Scheherazade: Pictures! (Last time)

K, there are a LOT of them, so I hope that makes up, at least a little, for the imminent demise of my blog.

This is the Separation wall. Not a nice sight.

The Palestinian side of the wall.

All of us watching the BYU game (that we lost...). You can tell how into it I am. I was, however, NOT allowed to be on the internet, as we were streaming it from ESPN.com. Lol.

The Church of the Nativity.

The actual spot where Christ was born, supposedly.

The really pretty Catholic church next door (also commemorates the Nativity).

The Mosque of the Nativity across the street. Hey, Muslims believe in Jesus having a miraculous birth, too. Just different than our version.

My little mother of pearl nativity that I got in Bethlehem. :) I couldn't afford anything bigger, but I love it.

Ammunition Hill- it's like one of the main battle sites of the 6 Day War in 1967.

Trenches at Ammunition Hill.

Sheep herding at Neot Kedumim! I'm in kind of the middle, near the flag.

An authentic Torah scroll. I think that guy you can't see behind it made it there at Neot Kedumim.

A watchtower on a hill, like in the parables. Cool.

Sweet waterwheel thing.

Caesarea Maritima. You can see the ruins of where King Agrippa was *almost* persuaded to be a Christian.

The more natural side of Maritima.

This whole beach was just millions of tiny seashells. Not even sand, really.

I wish I could say I found this. But I didn't. But it was found, on the beach, by Kim Wilson. Jealous.

K, so this is the valley where all the nations of the world will gather against Israel at the 2nd Coming. Pretty sweet. It's the Jezreel Valley, as seen from the top of Megiddo (aka Armageddon).

The sweet Israelite altar at Megiddo.

The Church of the Annunciation (where Gabriel came and told Mary she was pregnant) in Nazareth.

The view out my window in Galilee. No big deal, just INCREDIBLE.

The front of the boat that we sailed across the Sea of Galilee.

The whole of that boat... Lol, no. This is a boat that dates back pretty much to the time of Christ.

The Church of the Beatitudes. So this is supposed to be the site of the Sermon on the Mount.

They had all the Beatitudes in stained glass like this around the church. It was way fun figuring them out, I'm still kinda sad that almost no one took my little challenge...

K, this is at the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes (a mouthful, yes). And as we were outside talking about it, this random dog jumped in the fountain... We're not really even sure where it came from.

This is the fish pond they had at said church (loaves and fishes, get it?). It was pretty sweet.

The famous mosaic. I got a magnet with this on it. It says "Sea of Galilee." It's rockin. You know.

St. Peter's Primacy, where Christ came to the apostles and told Peter to "Feed my sheep."

I could totally just imagine Christ standing on this beach, calling to the Apostles. Awesome? Yes.

The 4th century Christian synagogue (yep) at Capernaum.

It's built on the remains of a 1st century one made of black basalt, which you can kind of see here.

HAHA! You got to admit, this was clever. This is where we stopped to talk about the swines that ran off a cliff after the devils went into them. Ryan, on the left, came up with this idea.

My new boyfriend... :P But seriously, I totally ate that! After I kissed it... And it was pretty good fish, too.

This is Gamla.

And the waterfall we hiked to at Gamla.

Qazrin. The Talmudic village.

This is the view from the Galilee Branch house. It was a little bit AMAZING.

The other baptismal site. It's prettier than the one in Jordan, but less likely. This is where people come to get baptized in the Jordan River, tho. They gave us a handout that looked like that scene in "O Brother Where Art Thou." But like, one of Bro. Huff's kids got baptized here.

Hehe.

Mt. Tabor. Aka the Mount of Transfiguration.

The view from Mt. Tabor.

The Church at Nain, where the Savior raised a widow's son from the dead.

K, so apparently there would have been hot tubs sitting on top of these things. This is at Beth Shean, btw. Pretty trippy.

Beth Shean. Pretty cool place. Lot like Jerash, but not as big.

K, so Time Magazine dubbed this the most beautiful place in Israel. It's called Gan Hashelosha.

That was totally a cave that you could swim into. It wasn't very deep, but it was cool.

Above the waterfall (below).

We totally stood under this and it felt really good. You kinda had to hold onto your swimsuit tho... Oh, and the water was warm.

Check out how clear this water is! You can totally see all the fish and this was from like 10 feet away!

Sunset over Galilee. No big deal. :)

This is Caesarea Phillippi. (Not to be confused with Maritima...) This is where Christ said, "Upon this rock will I build my church."

The Banias waterfall. It's one of the main sources of the Jordan River.

The border with Lebanon! We didn't get to go, but we did see it! Lol.

This is a Canaanite era gate that dates back to about Abraham or so.

Nimrod's castle. It's like an old crusader fortress.

From the inside (there was actually a lot more of it, but this was the coolest pic I have).

The freaking VIEW!!

Syria. :)

Another crusader castle. In Akko, this time.

The only mosque you will ever see that is this decorative on the inside.

The harbor at Akko. I mean, not the whole harbor, obviously. The coolest looking part...

Freaking awesome mosaic at Sepphoris (aka Zipporah, I don't remember what I called it).

The tomb of one of the missionaries at Haifa.

The grave marker from farther away.

Some embassy in Haifa. We only just drove by it. But the bus driver did go around the roundabout twice so that we could get pictures, lol.

Statue of Elijah at the top of Mt. Carmel. I dunno if I told about how we got stuck up there... Well, we did, coz a whole bunch of other buses were blocking the road by the time we wanted to leave. We were stuck for like an hour.

