The Past Month or So

I haven't really posted anything in a month so I have a lot to say about where we have been (which is a lot of places. This first series of pictures is from the first time we visited the Old City. The picture above is the view from the Tayelet, a hill overlooking most of Jerusalem, especially including the Old City

A picture of the Ottoman walls that surround the old city of Jerusalem

The view from the City of David (Ir David), the original part of Jerusalem that the Jews conquered and built in c.1000BCE

The Old City from the City of David

Inside the Hezekiah Water Tunnels under Jerusalem. They were dug by King Hezekiah around 700BCE to provide water to Jerusalem while being sieged by the Assyrians

 

Two pictures of the Kotel

The Dead Sea looking into Jordan

 

Sunrise at Massada

 

We had a week long trip to a kibbutz recently. Kibbutz Ketura is an hour north of Eilat in the Arava Valley. We spent the week relaxing and learning about Kibbutz life. A traditional kibbutz is a socialist community (they were originally based on agriculture). Most kibbutzim have become less traditional over time (you are allowed to own property, money isn't distributed equally, etc.) though Kibbutz Ketura is considered traditional. The picture below is a view of the kibbutz and its date tree fields.

These two views are from a mountain overlooking the Red Sea and Eilat. This place is the only location in the world that you can see four different countries from one location (Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. After going hiking we cooled off by snorkeling in the coral reefs of Eilat, the northernmost coral reefs in the world.

After the kibbutz we began to learn about Christianity. The church below is the Church of Visitation, where Mary visited Elizabeth while she was pregnant with John the Baptist.

The two pictures above are views from Mt. of Olives, the only place overlooking the Temple Mount. The picture below is Dormition Abbey, where Mary supposedly went into eternal sleep.

January 30-31

Today we went our first tee-oul (best Hebrew to English translation I could do) We went south to Be'er Sheba and the Negev Desert. On the way we stopped at the Negev Brigade Memorial, a memorial to all the soldiers that died while defending Be'er Sheba during the Israeli Independence War in 1948.



All the names of the soldiers who died fighting are engraved in concrete all over the monument

The city of Be'er Sheva from the monument

 Random picture of Jerusalem from the bus.

 The monument from afar

 A tall concrete tower symbolizing  a guard tower riddled with bullet holes

 A view of part of the monument and Be'er Sheva

 An overhead picture of Tel Be'er Sheva. A Tel is a man made mound created out of the destroyed and rebuilt towns created over a long time (from before c.4,000 BCE to Greek times for Tel Be'er Sheva). The significance of Be'er Sheva is that it is known as the place where Abraham made a pact with G-d.

 Looking into the depths of the water storage system of Tel Be'er Sheva. Water is a lacking in the Negev, therefore some residents of the Tel created and enormous water collection system involving a system of underground tunnels (pictured below) to harvest the water of flash floods

 A picture from underground in the water collection system of the Tel

 A picture of the camel I rode to get to the place that we slept at in the middle of nowhere, close to the border with Egypt

 A picture of our dinner consisting of lamb/beef (I don't know, but it was delicious), Israeli salad, carrot, cabbage, and fresh hummus with laffa (its sort of like Israeli tortilla).

 A picture of the dining hall of the mud huts that we stayed in, located in the middle of nowhere in the Negev desert.

 On both Wednesday and Thursday we experienced something that happens only 5 to 7 days per year in the Negev, rain. It was cold and damp the entire time but we were all able to appreciate the rain in the end.

A first-person view of camel riding.