Laundry, Field Trip, and Thunder

The first picture is at the Tel at Jericho. The second one is overlooking the Judean Wilderness.


So just a quick funny note about how so much of my life is intertwined... this morning I had a quick 5-10 minute break in my Old Testament class. So I decided to might as well make it productive, so I ran down four flights of stairs and took my laundry out of the dryer, and back to my room. How many people can say that they took their laundry out during their short class break? I just thought it was really funny.
Well onto more exciting things... early this week we went on a field trip to see Jericho and a couple other sites. We first went to a monastery that is on the Mount of Temptation. It was somewhere near this sight that they believe Jesus was tempted by Satan. And in the monastery they even had a rock that was the rock Satan told Jesus to turn into bread. :) I love how everyone makes claims here like that all the time. Sometimes you just have to chuckle. Anyway at the monastery it overlooked ancient Jericho, which is being excavated, as well as modern day Jericho. To overlook Jericho we went on a little balcony at the monastery on the mountain, and even our professors said that they weren't sure how much weight the balcony could hold. Luckily we had no tragic deaths falling off the Mount of Temptation. After the monastery we went to the Tel of Jericho, where they are excavating ancient Jericho. It was neat because they are excavating remains that are 8,000 years old! Probably my favorite spot we visited that day was overlooking the Judean Wilderness. They told us that it was the spot where they took the picture in the Bible. I never knew a wilderness could be so beautiful!
So with that field trip our professors told us that one of the most amazing parts was the weather we had. It was raining the day that we went, and our professor told us that he had never seen rain in that part of the country. So the hike up the monastery was kind of slippery because they don't plan on it ever really raining. They also told us that was the coldest they've ever seen it in the Judean Wilderness too. I don't think we got the full effect of what it would be like to be stuck in the wilderness because we weren't experiencing the scourching heat.
The weather has actually been amazing since I got here! The first week and a half we were here the weather was like the perfect temperature, mid 70's or so. It definitely did not feel like January, and we all kind of forgot that Christmas happened less than a month ago. Since then it's cooled down a little bit, but it's still been nice. Probably more like 50 and 60 degree weather. They tell us that this is the rainy season, and we've begun to see that. They're in a drought right now, so it hasn't rained that much, but it is often drizzling lightly. Except for the other day... their was a huge storm! Someone native to the Holy Land told us that it was the worst rain storm that they had seen in a couple decades. It was thundering and lightening like crazy too! At one point it was so close and so loud the huge windows in the center started to shake. I also heard that the rainstorm caused a lot of flooding in the Middle East. Luckily that day none of us were out in the city, so we got to enjoy the big rainstorm from inside.
Another neat thing we did this week as attend a Lutheran service on Sunday. It was kind of neat to go to a sunday service in a church in the middle of the old city. The people were all very kind and welcoming. The funny part was that they had all the visitors stand up and introduce themselves. There were probably at least 100 visitors, and only like 15 members of their congregation.
Today when I went out to the city we have a group of five 14-15 year old boys follow us half the way there. I most definitely had a 15 year old boy trying to hit on me. I was just glad that he was only 15. :) One thing that has been surprising is how much the kids just run around here. It isn't uncommon to see a little kid running around the old city by themselves. Also it's really sad to see how young they begin smoking. As we came back to the center there was a boy that was probably about 9 or 10 smoking on the steps of the center. It's really really sad.
So I need to get over to Hebrew University more often so I can upload pictures, because I know that's more exciting than writing. So I'll definitely work on that, but it probably won't be for at least a week and a half.