Again, no time

Sorry, I still don't have time to write much. Easter was indeed wonderful and this week has been full of thought, work and a healthy dose of relaxation! I have just finished my Pastoral Assistant application for next fall and I registered for classes. For those who care: New Testament Studies: Paul; Colloquium: Cities; Colloquium: Sex, Death, and Politics Reading Genesis Philosophically (that needed the whole title); Speech; Interpersonal Relationship Skills; Biblical Theology of Peace and Justice; hopefully Chamber Singers; and guitar lessons.

Life is good here! Thanks for all those that wrote comments and for the emails and facebook stuff. I'm sad to have missed the reunion of friends in Corning over Easter, but Darrel gave out extra hugs so that helps a bit. We have a NCAA bracket battle going on over here too, so I am connected home in that way! We even get ESPN here at Afikim, so we did get to watch some games! Ok, no more time. I'm done.

Tomorrow is Easter!!

I am doing wonderfully well here at Kibbutz Afikim! I don't have time to write hardly anything before I get kicked off this computer, but I have to at least write something! We've been learning more Hebrew, working around the kibbutz and actually doing schoolwork for once. Tomorrow we are blessed to be able to have a sunrise service for Easter on the bank of the Jordan River! One of us will actually get baptized too! It'll be a great day! That's all for now!

Last day in Jerusalem

It's sad. In less than 3 hours we will be leaving Jerusalem for the rest of the semester. I hope to come back some day, but it won't be for a while and who knows how it'll be politically! I guess Tony Blair wants Palestine to declare independence right now as a first step to the peace process instead of waiting for peace first. I'm not sure what'll happen.



We are off to the Galilee for the next 2 weeks. We'll be living and working at Kibbutz Affikim, right on the Jordan river, about a mile south of the Sea of Galilee. I'm not sure what all that will entail, but I do know that in the next two weeks our projects and papers and presentations are all due. That'll be a lot of work, but it's all extremely interesting stuff!



Thanks for all the comments on my last blog! The mysterious event of Thursday night was our meeting with Mordecai Vanunu. He's the one who leaked Israel's nuclear secrets to the world. He has spent 18 years in prison, 12 of which were solitary confinement. He is currently restricted to Jerusalem and it is illigal for him to speak with foreigners. Oops. He loves speaking with foreigners! There could be problems from that, but he refuses to be quiet about what he has seen and experienced. I was blown away by his story! He's a great man in my opinion, but certainly very dangerous.



I'm not sure what all the comments about the pictures were of, but yeah, there were some really sweet rocks to climb! The cliffs at Qumran were especially fun! Paul Wirght, our guide just pointed at the cliffs and said "I'll meet you in the cave that looks like Ohio in 10 minutes." So we went!



A bunch of us were able to ascend to the Temple Mount this morning! The times are confusing because the mount is closed around the Muslim calls to prayer which happen many times a day. So I was up there for about 20 minutes. Unfortunately they wouldn't let any foreigners in the Dome of the Rock or Al-Aqsa Mosque. Still I got to see what this whole conflict is all about. In the midst of the massively crowded Old City of Jerusalem is a vast elevated expanse of open air with a few buildings and tons of stone. It's Mount Moriah, the Temple Mount, the mount of Muhammed's ride and ascention, the mount where the Messiah will return. Some even think it is the site of the Garden of Eden. Wow.



Yesterday was Palm Sunday! I went to East Jerusalem Baptist once more and then walked for hours and hours as part of the Jerusalem Palm Sunday processional. It started at Bethphage on the eastern side of the Mt of Olives and ended in the Old City at St. Anne's. Palm branches, olive branches, flag, banners, guitars, singing, clapping, dancing, praying, monks, nuns, bishops, priests, people from all over the world, languages like I have never heard! It was incredible! The unity of the Christian faith is impressive! It's a diversity that is completely foreign to Judaism and Islam. I'm proud to be a Christian!



