence. But i roomed with three girls and talked some to some of the others. Very nice people. Fun group. Ok.) The bus ride is usually 4 hours to galilee but we took all day getting there because we stopped along the way at various sites. Alot of what we did was going to gorgeous and high vantage points and having Dr. Wright point out certain geographical things and then relating it and placing events from the bible in it. That's actually quite fun to listen to. Especially for someone so not into the old testament as me. It's good. We walked ALOT everyday we walked alot. The most was probably the third day. But i get ahead of myeslf. So yeah we did ceasaria and lots of other places, ate at a cheap but good falafel/chicken pita sandwich place for lunch and got to the kibutz resort by dinner time. They had an awesome dining room the whole time. I loved it. Plus, buffet style! Seconds, anyone? lol. So yeah and then i convinced Ben to go swimming with me even though it was really cold (it was Hoooot during the day, i was in a tanktop and stuff but it cooled off significantly that night) so we swam for a bit till i took pity on him and then we went and showered and met up to hang and talk. I ended up going to bed pretty late and so my roomates were already sleeping and i just slipped into bed. Except it was freezing and i had only a thin blanket and one pillow. I didn't really sleep that night. Finally at like 5:30 and sat up and shivered in bed and spotted the closet *haaalelulia!!* there was an extra blanket and pillow. Needless to say i was WIPEd the next day and Ben and i agreed we should get to bed earlier next night. that day we did alot of sites again and alot of bus time (i brought a book and all kinds of stuff but most of the time we would just sleep and listen to Ben's ipod on the bus) We saw the region's biggest water source thingy (other than the Sea of Galilee, obviously) in this really cool park type place and two guys jsut dived in which was pretty funny. It's hard to recall excatly what we did because they all just start blending together. Anyways that night after dinner we just watched tv for half an hour before going to bed. We decided that the next morning we would climb Mount Hippus which is a MOTHEr of a mountain close to the resort where we were encouraged to go see the sunrise. I'm always up for this kind of thing so the next morning i wake at 4:30AM to be out the door with Ben, John and Erin (two college kids) by 5. Ben was supposed to show us the quicker path up the hill but he missed it and so we ended up walking at least a good 3 miles UP (and i mean UP) this terrible winding road all around the mountain in the dark and in a hurry because we were scared of missing the rising sun. we even ran some. We were going to just cut up at some point but had been warned before hand that the "Beware: Minefield" signs weren't there just to scare us. The Syrians had meant buisness, i guess. So anyways by the time we got to the top it was just barely light but there was really no sunrise seing as how it was very cloudy. But it was still worth it. there were roman ruins up there and this pretty cool tunnel. We took the cow path back down and then realized we were very late. I was SO looking forward to the breakfast buffet by this time but it seemed we were late for the BUS departure, not breakfast! Eek! so we scrambled down the non-pathy part of the moutain (not full of bombs, don't worry.)and i got pricklies in me =-( but twas fun but very frantic and then literally ran back. I was SOooooooooooooooo exhausted. It was 7 AM and i was sweating and i didn't have my contacts in and my door was locked so i couldn't get my bag, i had no breakfast, my muscles, especially in my legs and butt were very sore and i had very little sleep acumulated over the past 2 days. Needless to stay i was just this side of death. So then in my foggy memomry of the next 4 or five hours i vaguely remember taking a boat out to the middle of the Galilgee, Dr. Wright talking, going various other places, i vaguely recall green and ruins and collums and i knokw i remember sleeping in the bus. I only really woke up when we went to this AWESOME cliff thing. I can't really describe it except that it was kinda like that rock Pocahontas jumps off of the first time we see her in the disney version exept bigger with more to climb. There was awesome wind and it was finally clearing up so the sun was out and it wasn't cold at all. So we hiked around there (actual hiking! not just walking) and went down this uber-steep part that had hand and feet holds put in. Then we explored some high up caves and made our way back down this treacherous path. We literally had to slide on our butts at one time with this loose dirt steep path thingy and i loved it! That night was last night and after dinner we just walked and talked some before getting to bed at a very reasonable hour. I swear we must have walked at least 8 miles total that day. More, probably. At least i didn't feel too guilty when i ate alot, lol. Today we packed up and left and headed back making frequent stops. It was raining all day and i was complaining about the bottom of my pants being wet at first. Today was like mosaic day, too. Saw lots of those. We went to this place called "three springs" in hebrew and it