Some photos...

Since I had so many photos and I was having a hard time deciding which ones should go up, I'm going to do this is stages. I'll start off with a bit of an over view. Galilee is located in the north of Israel. It's very hilly and mountainous with a teeny little coast line. It's split into Upper, Lower, and West Galilee by mountains and the Quishon River. Um...here's a website with a bit more info: Galilee.

I'll start by showing you the overviews we saw throughout various times on the trip, so you get an idea of what is looks like.

Mountainous, is about the best word to describe it.

Look! The Sea of Galilee!!!

Mountains and valleys...

Also green.

Here you can see Haifa and the Mediterranean Sea behind it.

Haha, they have a nuclear power plant up there.

Look at the clouds. That's what fascinated me the most. The weather was absolutely perfect. Warm, not hot, breezy, cloudy.

We also made a stop to Mt. Carmel to a Carmelite Convent that had a fantastic view of the valley and mountains. Here's the Jezreel Valeey.

Farms, clouds...

There was like a map pointing out all the various locations around the Middle East.



Here's the convent...

This is a statue of the prophe Elijah killing the prophets of Baal. The convent is placed on the spot thought to be where Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal to call fire from their god (Baal) to send up the sacrificial calf. When nothing happened, Elijah poured water over the entire altar, soaking everything. Then he charged God to light it aflame. When the sacrifice went up in flames, Elijah and his men killed all the prophets of Baal.

That pretty much says what I just said except in Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew...

There was a triptect of the story...

Of course, no Catholic shrine is complete without a sanctuary to Mary.

And the full view of the convent.

Ok, now that it's taken me like an hour to do this, I'm going to stop here. I'll try to get more pictures up later. For now I should probably go through my notes and make sure everything is going to plan and figure out what I'll be doing this week. We have many many new volunteers so after getting settled with the people we have already, we need to refigure logistics. Until laters, with more photos...

Mom, Dad: Take this list down...

Things I want to eat upon returning to the USA:

• Big hunk of steak
• Pork chops
• Powdered donut holes
• Doritoz

That's all I have so far. I've eaten so many olives and the food is just naturally so salty that I have mega chocolate cravings in between meals. They've been satiated with regular trips to the market for dark chocolate bars, Riesens, chocolate pudding, and chocolate chip cookies. haha. I've never had so much juice in my life, and I love it. Each week Lesley, Marcella, and I guzzle down about 3 litres of juice a week, plus the "Jump Juice" we have for second breakfast every morning on the Tel.

Yesterday Lesley, Marcella, and I joined Jason, Jessica, Eric, and Byron for a tour of the parts of Galilee you don't get to see on the study tour with Gezer. Dennis was our tour guide. He hadn't been up to many of those sites in nearly 10 years, and Israel has had major highway construction since then, even in just the past 2 years. Needless to say, it was quite an adventure. We had an absolute blast. As soon as I go through all 239 photos and limit them down quite a lot I'll put them up. I also have to check in my travel journal I took with me for all the info we got about all 8 stops we made. haha.

It was a full day. We met in the dig house for breakfast at 5am, were on the road by 5:30, and had already made 4 stops by noon. We slowed down quite a bit after lunch, due to exceptionally large schawarmas we scarfed down. haha. We had a few more stops in the afternoon and stopped at Abu Gosh for dinner at a delicious Lebanese restaurant. I had chicken shishlik, which is what we would call shish-kabob. Funny, but kabob in the restaurant was hunks of beef on a skewer. I'm guessing, then, that we get shish-kebob from the Lebanese. There weren't any veggies on the skewer, but there was a huge plate of rice with lentils and flavored with saffron and covered in onions with a fried tomato. mmm...thank God I couldn't eat it all and have leftovers I can eat today. We got back at 9:30 and we were all completely exhausted. I was asleep the instant my head hit the pillow, despite the noise outside from the graduation celebration for the elementary kids from the community school. We didn't get up until 9. haha.

Ok, well, I'm hoping to get the pictures up later today. I will go through them right now. :)

Sorry, the photos are a little out of order...

Ok, for some reason all of this is coming out really messed up and it's too difficult to try and get this all in a good order, so I'm going to leave them out of order a bit. First up are the pictures from our day trip to Jerusalem.