On Friday we were given one assignment and all day to do it. We went to 4 sites in Jerusalem and read and reflected on the story of this week from Luke--The Upper Room, Gethsemane, the High Priest's house, and the Garden Tomb. I chose to go by myself and adored every minute! Passion week has never been that much of a big deal to me, but being here, living here, walking the streets, seeing the story, the whole thing has come alive! Jesus walked and taught and died and rose again right here! So amazing!



That evening we were spectators at the Western Wall as Jews from all sects brought in the Sabbath. It's difficult to explain, but I'm so very gald we could see that. Then for dinner we had a Christianized traditional sabbath meal. That also was amazing! If it happened every week I'm sure it would lose some uniqueness. Once in a while with friends and family is great though.



Last night, we had an EMU Palm Sunday service at the Basilica at Ecce Homo. It was powerful. Things didn't go as we planned them. Some of the songs weren't quite right and the order of service was a bit off, but God was there. The place and the day, what we'd all been through and where we're all going, brought us together. We had communion and allowed for a very long time of sharing. We celebrated Jesus' entry and looked ahead at the pain that is to come. The songs ended up meaning more to me than I had expected. It was great.



Ok, I really shouldn't write any more or I won't have anything to say when I get home! But I do have to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SISTER!! I know I'm a day early, but there won't be internet access on the kibbutz. I'll be thinking of you all day tomorrow! And I'll be praying for a fantastically wonderful, incredibly awesome day for you! Yay!

Now at Ecce Homo

Ecce Homo is a convent type thing (Sisters of Zion) in the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem. I almost feel like I could throw a stone onto the Temple Mount from the balcony! It would be more like 2 really good stone throws away, but the Dome of the Rock is so close. To make this story a sad one, I have to say that there is a chance that we won't be able to get onto the Temple Mount at all this semester. With the recent violence it is very difficult to get there, but our leaders are working on it. Maybe I could just jump from rooftop to rooftop and then climb the wall! Maybe not.

Thanks for all the updates people gave me! Snow would have been lovely for some of the really warm days last week, but now it has cooled down a bit. It's a bit sad to know I couldn't be home for Spring break to see my family and friends (and friends that live at my house like family!), but I guess since I'm here and since Darrel couldn't either then I'm ok. I can't wait to hear your stories, bro! And yes, "11 Minutes" totally is not my style. I'm a bit surprised I read it all, but in the end I'm glad I did.

This week has been mainly for studying Judaism, but we've done other things as well, like play Rook and Mafia and Euchre and Cranium. Yeah, we have been given some free time. It's usually lectures and/or field studies from 8:30am to 4:30pm, then free time until the next morning. A lot of free time was spent swapping stories from free travel or playing games. 2 nights ago, we were able to celebrate our leader's birthday! That was so much fun! Last night, Brent and I made a return trip to Sarriots and this time we brought 5 others with us. Laughs and games and food and music and Fawlty Towers for 4 hours meant we had to wake the night guard at Ecce Homo to let us back in. Oops.

Brent and my final days at Sarriots went well to say the least! It was an amazing way to spend the last 2 days of that week. On Sunday we even go to have a church service in the garden of their church and have a potluck afterwards! I loved it all! There was a very happy reunion as all 30 of the EMUers finally came back together again.

My favorite part of Ecce Homo is the layout. It seems random as layers have been added on top of others. So a lot of the hallways are open-air rooftops with many great views and there are a lot of sets of stairs. All the guys stay in two large connected rooms with "cubicles." Each one has a bed, desk, closet, lamp, and sink. Sound and light all run together and make it possible to know what everyone is doing even though everyone has their own space. It works for me!

We've had a plethora of lectures on all sorts of subjects: Hebrew, Jerusalem, historical Judaism, the Holocaust Museum (Yad Vashem), the history of Isreal from Israeli eyes, David's Tower, the current Jewish state, and Jewish religious customs. The speakers have had very interesting personalities! It is difficult to not be engrossed in what they have to say. I've learned quite a lot as some missing puzzle pieces have finally been revealed. I can't say what we are doing tonight because it has one of our leaders quite nervous about the ramifications. I think it'll be even more fascinating than the rest of the week has been!

