Interesting Times

I hate it when people you love are going through hard times. It is about as bad as when going through them yourself. To those people who I love...I love you! Yes, I'm being redundant because it is true.

Over here we are having hard times too. They are hard because the number of days we have left in the Holy Land is severely diminishing and we are all having freak out  moments...we don't want to think about it, but when it does it scares us because we still want to do too much. That is one side. The other side when we think about how little time is left we get excited to move on to new phases of life. For some its marriage...for others its a mission...for most it's another semester at school and the unknown. That is pretty scary stuff.

Something I think I've learned a little better the past couple years is YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN. Just when you think everything is good and figured out, Heavenly Father gives you something else to think about. Not that this is a bad thing...but sometimes it is painful or just tough to accept that our plans didn't work out. Well, I'm grateful that Heavenly Father knows what is best for me.

I believe that thinking about finals has made me a little weird at the moment. But these are just some things that I've been thinking about lately.

Life will randomly give you something beautiful to look at and be grateful for though.

Like a rainbow on top of Masada. It was beautiful.

And other times life will just give you random funny things like this...

HAHA sorry I couldn't resist posting this.

Rundown of our last out-of-Jerusalem field trip yesterday:

*Qumran: Site where most of the Dead Sea scrolls were found, inhabited by a large group of Essenes (extreme Jewish religious group - practiced asceticism, communal living, intense studying, ritual purification...all that fun stuff). We saw some caves from a distance in the cliffs, walked through the ruins, and took some pictures.

We are kind of bored of taking lame smiling pictures. Dead Sea behind us. Very cloudy.

*Masada: HOLY COW. We were lucky and got out of a good hike because they paid for us to take the cable cart up the mountain. Masada is on top of a mountain, but the top is giant plateau...it's huge. Masada is a fortress, the last one that the Romans conquered after Jerusalem and the 2nd Temple were destroyed. The Jews who were hiding there decided that rather than surrender to the Romans and become slaves, they would commit mass suicide. The men killed their families, and then the men drew lots to see who would kill who at the end. When the Romans got to the top they found them all dead. It is a sobering story. I am grateful that I do not have to choose between slavery and suicide/death. Very grateful. 

        At Masada, it is usually blistering hot apparently. Reading some Jeru blogs from the summer, it is almost unbearable. And this is supposedly at any time of the year. WE WERE SOOOO LUCKY. It wasn't hot at all. Instead it was very windy and we got attacked by dust flying in our faces. It is also ironic because this is the ONE field trip this entire semester where they allowed us to wear shorts all day. This was the coldest field trip that we have ever been on. Hilarious. We got a little sprinkling at the top, and then we saw a rainbow that turned into a double rainbow. I am grateful for small beautiful things like this that happen to remind us that God loves us, and nature is beautiful. See above pictures.

View of side of palaces on the front of the mountain. We were high up.

*Ein Gedi: This is where David cut the bottom of Saul's robe. David did not kill Saul because he would not kill the Lord's anointed. Even though Saul was chasing David and trying to kill him. At Ein Gedi is also where a busy highway was in ancient times, and it is most likely that Lehi and his family traveled through the wadi when going south from Jerusalem to the Red Sea. Cool beans. We hiked through to some waterfalls. We saw lots of ibex and coney's.

Looking back through the wadi we hiked through and to the Dead Sea.

Excited to see some waterfalls! And sick of smiling in pictures!

**Dead Sea: Floating in the Dead Sea is an experience that will difficult to describe to someone. You seriously cannot sink. The intense salt concentration burns in weird places, but it was worth it to bob around! We also got some Dead Sea mud to rub over our skin. Yup, that stuff works. It smells DISGUSTING, but my skin is oh so soft! Talk about exfoliation! 

Pictures to come on that one.

It was a grand field trip. And when we got home we found out that it has been pouring rain in Jerusalem most of the day. That is SO SO SO GOOD. FINALLY. And it was nice that we got to have our field trip, and Jeru got some desperate-needed rain. It rained some more that night, so we got to see it. 

It was also freezing in the center. I slept with my sweatshirt on (never happens), PJ pants, 2 pairs of socks, and 2 thick blankets. And I slept super comfortably. It was a very tiring day. But a great one! :)

And tonight I get to go see this at Hebrew University!!!

Whooooooohoooooooooo!