did indeed have three really clear blue awesome springs and one with a waterful and some big rocks you could jump off of into it. So even though i was wet, it was gray and not all that warm i changed my mind (because at first i was loath to get any wetter) and we went swimming. Then we (ben and I) were the last ones eating(because everyone else ate before swimming) and got on the bus. Again, tired and wet and also sore from previous mountain climbing and everday walking miles. So then we got to our last site. This roman ruin thing. And it was kindof raining when we got out there (it had been pouring and then slowing down and then pouring off and on all day)but Dr. Wright wanted to check out a supposed stream he'd never seen that drains the whole Jezreel valley and invited ben along and i said i didn't really need to see more ruins so we three went off. Through the ruins, down a path to a big gushing stream. then we had to cross it which required stepping on a stone submerged in the water. By this time it's raining and my hair was in that more-than-damp-less-than-soaked stage and the water on my jeans was creeping higher which i hate but it wasn't like i wasn't going to follow so i just put my foot in and did it. Which means my foot was then SOAKED. So then we walked through thigh-high flowers/weeds up this hill and my jeans started getting wet up high then we walked like a mile on this path, crossed another big stream (actually the same one farthber down0 which required a big leap and walked on. Then we realized we were late. Lol. And now it's raining HARD. i mean SERIUOUSLy hard. Huge storm (later on in the bus the road was flooded adn we had to go through) so then we have to backtrack with my hair now stuck to my head and dripping, my pants COMPLETELY soaked through, shoes squishing so much so i'm not even avoiding puddles anymore and muddy feet that are very easy to slip with when jumping rocks across a stream. And we're in a hurry. It took us an hour to get out there and a half hour to get back, to give you the idea. So we were a half hour late but whatever. Then the gross part was being SOAKED in the bus. And no sweaters because i had those on and they were soaked through. My tank top, heck my BRA was soaked through. So cold. So then we drive an hour back to jerusalem adn i get home. And there endeth our weekend story adventure. Phew. ok i'm going to chill a very short while before going to bed because it's 9:30 and i have school tomorow!
I hope yall appreciate this, lol.
I love you to pieces!
~ The grand adventuress
To start we went to ALOT of national parks. Let me just list them because i'm not going to be able to remember what went when or necessarily what one was and how it corresponds to where i went so i'll just list them and then talk about the trip generally. I went to (among other none-national park places): Tel Dan (which i now recall had this huge gate/city entrance made of mud brick and miraculously preserved because it was buried for some reason...invasion or a new one i kindof forget. But it was like...4000 years old or something. Impressive. Ok well as long as this is a long parentheses i may as well take the oportunity to talk about the whole "old=impressive" thing. I mean, i've never been one of those people who necessarily think things that are old are necessarily cool or worh looking at. Nor am i really impressed with ruins or basically anything i label "old rocks" including ancient jars, toilets, kitchens and whatnot. I think it's cool we can figure out from them how people lived in a "really? that's cool.." kindof way but that doesn't mean i have to see them myself.Having said that I didn't get bored doing this kind of stuff on this trip. There are two major reasons for this, i think. Number one: I went knowing i was going to be doing this kind of stuff and therefore made a willful effort to put away my natural tendencies and be open minded. Number two (and probably more importantly) Dr. Wright (Ben's dad) would consistently bring the places to life. telling stories or making suppositions or interesting trivia and alot of the times relating them with stories in the bible that suddenly take on new dimensions and realism. So it was actually pretty cool. Ok. On with the list.) Hamat Teverya, Gan Hashelouta, Tel Megiddo or Armageddon (yes, Armageddon, as in where the world is supposed to end. Maybe. Except that if you look at the wording you start having doubts. Do some linguistic juggling and scholarly thinking and for Dr wright that meant him telling us he thought it was actually supposed to be talking about Jerusalem but anyways this tel (which actully means a site where severeal buliding from differnt times were built on top of each other creating layers) is where it's supposed to be.) Bet Alfa, Bet She'an ( I vaguely remember collums and gardens attached to this name but i think that was the day i was half asleep) Kursi, and Caesarea (which was the first place we stopped. ruins, roman theater facing the mediteranian. Built by Kind Herod. Leanred all kinds of stuff but this isn't a term paper so i'll let you guys read up if it interests you.) and that's it for national reserves and parks. Of course we stopped at probably 6 places per day on average so over 4 days that's about 24 so you KNOW i'm missing alot.
