three girls & a camel

Today was another field trip day! You know, I really don't quite feel like I am in school to tell you the truth. My teacher will teach me, then also be my church leader, eat dinner with us, take us around Israel, class is never the same time or even same day, I am constantly with 80 of the coolest people. It is just great great great!

Anyway, people aren't really allowed to go into the West Bank. But today, we went into the West Bank...no big deal. We had to go past this check point with armed guards and they could technically use their arbitrary power to let us in or not. Luckily, they let us in! Robert's grandparents were on the bus with us and didn't have their passports, so it is lucky they didn't want to check us going back into Jerusalem, or it would have been a big problemo.

1st stop: Inn dedicated to the Good Samaritan. There were a lot of cool Mosaics from the Byzantine era. There was a sign that said, "No Photography." I took pictures anyway. One of the students pointed out that I was breaking the rules. But everyone else was doing it.....

2nd stop: ok I actually get a little confused as to the stopping order, so this are not necessarily in the right order. But another stop was JERICHO! As in "Joshua fought the battle of Jericho!" We saw part of the uncovered ruins of the wall. There is also this tower there that is the oldest found man-made structure in the world! It is dated back to Neolithic times. (no relation to Joshua, it just happens to be right next to it.) It was uncovered by Kathleen Kenyon. She also uncovered the ruins of the wall from the battle of Jericho, which were dated from a different time than the Battle in the Bible. She was trying to refute the story, but it was later discovered that that wall was older than the time of Joshua, but it was still around when Joshua came along and it was therefore the same wall that was knocked over. Moral of the story: the church is still true.

This is Alyssa and one of my cute roommates, Bekah. She is from Maryland, and I just love her! Oh, and we aren't being bad students with our headphones - we have to use them so that we can wander around and look at things while our teacher is talking to us.

These were the mosaics we weren't allowed to take pictures of. Worth it? absolutely.

This is Jake Steel. Doesn't his name sound like a superhero? He is trying to grow a full on mustache because his girlfriend and mom won't let him have one at home. I'll keep you updated on how that goes.

Another stop was to see King Herod's winter palace. It was really cool! He was such a horrible person though! He knew he was dying, so he had his priests go and get all of the Jewish leaders to be killed so that there would be mourning at his death, because he knew everyone would be happy he was gone. It makes you think about how you will be remembered when you are gone. Hopefully in a good way! Just keep being nice! Apparently a lot of the wealthy people from Jerusalem would come down to Jericho during the winter to get away from the 'cold.' And when I say down, I really mean it. Jericho is 850 meters below sea level. Of course, when we passed the sign informing us of our elevation status, we sang "Under the Sea."

My favorite stop was to see the road that leads from Jerusalem to Jericho. It is where the Savior would have walked from on his way back to Jerusalem after his meal with his friends Lazarus and Mary and Martha back for the last week of his life. It is a long road. My teacher wanted us to think about what the Savior would have been thinking about on this long walk by himself, knowing full well what was ahead of Him.

This is where the parable of the good Samaritan would have occured.

This is Andrew. He is my favorite. Hence, there are going to be lots of pictures of the two of us. We already decided that, so just be ready. Let me describe Andrew to you by a question asked by Amy. "Andrew, did you serve your mission in CandyLand? Because I could totally see you going there." Don't worry - he didn't actually serve in CandyLand. Nonetheless, he is still wonderful!

There were so many of these little Bedowin homes. It is amazing to see how people can live so different than I. I was born in America for a reason; there is no way I could survive living in this heat. I hardly lasted the 5 hours today - everyone was drenched and smelly and icky. not fun.

This is Andrew, Brandt & I at a tree similar to the one Zacharias (spelling?) climbed to see the Savior before the Savior came over to Zacharias's house that evening.

Betcha didn't realize how cute Alyssa and I are. Also I betcha you are surprised at the fact that I now care so little about what I look like that I actually posted this picture! ps notice Talia and Bekah in the back.

Oh I just thought of a story that is completely unrelated to anything I have been talking about: The other day when we were going to the Western Wall, one of our teacher's three-year-old sons was not wanting to walk. He is cute, so naturally I wanted to give him a ride on my shoulders. What can I say? I miss Jane. There were a lot of trees that were really close to my head. So I would say "Oh my goodness Jacob! DUCK!" we would both duck and run and he would laugh and laugh and laugh. Finally after about 10 minutes of this, he said in between giggles, "Lizzy, I don't see any ducks anywhere!" Oh how I miss little kids!

Well I feel like that is quite enough blogging for me for today!