On catching y'all up...

Hey family and friends!

Looking Romanesque

I want to post a bit more about my trip to Galilee, because I didn't actually say much in my previous posts. We were staying in Kibbutz Ha'on (hah-own), which is right on the lake. We had little cabins, pretty nice, with 4 people to a cabin. It was nice, especially the part where we could leave our toothbrushes in the bathroom. Israeli hostels are really, really nice--nicer than most of the hostels and some of the hotels that Sarah and I stayed in this summer. We ate dinner and breakfast at the hostel; but meals here are a little different than back in the States. Let's just say, for Sunday morning breakfast, I had a salad (this hostel was the only place so far I've seen salad dressing that wasn't just olive oil and vinegar), cinnamon toast crunch, brown bread with strawberry jam, orange juice fresh from the tap, and sinfully delicious chocolate cake. I don't think I've ever had salad and chocolate cake both for breakfast. Meals here generally offer more things that look like they belong at a Lutheran potluck--maybe vegetables, maybe fruit, maybe noodles or some sort of legumes, mixed up with a bunch of random stuff and mayonnaise. We also get served a lot of this Jello-like substance. I try to avoid that substance as a general rule. But the food at the hostel was pretty good. One night, as I was putting food on my plate, I kept getting more and more excited about the fact that I was going to eat this food in just a minute. I had French onion soup that I liked better than the stuff I had in Paris, strawberry ice cream, amazing brown bread, mashed potato pancakes, chicken something, and a salad. It was truly amazing. Everyone enjoyed that meal a lot.

Classtime along the shore of the Sea of Galilee

Enough about food. How about the Galilee? Well, I heard lots of people talk about how much they love the Galilee and how beautiful it is and all of this, before I came. It seems to be a lot of people's favorite region, especially those who aren't used to the pretty dry area around Jerusalem to the east and south. I was not one of those people. I just didn't really like it as much as the dry land. I think part of that is that we are between the dry season and the rainy season right now, so we're getting hamsin, the hot, sandy, dry Arabian winds that really obscure any view. If you notice any of my pictures looking really hazy, it's because of the hamsin. I think I'll like Galilee better when I go back with my parents, because that will be right in the middle of the rainy season, so the rain will have washed out the air a good bit.

We saw cows of Bashan! Actually I saw some earlier, on my hike in Yehuddiya, at the beginning of the year with the big cliffs.... there are pictures on an earlier post about that hike. There were cows of Bashan there too, grazing in the ruins of a Byzantine village. Read Amos 4:1 about the cows of Bashan--Amos is talking to women who live in the region of Bashan! It's pretty great. Only a few verses after that is the classic "Go to Bethel and sin" reference (Amos 4:4) that all Northwestern students love (Bethel is our chief rival on many levels, and they are literally just up the road from us about a mile). Anyway, we were seeing real cows, although I'm sure we saw women there also.

My brain is starting to get fuzzy... I was up really early this morning for my volunteering, so I think I'll go to bed soon. Here's an idea: If there's anything I mentioned in any post, or a picture or really anything at all, that you have a question about, make a comment on my blog and ask!

Quick funny story: There was a student here at JUC a few years back who didn't really know much Hebrew, but knew the word for "perhaps," and would insert it into conversations periodically if he didn't understand, until he could catch up with the person. So one evening he headed down to the Kotel (the Western Wall), and was going through security to get in. He was asked in Hebrew, "Do you have a weapon?" You can go in with a weapon, if you have a license--all new Israeli recruits have to have their gun with them at all times, I guess, so we see a lot of guns around the city. So they just ask "Do you have a weapon?" And of course this guy has no idea what they just said, so he responds "Perhaps!" I know the guy made it out alive; I'm guessing the security man was able to figure out that he had no idea what he was just asked. I do my best to avoid such circumstances.

Well, I'm off to bed! Don't forget to post a comment if you have a question.

Shalom!