Ok. So. For the narrative. After a stressful half week of school i want to the school play "the importance of being Ernest" wednesday night and it was GREAT. Khaled was HILARIOUS and brilliant as were the other leads for the vast majority. twas awesome. Bright and early the next day (after staying up till like 12 packing, waxing and whatevering the night before) i go to ben's and join him, his dad and a busload of college kids for the trip. (i'm not going to talk about the college kids because they're really not that central to my existence. But i roomed with three girls and talked some to some of the others. Very nice people. Fun group. Ok.) The bus ride is usually 4 hours to galilee but we took all day getting there because we stopped along the way at various sites. Alot of what we did was going to gorgeous and high vantage points and having Dr. Wright point out certain geographical things and then relating it and placing events from the bible in it. That's actually quite fun to listen to. Especially for someone so not into the old testament as me. It's good. We walked ALOT everyday we walked alot. The most was probably the third day. But i get ahead of myeslf. So yeah we did ceasaria and lots of other places, ate at a cheap but good falafel/chicken pita sandwich place for lunch and got to the kibutz resort by dinner time. They had an awesome dining room the whole time. I loved it. Plus, buffet style! Seconds, anyone? lol. So yeah and then i convinced Ben to go swimming with me even though it was really cold (it was Hoooot during the day, i was in a tanktop and stuff but it cooled off significantly that night) so we swam for a bit till i took pity on him and then we went and showered and met up to hang and talk. I ended up going to bed pretty late and so my roomates were already sleeping and i just slipped into bed. Except it was freezing and i had only a thin blanket and one pillow. I didn't really sleep that night. Finally at like 5:30 and sat up and shivered in bed and spotted the closet *haaalelulia!!* there was an extra blanket and pillow. Needless to say i was WIPEd the next day and Ben and i agreed we should get to bed earlier next night. that day we did alot of sites again and alot of bus time (i brought a book and all kinds of stuff but most of the time we would just sleep and listen to Ben's ipod on the bus) We saw the region's biggest water source thingy (other than the Sea of Galilee, obviously) in this really cool park type place and two guys jsut dived in which was pretty funny. It's hard to recall excatly what we did because they all just start blending together. Anyways that night after dinner we just watched tv for half an hour before going to bed. We decided that the next morning we would climb Mount Hippus which is a MOTHEr of a mountain close to the resort where we were encouraged to go see the sunrise. I'm always up for this kind of thing so the next morning i wake at 4:30AM to be out the door with Ben, John and Erin (two college kids) by 5. Ben was supposed to show us the quicker path up the hill but he missed it and so we ended up walking at least a good 3 miles UP (and i mean UP) this terrible winding road all around the mountain in the dark and in a hurry because we were scared of missing the rising sun. we even ran some. We were going to just cut up at some point but had been warned before hand that the "Beware: Minefield" signs weren't there just to scare us. The Syrians had meant buisness, i guess. So anyways by the time we got to the top it was just barely light but there was really no sunrise seing as how it was very cloudy. But it was still worth it. there were roman ruins up there and this pretty cool tunnel. We took the cow path back down and then realized we were very late. I was SO looking forward to the breakfast buffet by this time but it seemed we were late for the BUS departure, not breakfast! Eek! so we scrambled down the non-pathy part of the moutain (not full of bombs, don't worry.)and i got pricklies in me =-( but twas fun but very frantic and then literally ran back. I was SOooooooooooooooo exhausted. It was 7 AM and i was sweating and i didn't have my contacts in and my door was locked so i couldn't