I think that's about it. There are new pictures on the EMU website to check out. I'm in 7 of them and one of the captions actually mentions me by name! There's my proof; I am actually here in the Middle East!

Home in Jerusalem

I know this will never fully compare to home in Corning, but it is incredibly nice to feel at home here in Jerusalem! The Sarriots have been kind enough to allow Brent and I to crash at their home for a few days as we finish up our week of free travel. It's more than I could have dreamed of! I would have been content with a bed, food, and a shower, but they piled on a computer, TV, plenty of books and movies, excellent homecooked food, laundry, and great company with a full load of laughs! I couldn't ask for anything more!

Free travel technically started on the 1st, but I, and most of the other EMU students, stayed at JUC so it hardly counts. The first day of real free travel was the 2nd. On that day 16 of us found ourselves in Istanbul! Now, it was a bit more planned than that, but we were all still a bit shocked when we finally got there! Exiting Israel was a tad bit difficult, but entering Turkey was no problem.

We stayed at the Golden Age Hotel near Taksim Square in Istanbul, about a 45 minute walk (once we learned the way) to the old city sites. Besides walking a whole lot, I didn't really do too much in the city. This week was more for relaxation than for tourism. Still, I made sure to go to the Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, Archeological Museum, Grand Bazaar, and Spice Market.

Our first night in Istanbul provided a surprise! We could hear the sound for quite a distance, but no one could quite grasp what exactly we were hearing. Then we saw it! It was a gigantic football stadium, pounding as the fans cheered on their Basiktas team! We walked around 3/4 of the fence outside the stadium trying to get a peak in at the action, but were constantly pushed on by the hundreds of police officers lining the fence. (Funny thing: although we and dozens of other people couldn't watch the game through the fence, a lot of officers were ignoring the spectators and just watching the game through the fence. That must be a nice shift to have!)

On our second night 8 of us set out from our hotel to walk to Asia. After walking for 2 hours we had gone far enough to learn that walking across the bridge of the 2 contintents was actually illegal! Where's the fun in that? It wasn't a worthless trip though. We had a blast exploring the city and talking! The next day we took a ferry to Asia and had dinner there satisfying our bicontinental asperations.

Yesterday, we got up around 5:00am to catch our bus to the airport to fly back to Tel Aviv. Getting into Israel came with some difficulties, but in the end we all must have passed our short interrogations because we all made it in! It took a little work to find our hostel and it wasn't a real nice one, but it was right on the beach so the complaints were cut short. An afternoon on the beach for me meant the finishing of "Shadow of the Hegemon" for me. Overall, I'm not a huge fan of Tel Aviv. 10 of the EMU students are staying 2 more nights, but I feel much better in Jerusalem with Brent and the Sarriots.

So today was a day of travel. Bus to the Central Bus Station. Then bus to Jerusalem. Then taxi to the Aroma Cafe where Mrs. Sarriot picked us up to drive us to their home. After all that it was amazing to relax! I started reading "Eleven Minutes" by Paulo Coelho and watched 2 episodes of "Fawlty Towers" and "Gladiator" for the first time all the way through. I've also unlocked all the songs on my mp3 player that have been unplayable for the last 2 months because they were in a different format! Everything is going well here!!

How about some Spring break updates from home? Any good stories to tell?

The Sea of Galilee among other things

It's a good thing they don't put a limit on fun on this cross-cultural! I've had a pretty fantastic last 5 days! Just to get it out of the way, here is where I've been: Caerasea, Mt Carmel, Megiddo, Ein Gev, Hazor, Dan, Caesarea Phillipi, Golan Heights, Hippos, Kursi, Gamla, Capernaum, Mt of Beatitudes, Cliffs of Arbel, Nazareth, Mt Gilboa, Bet Shean, Old Testament Jericho, New Testament Jericho, and Gethsemane. Woah! It seems like a whole lot of traveling, but actually all this places are pretty close together. Most of those sites we hit on our 4 day trip up to the region of the Sea of Galilee.

