This is us thinking about Netanya... it was cold and windy just then, but it grew on us!
We found a beautiful beach--this is Jana and I going for a stroll.
We had some fantastic adventures, like getting a parking ticket or being completely lost in Haifa and being turned away from the Bahai Gardens when we finally found them. Also, at an overlook on Mount Carmel the girls (Jana and Ruth) picked flowers while the boys (Steve, Ben, and Jordan) threw rocks at a stump. The rock-throwing thing became quite a habit. We camped on the beach just south of the Lebanese border--it was so beautiful! We had burnt noodles for dinner, and while we were sitting there in the dark, all of a sudden three police officers were standing around us asking if we had drugs. Luckily we didn't, so we were good to go. We had some good conversation around the fire, and Jordan (our resident astronomer--for real, like that's his major, along with Bible) gave us a tour of the night sky. It's a lot easier to see stars on the beach than in Jerusalem...
Big news! I got a very important phone call from my roommate Adria that night. She had gone along on the field study just for funsies, and when she got back and was unpacking, what did she find on the floor next to her bed? What, indeed?? It was Dog! He was all dead and flat and ugly-looking, and I think his tail was gone. But at least the mystery is solved! Well, kind of. We still have no idea how he got over there without leaving any trail--her bed is on the opposite side of the room from my desk where Dog's bowl was, and Dog was a very small fish. Also this fish was right next to her bed, and apparently was very good at camouflage or something. Anyway, at least we can have some closure now.
The second day we went to the Rosh HaNiqra, some amazing caves right at the border--I think this is also called the Ladder of Tyre. This was the view down the coast, looking south.
The water was this crazy intense color...
It was kind of damp that morning... I got to drive though! Lots of fun. I miss driving. We went to Akko and decided we didn't want to pay to go into any of the tourist spots, which were absolutely crawling with Israeli highschoolers. It seems like they never actually go to school--any time we go anywhere, there are always hordes of Israeli schoolkids out. This became much more apparent later in the trip, as we shall see. So we didn't pay for anything at Akko; instead, we just walked around the marina and had lunch looking out over the Mediterranean--so beautiful! After lunch, there was of course some throwing of rocks into the sea by the boys.
That afternoon, Jana and Jordan dropped off Steve and Ben and I at a bus stop near Merom where we were going to meet 5 others who had been on the field study. We had a bit of an adventure trying to find a supermarket in the rain--we asked several people by the side of the road, and finally one guy was like "Yes, I have a supermarket, I will show you"--and he bundled his kids into a car and took off down the hill! We followed him to a supermarket which had no produce, but it did have enough comestibles for us to stock up. We also got to use the toilet and fill up our water at the sink, which had lots of dishes all over it. Probably the first time I've ever used a public toilet that had a meat cleaver on the counter. Anyway, the three of us sat in the rain at the bus stop for a while.
After the torrential downpour stopped, Steve and Ben decided to throw rocks at each other across the road... I mean, what else would you do? Finally the other 5 arrived--Tim and Kristi Knipp, Shlomy, Craig, and Kyle. We hiked up a road just a little bit to a campground--it was going to be dark before too long, so we weren't going to go far--and ran into a group of people who were cooking massive amounts of food. We had no idea what was going on, but they waved us over and gave us hot soup. Of course we wouldn't say no to hot soup, so we stayed and chatted with them for a while, and found out that they were cooking for 700 Israeli highschoolers who were supposed to be camping there that night but had left because of the rain. Two things: First of all, I told you that Israeli kids never actually go to school! Second, thank God for the rain! We got to use their tents, which was really great; and the people gave us tons and tons of food--a bottle of oil, for instance. When would we use a bottle of oil on the trail?? We ended up giving most of it back, but we had their hamburgers and kebabs that night, and omelettes the next morning, and cornflakes and pita and veggies, all thanks to them. (And yes, I actually ate an omelette! It was only one egg, and mostly veggies, but still! I also ate peanut butter the day before, which I haven't eaten since Euroquest, which was 2004... I was a crazy woman!) We had a huge bonfire, even when it started raining again. It got super foggy, which was kind of fun. For a little while I thought our fire was just making a ton of smoke because the wood was all wet, and then I felt kind of stupid when I realized that it was fog. Oh well. I didn't sleep well that night, or the next night actually, because I didn't have a mat (stupid idea) so I was really, really cold. We were all very thankful for the tents though!