get my bag, i had no breakfast, my muscles, especially in my legs and butt were very sore and i had very little sleep acumulated over the past 2 days. Needless to stay i was just this side of death. So then in my foggy memomry of the next 4 or five hours i vaguely remember taking a boat out to the middle of the Galilgee, Dr. Wright talking, going various other places, i vaguely recall green and ruins and collums and i knokw i remember sleeping in the bus. I only really woke up when we went to this AWESOME cliff thing. I can't really describe it except that it was kinda like that rock Pocahontas jumps off of the first time we see her in the disney version exept bigger with more to climb. There was awesome wind and it was finally clearing up so the sun was out and it wasn't cold at all. So we hiked around there (actual hiking! not just walking) and went down this uber-steep part that had hand and feet holds put in. Then we explored some high up caves and made our way back down this treacherous path. We literally had to slide on our butts at one time with this loose dirt steep path thingy and i loved it! That night was last night and after dinner we just walked and talked some before getting to bed at a very reasonable hour. I swear we must have walked at least 8 miles total that day. More, probably. At least i didn't feel too guilty when i ate alot, lol. Today we packed up and left and headed back making frequent stops. It was raining all day and i was complaining about the bottom of my pants being wet at first. Today was like mosaic day, too. Saw lots of those. We went to this place called "three springs" in hebrew and it did indeed have three really clear blue awesome springs and one with a waterful and some big rocks you could jump off of into it. So even though i was wet, it was gray and not all that warm i changed my mind (because at first i was loath to get any wetter) and we went swimming. Then we (ben and I) were the last ones eating(because everyone else ate before swimming) and got on the bus. Again, tired and wet and also sore from previous mountain climbing and everday walking miles. So then we got to our last site. This roman ruin thing. And it was kindof raining when we got out there (it had been pouring and then slowing down and then pouring off and on all day)but Dr. Wright wanted to check out a supposed stream he'd never seen that drains the whole Jezreel valley and invited ben along and i said i didn't really need to see more ruins so we three went off. Through the ruins, down a path to a big gushing stream. then we had to cross it which required stepping on a stone submerged in the water. By this time it's raining and my hair was in that more-than-damp-less-than-soaked stage and the water on my jeans was creeping higher which i hate but it wasn't like i wasn't going to follow so i just put my foot in and did it. Which means my foot was then SOAKED. So then we walked through thigh-high flowers/weeds up this hill and my jeans started getting wet up high then we walked like a mile on this path, crossed another big stream (actually the same one farthber down0 which required a big leap and walked on. Then we realized we were late. Lol. And now it's raining HARD. i mean SERIUOUSLy hard. Huge storm (later on in the bus the road was flooded adn we had to go through) so then we have to backtrack with my hair now stuck to my head and dripping, my pants COMPLETELY soaked through, shoes squishing so much so i'm not even avoiding puddles anymore and muddy feet that are very easy to slip with when jumping rocks across a stream. And we're in a hurry. It took us an hour to get out there and a half hour to get back, to give you the idea. So we were a half hour late but whatever. Then the gross part was being SOAKED in the bus. And no sweaters because i had those on and they were soaked through. My tank top, heck my BRA was soaked through. So cold. So then we drive an hour back to jerusalem adn i get home. And there endeth our weekend story adventure. Phew. ok i'm going to chill a very short while before going to bed because it's 9:30 and i have school tomorow!
I hope yall appreciate this, lol.
I love you to pieces!
~ The grand adventuress