I have no idea what of that to explain. I have over 50 pages written from those sites, but there's no way I'm typing it all. I'll pick a top 3 and if you want to here about another place just say so in a comment. No guarantees, but I do have some more free time these next few day that I could write more.

#3 Cliffs of Arbel. These are on the west side of the Sea of Galilee and are sheer cliffs with caves in the middle. I don't have numbers on the height, but when Herod tried to capture that area his soldiers could neither climb down of the caves nor climb up to them. So the soldiers were let down in baskets over the side and killed anyone who didn't surrender. Some that didn't surrender chose suicide instead. That seems to be a sad theme for a lot of the battles at these sites.

The bus dropped us off at the top of the cliffs and we all climbed down. For a little while there are just stairs, but then there's a place where stairs are even impossible. In that section they have a bunch of climbing staples and cables on the side of the cliff face. It was a tad bit dangerous to be sure, but no one died. 3 of us challenged ourselves to do it without hands. Turns out that's possible!

Unfortunately, the caves were receiving some sort of repair work so we couldn't climb the stairs to the large caves where the resistors lived. Instead we could climb up to the smaller, but still impressively large caves. Caves and cliffs are a good combination!

#2 Dan. By defaut I think I have to like this place, but even without the name I would still like it. Most of the ancient sites we visited had one main problem: water. Apparently water is important to survival or something like that. So people went through huge amounts of effort to secure a lasting water source for every city. Dan did not have that problem. Dan Spring is the largest spring in the Middle East and the largest supplier of the Sea of Galilee! We've seen all sorts of trickles or puddles or creeks called springs, but this was a full blown river! The sound was amazing as we walked along it. Running water is not a familiar sound here. The river also allows for all sorts of animal and plant life that we had never seen before. It seemed life a rainforest by comparison. We found a turtle and some lizards and some gorgeous flowers! It was a great little hike!

There were 2 significant buildings at Dan that our guide pointed out. The first was an arched gateway from long before Rome or Greece had any influence on the region. So the thought that Europeans invented the arch apparently isn't true. The second building was the temple built by Jeroboam in 1 Kings 12. It's an impressive ruin but not one of good news for the ancient Israelites. That was the beginning of the end for the Northern kingdom.

#1 Hippos. A lot of people thought we were crazy and it was entirely conceivable that we were, but I wouldn't take it back for the world! At 4:30am after a full day of travel and before another one, 7 of us got up to climb the decapolis city of Hippos. Our goal was to make it to the top of this mountain from our resort on the Sea by sunrise. We had to hustle if we wanted to make it! Some of you know that my Dad's side of the family is notorious for walking really fast. Well, I was with 6 other people that must be able to claim even quicker ancestry! I struggled to keep up! We all made it up in time though!

The city was beautiful! I suppose anything will be beautiful after a blistering 90 minute climb at 4:30 in the morning. The ruined city was all made out of dark basalt rock and the central road stretched much longer than any other Roman road I had seen! There were columns every where and I can only hope that the rock came from the top of the mountain and not the bottom. We walked through a seemingly random tunnel and rested as the sun poked above the mountains. Then we climbed all the way back down to start the real day. Yeah, that was excellent! I've certainly skipped a lot of details.

Alright, it's late. I have an exam tomorrow and then the JUC portion of this cross-cultural will be finished! Next on the schedule is free travel and I'll be heading over to Istanbul! The plane leaves on Sunday, so I get one more full day in Jerusalem before I leave.

By the way, I'm listening to the soundtrack to Spirit as I type all this. Thanks, bro! All sorts of random songs have been in my head, usually involving a random phrase from a scripture passage we read. Or from a VeggieTales movie, that happens a lot too. I finished "Three" last week some time and now I'm reading "Shadow of the Hegemon," part of the "Ender's Game" collection. That's all for now.

