Galilee

All along the way to Galilee were little Bedouin settlements.  The settlements are just patched tents nestled together on the sides of hills and on the few small flat areas.  In the settlements are donkeys, goats, sheep, camels, dogs, children, and an occasional plastic chair.  (Yes, plastic chairs are everywhere,  in the more affluent areas and restraints they all match, but in the poorer areas they are all colors and shapes.  I think that plastic chairs can be found in the most remote areas of the world,  I know that  they can be found in the most remote areas of Israel.)  Herds of sheep and goats being led by shepherds, and dogs keeping the herds in line, were crossing the roads, our bus had to stop and wait for them several times.

The hills were beautiful.  Because of the heavy rains this winter, they were covered with deep green velvet, large areas on the hills were bright with the color of blooms.    On one of our hikes up to see a dig,  I picked a bouquet of 14 different wild flowers.  

Lunch was on the Golan Heights, and  G. H. was in wonderful bloom too. In Galilee is Tiberius and in Tiberius is a diamond factory.

Since Sunday was my birthday,  I thought we should stop there and I could pick out something for Don to give me for my special day.  We didn’t even get to Tiberius,  too bad, may the four day trip to Galilee this week end we will get there.  I don’t care if my present is a little late!!

Saturday evening was spent in a resort village on the east side of the Sea of Galilee.  Our rooms were nice,  the food was good,  and the sunset was beautiful.

Pictures  #1  Flowers on the hills of Galilee

# 2 Sunset from our room on the Sea of Galilee

# 3 Don and I in front of a cave

# 4 Don and I in front of  a cave, close up

More after our next trip,  and hopefully a stop in Tiberius............ Shalom.............Bernice

Pope

The Pope just went by again.  We had thought that he would be here during Easter week when we were in Greece, but he is here now as you all must know.  The last few days,  there has been a lot of bell ringing  (more than normal, there is always a lot of bell ringing here).  Our apartment looks across the Hinnom Valley at Mount Zion, in the last few days his entourage has been up and down Mount Zion many times.    We can’t miss it, there are many police cars in front and back with their lights flashing and sirens on.  In the parade are several limos, he must be in one, and a couple of unmarked ambulances.  I didn’t expect to see them today because he is supposed to be in Bethlehem and Bethlehem is in the other direction.  The weather has not been very good for him.  We had been having clear skies,  but since the Pope has been here it has been overcast and drizzly.

Tomorrow morning we leave with one of Don’s classes for Galilee.  This will be a two day trip.  The following weekend we take a four day trip to Galilee with the class Don and I are taking together.  They tell us that we will be seeing different places around Galilee for each trip.

I had better get a few groceries this morning,   this afternoon everything closes for Sabbath.

 More later............Shalom.............Bernice

Here are four pictures from Petra.  Don and I both took a short camel ride for pictures as we were walking in.

#1  is me on a camel in front of the Temple of Doom  (The Treasury).

#2 is Don getting off his camel.

#3 is Don in the door way of The Treasury, I am inside taking the picture.  This building was carved out of the stone side of the canyon.  In the background you can see the Siq which we walked through.

#4 The Siq

Shalom.............Bernice  

Jordan

On the bus at 5:00 am and some distance to our stop at the border of Israel and Jordan, most of us slept. When crossing the border, we first exit Israel, where our passports were stamped, then drive through no man's land to the Jordan border. At the Jordan border our luggage is checked, passports stamped, and we unload from the Israel bus to a Jordan bus. During this whole trip the weather was great, shorts and T shirt weather, but not hot.

During this first day we saw digs, ancient buildings, and suites where various Old Testament and New Testament events took place. In the evening, after 10 pm, we arrived at the hotel in Petra, had a good meal, and collapse into our beds. Wake up call in the morning would be 6:30.

The next day we walked and hiked through Petra. This is the most amazing place, its hard to believe that it is real. If you saw "Indiana Jones", you have seen a very small portion of Petra, The Temple from the Indiana movie is called the Treasury (al-Khazneh), it is believed to have been built as a tomb for the king Aretas III probably during the first century BC, and carved out of the stone wall. The treasury is 40 meters high and 28 meters wide, and has two floors. The facade has 6 columns, and between them some carved statues representing the horsemen, sons of the god Zeus. From a book: "The city of Petra is located south-west of Jordan,...... it is 255 kms away from Amman. It is....... where some think that the prophet Moses drew up water from the rocks. ........Most of the historians and archeologists classify the ruins of Petra among the most important, and as a wonderland of the past. .....visiting and studying Petra will remain in your memory for ever." And so it will, for me. We walked through the Siq, a natural narrow gorge through the rocks. It is 1200 meters long, the sides are as high as 100 meters, and solid rock. In various places along the way, the stone sides are carved, images of camels and traders, representations of gods, and a water duct. The bottom of the Siq was paved, and in places the remains of the Nabataean street could be seen. Beyond the Siq were wider areas where houses, government buildings and a theater had been carved out of the rock sides. In some of the areas the buildings were carved out of multi colored sand stone. Pink, yellow, white, brown and tan swirls of color made wonderful patterns on the carved buildings.