Nuts, you can't really see it, but this is a part of the "Ramparts Walk" Marcella, Lesley and I took. It's a walk around the outer wall of the Old City. We went from Jaffa Gate and got off at Herod's Gate. On the little map in the picture, that begins at the bottom left corner, goes around clockwise, and stops at about the top left corner. It took us about an hour. It was a beautiful walk, very breezy.

So, they're called "ramparts" because they're the fortifications! This is an arrow slit! I don't remember what their real name is called, but this is where they shoot arrows from. They're real tiny like this so the attackers can't shoot arrows back at the shooter inside the wall.

People also live on the roof of their house because it's the coolest part of the house. This family has lots of picnic tables! haha.

View of New City from one of the breaks in the ramparts. Notice the mini-skyscrapers.

Lesley pretending to shoot arrows from the arrow slit...

There was a Franciscan monastery along the inside of the wall! Yay for monks! haha.

It grew really narrow at this part. The hill in the background is the Mt. of Olives.

Some roof tops.

The German Colony!!! Notice the windmill...hahaha.

Some kind of Crusader church. You can't see the flags, but it's the Crusader cross with a smaller one in each corner.

A fully restored part, I assume. I guess some, if not all, was originally full of doorways?

A LIME TREE! Look, Stuart, it might be Limey's cousin! hahaha.

The Mount of Olives again with a view of the golden dome of the mosque on the Temple Mount.

Um...I forget what that tower is...nuts...

Pretty garden on the rooftop of some house...

Neat designs on the wall hiding someone's rooftop so that tourists can't take a look at them. The house must use the the inner rampart as a wall of their house. We could actually hear them on the roof talking.

Then we got a really nice part with a little garden.

Then we saw a huge set of deep and steep stairs. We didn't like it much.

There was also a cemetery...

Here is the lead dome of the Holy Sepulcre church among the mish-mash of houses in Old City. I believe the tower to the left of it is the bell tower for the Lutheran church we were hoping to go to services to. Unfortunately, we were a little late entering the city because of the traffic, so we missed services.

View of the Temple Mount and some more houses...

And for those of you who may wonder, yes indeed, they have satellite TV in Israel! haha. There's also a black thing which is how they get their water. There's no plumbing in most of Old City, so they fill huge containers to get their water.

The Garden of Gethsemene...Gesthemene...don't remember how to spell it. It used to look like a skull...

We met back up at the Albright Institute to go out for lunch. It's a part of the American School of Oriental Research (ASOR)!!! I was only inside it once - and it was the library! Ghassan showed it to me. It was so cool!!!!

Here's what the courtyard looks like. It's very nice.

We did not eat at McDonalds, though I have yet to actually eat there. I've eaten Italian McDonald's fries when in Venice and I've have a German cheeseburger while in Bamberg. They tasted exactly the same. I must try the kosher stuff...hahaha.

We did, however, eat at the only non-kosher pizza place in Jerusalem. IT WAS DELICIOUS! The McDonald's, for anyone who may ever go to Jerusalem, is right off Ben Yahuda St. somewhere. I don't know the actual name of the street. The rest of my Jerusalem pictures take place in the same alley way of shops off this street.

There's at least two Irish Pubs I've seen.

Um, and for some reason this truck had the Michelin man/Marshmellow guy from Ghost Busters on it.

Immediately behind it was a Mentos truck?! It was weird, like a mini parade. hahaha.

And a really creepy mannequin hiding behind a sheet of a closed shop...

Now on to some digging pictures!

I have no idea who took this photo...it must have been Savanna or Kelly. Notice my orange shorts! This was taken last Friday. See the cramped space that is in the silo we're excavating. Lin is the supervisor in the blue shirt who has become my mentor. She helps me a LOT. In the silo with me is a fellow Lyco-ite Valerie.

Kelly. She was so excited I let her and Valerie take out a vessel from the silo.

Valerie...

A view of the hills from the Tel. There's a distinct line where the green stops and becomes very brown.

Steve giving us our Friday Tel Tour. We all go around after fruit break to see the progress made in the other fields. It's been amazing how much the site has changed from day to day. We've really been making A LOT of progress so far this year.

Sunset from our balcony...

And that's it! Tomorrow Lesley, Marcella and I are joining Eric, Dennis, Jason, Jessica, and Byron for a tour of West Galilee!!! I'm so excited! I hope that also means swimming! We're leaving bright and early at 5am and won't be back for dinner. Tonight we're going to watch Shawn of the Dead! hahaha. Tomorrow night we might watch Princess Bride. It's become a fun weekend thing to do in the dig house.