Anyhow, this post is really supposed to be about my parents' visit. It was very good, I really enjoyed being able to show them around what is my world right now. I had planned out a few days of our trip for my final project in my Physical Settings class (that's the class that I did all the traveling for last semester), so I was able to amaze them with my brilliance and all I've learned... of course. :) Actually, we had to cut out a good portion of that part of their visit because I was stuck in Atlanta for so long. For another part of the trip, my friend John was traveling with us as a tour guide. He's a grad student here at JUC and knows a lot, so I was able to learn as well, and it was really nice to not have to know about every place that we went. It's hard work! But my parents really enjoyed being here as well--from what my mom said, it was very different from what she was expecting. I think a lot of people don't expect Israel to be a Western country. It really is, in a lot of respects. Of course, in a lot of other respects, it's definitely the Middle East. But there's enough of the West here to be a bit of a surprise.
I will put some pictures up, but there are so many I definitely won't be able to get the full picture, just a little taste of their visit. The first few days are covered in my previous post, so I'll start with our trip to the Negev!
We went to Masada--this is looking out towards the Dead Sea from the top of Masada. Masada means fortress--check out Psalm 62.
My mom and I showing off the Herodian facades at Masada... Herod the Great, late 1st century BC...BCE... whichever you prefer... He was really good at making really grand stuff, and if it wasn't so grand, he was really good at making it look really grand!
This is the waterfall we hiked to at En Gedi. We talked about some of David's psalms there, like Psalm 42 and Psalm 63.
Looking over the Dead Sea--this is the sea that's talked about in Ezekiel 47:1-12.
My mom and I in front of the Kotel-- the Western Wall, what is sometimes called the Wailing Wall (not by people here).
At Tell Dan, the headwaters of the Jordan River. We hiked around there and got to drink straight from one of the springs! I also climbed up into a hollow tree that's actually called "Winnie the Pooh Tree." In Israel-who knew??
We found a Roman bridge at Caesarea Philippi.
This is Tell Hazor (pronounced hot-sore), which is one of my favorite tells. Hazor was a really important Canaanite city (Joshua 11).
Reading Ruth 4 (which involves city gates) at the city gates of Tell Dan. That's not where this happened, but the city gates thing is a cool visual. Plus my name is Ruth.
At the fish restaurant at the kibbutz where we stayed on the Sea of Galilee, aka the Kinneret. Mom and Dad had what is called St Peter's Fish (probably for the benefit of the tourists)--it's telapia really. It's called St Peter's Fish probably based on the story in Matthew 17:24-27.
We tried to watch the sun rise over the lake from the cliffs of Arbel, which I climbed up and down in a previous trip. (If you remember pictures of people scaling cliffs, that was here.) Unfortunately, it was really foggy and there wasn't much of a sunrise. It was cool anyway, just not sunrise-y. I'd like to go back someday and see a real sunrise there--I'm sure it would be spectacular.
So I threw a toothpick into this hole at Beth Shean when I was there several months ago with my class, and it was still there! We have evidence, it made me really happy!
Also making me happy--on the top of the tell were some Egyptians ruins, and a copy of this stele (a big stone thing with hieroglyphs, basically... I don't even know the true definition of the word "stele"--pronounced "stella") which had my favorite hieroglyph--the duck! How fun!
Speaking of ducks, we saw "cattle egrets"-???? Is this a real thing? I'm still not sure. But that's what my friend John, who was our tour guide, said. We saw cows with these little white birds following them around. It was really funny looking, that's for sure! There's a bird in this picture, but it's kind of hard to see...
Happy family! This is us in a very muddy forest, where we had a picnic one of our last days.
Just for the record, yes, I am wearing the same thing in every single picture. It was cold, and so I wore my fleece and my vest over whatever else I was wearing, every single day. Although it's not as cold as I was expecting--we were expecting cold and rain, which would be normal for this time of year. It is chilly, although not as cold as usual, but there hasn't been much rain this year. It's starting to be a problem, actually, although from a traveler's point of view, it was nice to not have rain! So that was my parents' visit. It was good, they are home safely now, and I have 2 weeks until school starts. (By the way, after my parents left from Tel Aviv, John and I went to IKEA before taking the rental car back to Jerusalem. How exciting is that?? I didn't get a picture though, I forgot. Guess I'll have to go back! That would be fine--I love IKEA! I got a floor lamp and a super cute mini-tree plant. Matt and Alli, I thought of you guys. Let's go to IKEA when I get back to MN, ok?) If I decide to do anything else super exciting during my break, I'll keep y'all updated!
