This past weekend was one full of some great adventures! On Sunday we had our last full day field trip. It was also the hottest field trip ever! Luckily we were given a break and received permission to wear shorts. Everyone was pretty happy about that. We went to Qumran, Masada, En Gedi, and the Dead Sea. It was great!
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| standing in the scribes room at Qumran- some of the dead sea scrolls are likely to have been recorded in this very room! |
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| Cave 4 at Qumran- thousands of fragments of scrolls were found here! |
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| Gotta love Brother Judd. |
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| I'm trying to remember why I took this picture- The background is significant in some way, I'm just drawing a blank on why. But in any case- It's a great picture of my awesome new T-shirt that I got in the Old City! |
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| Jenny, Lisa Judd, and I in the mother of all cisterns! We've seen tons of cisterns (water storage areas) this summer, and this was by far the largest one! I didn't actually realize this picture was blurry until just now- so sorry about that. I hope you can still tell that this cistern is huge. |
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| this my friends, is the Dead Sea. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures on my own camera of floating in it, but I know people took some, so I'll have to track them down. It was such a weird sensation to just fall back into the water and automatically have your legs and arms up in the air! Definitely an experience worth while- although it was very hot and being coated in salt afterward was not that fun. |
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| Jennifer, Erica, Angela, and I at the Dead Sea! |
The next day, Angela, Jamie and I had a wonderful free day! We headed into the city early and did the Ramparts walk- a walk up on the city wall that goes all the way around the Old City. It was fun to see the city from a different point of view. After that we went into the old city and picked up a few things at our favorite shops. After that we made our way through the Mamilla (American like shopping center- even has a GAP!) and then on to Independence park and enjoyed our lunches while sticking our feet into a stream. After that we saw the Great Synagogue, and then walked through the open air market. We mad our way home and then later that evening, I went back out with Taylor, Krystalee, and Sara, and we played some music on Ben Yehuda Street. We made a whopping 14 shekels!! We had a really good time.
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| Angela and I doing the Rampart's walk |
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| view from high up on the city wall! |
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| More Rampart Walking |
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| A lovely view of the Jerusalem Center from high upon the city walls! We sure do love this place! It has felt more like home than I ever imagined it would be and will forever hold a special place in my heart! |
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| Why doesn't America have bakeries like this? Seriously- pastries here are so good. |
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| I love these cute little sacks of spices and herbs! |
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| The fresh fruit always smells so good and is so tempting! mmm. |
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| We smelled these cinnamon rolls from almost a block away and followed our noses to the bakery that had them. We got three for only 3.9 shekels! That's like 1 dollar- FOR THREE PASTRIES! I love it! |
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| This one's for you, Sam! |
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| I was the photographer in this picture, but here is our litte group trying to make some shekels on the street! We even made a new friend (Gur- playing the guitar) and he jammed with us for a little while. |
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It's hard to believe that this experience is going to be over in just 10 days! This summer has been incredible. I'll have to take another blog post to try and put it into words. Needless to say, pictures and words will never suffice to describe how much I have learned and how my testimony has grown. I'm grateful to have been given this opportunity!