Toward the end of the walk is a restaurant and museum where we had lunch. After lunch many went hiking on their own. Don and I got separated, I was looking for him, it was getting late and the hike back to the bus would take an hour or more. In my pocket was about enough money to hire a camel to the Treasury which is about half way back, so I did. I got on, but before the camel would stand up he made a mournful complaint to the camel man. The camel man shouted orders and kept jerking on the rope until the camel reluctantly stood up. I thought "Oh shoot! This camel is going to do something strange and I'm on top of him!" When the camel is walking, the motion is a swaying forward and back, but when he goes faster, and he did, it's like sitting on a violent vibrating machine. I had lost the lid on my water bottle and it splashed all over me and the camel. At the Treasury, the camel didn't want to lay down, again he made his mournful complaints, the camel man shouted and pulled on the rope again. Finely he laid down so I could slide off. I was wet, tired, and knew that soreness and stiffness was soon to set in. I sat and waited thinking that surely Don would come by soon, others from our group passed by, but they hadn't seen him since the restaurant. It was getting close to bus time, I had better start hiking toward the bus, maybe somehow he got ahead of me. I got to the bus before he did and went back to the gate to wait for him, I was worried. He had come through the gate while I was at the bus, taken a different route to the bus and we missed each other again. Don was late because he was looking for me. Well, to make an already long story short, we finely connected, and we're on the bus headed for Elot.

Elot was the second night and the best hotel of all.  We had time after dinner to walk down to the beach, I waded in the water and Don swam out to the float with some of the kids from our group. This was the first time for me to see the Red Sea, it was a beautiful evening.

The last day of our trip, Sunday, I, hiked up Masada, yes me, I did it!! We hiked up the siege ramp on the back side. On top are interesting ruins to see and explore. Some of our group hiked down the Snake Path on the front side, but Don and I chose to ride the tram. We stopped at the Dead sea for lunch. Many of the students went in for a swim, Don and I just watched, I was feeling tired and the thought of changing into my bathing suit seemed like an overwhelming effort. There were Arab women in the water, they were wearing their long, dark, heavy robes and shawls over there heads while swimming and playing with their children in the water. You can buy Dead Sea Mud, to rub on your skin (it is supposed to make your skin soft), and many on the beach, including some of our group were covered in black mud. The mud washes off in the water, but it looked strange to see all of these people covered in black mud.

Six thirty pm the bus stopped, we were in Jerusalem, the thought of my own shower and bed was the carrot in front of me that kept me going. Don flagged a taxi, what a luxury, and soon we were dragging our selves and our suitcase into our apartment.

There's no place like home.

Shalom.............Bernice

Jerusalem Museum

The tour bus leaves at five in the morning and we will be on it.  This means that soon after 4:30 AM tomorrow,  Don and I will be hiking across the Hinnon Valley, in the dark, dragging suit cases to meet the tour bus.  This trip will be a four day field study, and we will need our passports  because we will be crossing into Jordan.  I think that Dr. Wright likes to push us to our limits, surely it isn’t necessary for us to leave that early in the morning.  This trip will take us to Jericho, and across the Jordan river to Ammon.  We will stop at Mount Nebo where Moses looked out and saw the Promise Land, and follow the King’s Highway south  through Gilead (maybe I can get some of the balm they are famous for).  Eliot is at the Southern most tip of Israel and we will spend a night there.  Eliot is on a gulf of the Red Sea, so Don and I are taking our bathing suits, also there will be a stop at the Dead Sea and we may get to swim there too.

The last few days have been beautiful, warm into the 60s and clear.  When we have clouds they are little cotton balls, the kind in which you can see pictures.

Jerusalem Museum was our destination today.  It was great,  so much to see, with several museums clustered together in the same area.  Don took notes on the information he needed for a paper and we looked around for a while.  Because we needed to get back and get ready for this field study,  there wasn’t enough time to see everything,  I want to go back.