Me and JJ *asleep* in the back of the bus on the way to Eilat. Best. Bus ride. Ever. LOL.

Eilat. This is where we went snorkeling. Check out the mountains right on the other side of the gulf!

Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Palm Sunday (where I almost fainted).

Our group getting ready to join the procession on Palm Sunday. :D

It was a long procession. Lotsa people. It was awesome.

Dude. I totally took this picture. And honestly, I can't believe it turned out so freaking AWESOME because I totally had to hold the camera up over my head to get it. Ya, I rock. :D

So about 2/3 of the way through the procession (our group had been systematically splintering up to this point) I realized that I would need to make sure I had at least 2 other people to get back to the Center with... So I grabbed these three (the girl poking her head through wasn't part of our group) and said, "Hey let's stick together." And then we actually met up with everybody at St. Anne's at the end but we still wanted a picture.

This is that absolutely gorgeous church at the Franciscan monastery. The picture does it completely no justice whatsoever.

The door where Orson Hyde scratched his name. :D

K, so this is the Herodion. The top, anyway. From the bottom it kinda looks like a volcano... The bus never stops in a good place to get pictures of these places from the bottom.

These are the pretty cool stairs leading to the cistern on the inside. Like, these are kind of impressive, for how old they are. Herod may have been a bad dude, but he knew how to build things.

The procession of the cross that we just barely missed (most of it) on Good Friday.

The Garden Tomb. At sunrise. On Easter. Seriously.

And me. Coz I was there. :)

K, so this is me and Steph playing the bells later that day. This wasn't while we were actually playing, but it's a pretty accurate reenactment of the consternation I personally was feeling... It was scary. I kinda sucked.

And that's the YMCA tower where the bells are.

The view from Masada. The haze in the background is the Dead Sea.

Part of Herod's palace- well, one of them, I think there were about 3 on top of Masada.

The Dead Sea! Dude, this place is so trippy! I wrote a paper on Jerusalem at the Second Coming a few days after this, and one of the signs is that the waters of the Dead Sea will be healed and I was like, "What a shame!" coz it is a way fun place. Lol.

And this is the salt deposits on the floor of the sea.

Dead Sea mud! The point of this pic is that I'm darker than Kara for once in my life, because I used the black mud and she used the gray mud (she's Hawaiian...). You can't see the difference as much in the photo, sorry...

Ein Gedi. It's just this random waterfall in the middle of the desert. And that's not it, really, you have to hike up further.

This is the waterfall at the top. You will notice I am also sporting my lovely Jerusalem sandals there.

This is Cave #4 at Qumran, where they found the Dead Sea scrolls.

And one of the scrolls. It might be a replica...

Talent Show!!! K, so this was our opening MC skit. Josh and I did the actions (we were on a *safari*) and the real MCs did our voices. It was pretty fun.

The Luxor-motion.

I Won't Say I'm In Love!!! Best skit ever!!!!

Hehe, this is me in everyone's clothes. I didn't end up with any good pix from the actual skit, so we took some after. That's Chelsea's hat, Kara's jacket, Eliza's skirt, and Heidi's shoes. Holy crap, it felt SO GOOD to be in real heels again!!! That was the best part. :D

Ken and me on our date!!!! Hahahaha! Best awkward date ever.

K, so this was our Triclinium fireside. They had all the guys come up and demonstrate the seating arrangement. You can kinda see how "leaning on Jesus' breast" would be totally not even weird. Like, just imagine JJ, in the middle there, leaning back. Totally normal.

Twilight and Harry Potter in Hebrew!!! Hahaha.

Me emerging from Lazarus' tomb. Except that's like the very most underground part. There's still a whole other stairway to climb up. This guy was pretty seriously interred.

The Lord's Prayer in Aramaic and Hebrew at Pater Noster.

Steph and I looking out over Jerusalem at Dominus Flevit.

Dormition Abbey. Which I never got to go inside, dang it! I was misled, because I thought that's what we were going to do on our last week field trip, but apparently not...

The Upper Room, where the Last Supper would have been. At least, about 6 meters above where it would have been...

Quiet reflection time at Gethsemane.

St. Peter's Gallicantu. Where he denied Christ

The steps they would have brought Jesus up from Gethsemane to Caiaphas' house.

K, so this is when I met these incredibly sweet little girls for the first time, after being out in the city after that field trip (well, the day before the last couple pix, actually). And it made me want to go and meet their families and the other families that these girls had all gotten to know.

So I did. I don't remember this woman's name, because I couldn't pronounce it... But I loved her dress!

This is Rachael and I with Susan and her children. Rachael gave the older girl some clothes that she didn't need anymore, and I thought that was really sweet.

LOL. Too cute.

This is "Mom." She made us popcorn, and she was so sad to see us leave for the last time. It touched me how much love these people have. It's amazing. We sang "God Be With You Til We Meet Again" for her.

This is Sahad- she's the one who dressed me up. You can see that I was just a little nervous to have a six year old poking around in my ear... She actually put the earrings in backwards, but she didn't stab me.

This is Breanne. She was one of the more shy, but so sweet, and just as loving as all the rest of them.

Words can't describe a scene like this. Being with these people, just for that one afternoon, really changed my life.

This is me being sad because I had to leave behind my palm frond that's been sitting in my room since Palm Sunday. It was the last night- you can see the suitcase and various disarray behind me.

Have you ever noticed that they apparently don't have a 13th row on airplanes? At least, on this one they didn't. So I took a picture. Because I've been a tourist for the last 4 months, and that's what tourists do. Lol, I keep having the impulse to take pictures of random things in Utah, just because it's been the norm for so long...