Well, it's been yet another fabulous day! I woke up in Arad at, what I'm told, will be the poshest hostel I will ever experience. It was great! After a few too many days without a warm shower, that was just what I needed!

We've been all over the land of Judah these last 3 days. None of the ancient sites are inhabited today, but the locations of the sites are still well known today. Everyone seemed to have the same idea for centuries! One civilization would build a city at a strategic location and then eventaully it would be destroyed. When the next people come along, the location was still strategic so they build right on top of the destroyed city using what remains they could. Now all that's left is a tell, an artificial hill filled with ruins from the past millenia! Those are the sites we visited.

Not many of them were fully excavated, in fact some seem to have been barely touched. There's not much money to be made in archeology here anymore. Any thing of value was kept with the most current surface generation and enough digging has been done to know pretty much exactly what is under every tell. Why spend the man power to discover nothing new? The ones that were excavated looked a lot alike with small differences. Gezer has a 6 chamber gate that Solomon would have built when the city, as well as a daughter, was given by Pharoah. Lachish has a seige ramp built up by Sanacarib when he attacked Judah during Hezekiah's reign. Azekah had a group of Israelis acting out the story of David and Goliath. That was pretty funny! Beth Shemesh had a cistern we could climb down into. Arad had a mysterious temple with 2 deities, Yahweh and his Ashorah.

Beersheva was a bit different. This site had been completely excavated so that the entire ancient city could easily be seen. Sure the walls had fallen down, but the overall layout of the town was easy to see from the nearby tower. Some walls had been built up a bit higher to give even more of a feel for the ancient homes. Here they also found a horned alter, while there was only supposed to be one in Jerusalem. That's odd and archeologist still don't really have an answer.

We explored the land of the tribe of Benjamin on Thursday. Mt Scopus; Nabi Samwil, from here we could see Gibeah, Gibeon, Ramah, and a few other Biblical cities; Gezer; Beth Shemesh, where we could see Zorah; and, Azekah, here we could see Gath. At Beth Shemesh we heard the story of Samson and could see exactly where it happened. Azekah was where the Isreali group so kindly acted out the story for us, but we could see the Sorek valley where David and Goliath would have faced off. Also at Azekah we had the chance to climb in some caves. Unfortunately it was too muddy, well, too muddy for most of us. I explored the dry caves and I can only hope that the pictures of the 2 bravest souls gets on the EMU website.

On Friday our trip headed south. Lachish was the "toaster" for Israel as it needed one more thing to stand on to reach the cookie jar on the top shelf. From there the coastal plains, Egypt and Jordan were accesible. Beersheva I already mentioned. Arad was the strangest with its polytheistic (bitheistic?) temple and wall well larger than the population center. Then we saw an erosion crater called the "Big Crater." It was quite impressive and quite expansive! We were able to climb around there a little bit. Then we headed to the modern day Arad for the night.

4 stops today before getting back to JUC. First, Masada, Herod the Great's rediculous palace. Second, En Gedi, the coast of the Dead Sea. Third, Wadi David, a gorgeous nature preserve! And last, Qumran, the site of the Dead Sea Scrolls. At Masada, Aaron and I set an EMU record for accending the 400 foot high cliff path at 4 minutes 8 seconds! To us it doesn't matter that there was no previous record to break. We get to hold the record for at least 2 years anyway! Wadi David had a whole lot of waterfalls and ibexes and conies to watch. Ibexes with massive horns scampering up cliff faces is quite the sight to see! We had fun climbing to a nonimportant cave at Qumran where Paul Wright, the director of JUC gave us a lecture. Oh yeah, I should have mentioned that. Cindy, our normal professor, had lost her voice on Tuesday, was back with us for Wednesday and Thursday, but then couldn't speak again on Friday so Paul came with us on our 2 day trip.

Now we are back on Mt Zion! Tonight I studied for our exam tomorrow and filled up my journal from Rachel! Thanks, Rachel! On to journal number 2! Alright, it's 1:09am here. Time for bed.