The next morning Kyle made us omelettes... we also got hot chocolate from the big group people. Unfortunately at that point all the 700 kids started showing up and heading off on their hike, which often meant tromping through our campsite or at the very least making a lot of noise. We didn't get going until almost 10:30 because the omelettes took quite a while, and we were all not in too much of a hurry. We kept hiking through groups of students, which was kind of a pain, but it was still a nice hike. We thought we were climbing Mount Merom, so we read Joshua 11 up at the top, about the waters of Merom, but then we realized that we had hiked Mount Meron, which is apparently different. Oops. Oh well...
Lunch break...
We tried to camp that night in the Wadi Ammud, which we were going to hike through down to the Kinneret (aka Sea of Galilee), but a park ranger man found us and said that we couldn't camp there because it was a nature preserve. We had to follow the millions of little children up to a campground. The man at first was trying to have us camp in this random patch of grass that was pretty much just a traffic island in front of the little store/toilet building, and then he showed us another spot that was not a campsite at all either, just a bunch of rocks; finally he took us to a nice big spot that was a parking lot but mostly grassed over, with some picnic tables and such, so we got a good deal by holding out. We shared a campfire with a couple of guys who had just gotten out of the IDF--one of them lives just across the valley from us! It's a small world. You meet a lot of cool people hiking the Shvil--that's the word for the Israel Trail, which goes from Dan in the north all the way down to Eilat in the south. It takes a month or two to hike, depending on how fast you go. I think that might be one of my goals--I'd really like to do some more hiking, and doing the entire Shvil is definitely on my list! Tim and Kristi have done some sweet hiking that really sparked my interest as well. For example, they got engaged on a hike in Nepal. Pretty rad. So if anyone wants to do some amazing hikes ever, I'm totally game.
The Wadi Ammud
Anyhow, we got going a little earlier the next morning, and didn't run into really any schoolchildren, even though the park man had told us there were supposed to be 22,000 kids out cleaning up the Shvil. Yikes yikes yikes! Anyway, that day of hiking was a little more intense--cutting across the wadi, climbing over boulders and stuff. I got a little banged up, and also broke a jar of spaghetti sauce inside my bag (which I was borrowing from a friend! Oops!) when I fell once. We made it to the road late that afternoon. Half of the group decided to hitch down to the lake, while the rest of us were going to walk it--another 5 or 6 kilometers. It was a beautiful beautiful hike, and we ran across a grain field! Where, of course, we got some pictures of a couple of the boys doing the Gladiator thing, and of me doing the Ruth-gleaning thing (read the book of Ruth--good stuff).
We finally made it down to the lake, and had a bad experience with a cranky campground man before we met up with the other half of the group, who had found a place to stay in this hayfield that was kind of these people's backyard.
It wasn't an official campground, but I think they have people stay there pretty often. They had some fantastic dogs, with adorable little puppies... makes me want a dog. Anyway, we had these low tables that we ate off of, while we all sat around on the ground--it felt like a crazy banquet, because we had these amazing noodles and the pot only makes enough for 2 at a time, so we just sat there eating for hours it felt like. Fun times. Tim gave me his mat for that night, and I slept in this shack thing with a bunch of the guys, and I had a Nalgene full of hot water for my feet and I was wearing every piece of clothing I brought, so I stayed nice and toasty warm all night! It was amazing. I slept so well. We got up to see the sunrise over the lake, which was beautiful, and then fell asleep again outside.
That morning we had decided not to hike, so we just lazed around for the morning--slept in, had some oatmeal and stuff for brekky, and then went for a swim (Kristi and I just put our feet in the water, but the guys went for a full dip) and walked down to the bus stop and caught a bus back to Jerusalem!
The three of us at the bus stop again... a fitting bookend to the trip, we thought.
It was a very uneventful day, but nice and relaxing. We got back to JUC in time for a lovely shower and then dinner... so nice! It was pretty much the best spring break ever, I think. There's a weekend coming up where the physical settings class will be gone on another field study, so we will have a 4-day weekend. I might try to do some more camping then, if I can convince other people to come with! We shall see. Anyway, it was fantastic, and now that I have finished this ridiculously long blog, I have to go do some work! I leave 5 weeks from today, and I have so much to do between now and then! But mark your calendars--I'll be back in the US soon, and I have a lot of catching up to do with a lot of people.