Well,  about 9 pm  (Georgia & Tennessee)  and 6 pm  (California) tonight,  think about us trudging through the dark, Jerusalem streets, in the wee hours of the morning,  half awake, and wanting one more cup of coffee.     We will think about ya’all at home on your comfortable couch watching TV.

 Love..............Shalom...........Bernice

Bus Adventure

It took 2 hours for me to get to the mall, not because of a poor plan, but because I didn’t get off when I should have.  I took the #30 bus until I saw a stop that said 31, then jumped off to wait for the 31.  There was no one at the stop, but a lot of people on the other side of the street, so I went over to ask them which side I should wait on to get to the mall.  No one understood English and I couldn’t understand what they were saying back.  Finely instead of saying mall,  I said shopping, one of the lady’s face brightened up and she indicated that I should wait on this side of the street.  Shopping was the magic word.

I was on the look out for the mall, I could see it, I thought we would turn to get closer,  but we didn’t.  The next stop was some distance from the mall, I could get off and double back or stay on the bus and see where it goes.  I chose to ride it out.    We ended up in town at the bus terminal, this was the last stop, this bus was now going out of service.  I was hoping the bus would keep going until it got around to the mall again, but no such luck.  I was the only one left on the bus, the driver asked me where I was trying to go, I told him Jerusalem Mall,  he said I could catch the #31 across the street.

Now I was on the 31 heading off to the mall,  I saw a lot of the city I had never seen before.  At the intersection where the bus was supposed to turn to get to the mall, a police man was stopping traffic and making all the cars go straight.  The bus driver yelled some words to the police man, but the cop wouldn’t let him turn anyway.  All of a sudden there were a lot of excited conversations on the bus, and the driver was mumbling to himself.  We drove some distance before we came to another intersection,  there was a policeman there too.  The bus driver leaned out the window and conversed with the policeman for a while,  then the police man walked to the middle of the intersection, blue his whistle, and stopped traffic in all directions.  We then made a wide swinging U turn, now, this is a double bus that bends in the middle,  I was not sure we could do it,  but we did.   Finely I was at the mall!!  I found my mascara and bought a wonderful pair of shoes.  I spent the day roaming in and out of the stores.  I was getting tired when I spotted a tall director chair.  Ha, ha, just what I needed on the roof when I paint  (I’ll tell you why another time), and the last one, marked down, less than half the original price. Perfect!   I bought it, the man in the store folded it down as small as it would go and tied it up for me.  Now, should I take a taxi, or try to carry this chair and all my packages on the bus?  Oh,  take the bus, what the heck!!

I successfully got from the 31 to the 30 and was on my way home. It was late in the afternoon and traffic was heavy.  As we came to a stop light, the bus driver opened the door and started yelling and swinging his arms at the man in the car next to us.  The man got out of his car, got on the bus, and the two of them were having a very loud and heated conversation.  An older woman in the front seat got into the argument too, I couldn’t tell whose side she was on.  Finely, the man got off the bus,  the driver closed the door,  while still yelling at the man,  and we continued on.

Almost home, very tired, but almost home.  The walk from the bus stop home is a block, the chair was folded up enough that I could get it into the elevator, and I could collapse on the couch and have something to drink, before starting dinner.  Don was asleep on the couch, so I didn’t need to start dinner for a while, dinner would be easy, warmed up leftovers.

Well that’s my bus adventure..................

Shalom...........Bernice

Thanks

Thanks for all the weather reports.  I didn’t mean to dump a guilt trip on all of you................well I guess I really did mean to............. but isn’t guilt what mothers do best?  It’s in The Mother’s Rule Book, I had to do it.  Others here are tired of all the cold too, they say winter is hanging on long this year.  I think weather here is like in Georgia, normal weather is not normal, and un-normal weather is normal.  Anyway it is sunny today and supposed to get up into the 60 ies.  Horary!  Horary!  Horary!

Yesterday we found out that there is a meat market in town that is not kosher!!!!  After class my carnivorous husband and I jumped on to a bus and headed for town to see if we could find it.  There it was.......   bacon!......... pork chops!......... and ham!  I could hardly believe my eyes!!!  We loaded up and spent a shameful amount.  Now our freezer is loaded with good stuff,   and Don will get what he has been wanting for two months, a ham and cheese omelet.

Today I am going to find my way to the “Big Mall”.  I’m going to try a different bus route  (If you don’t hear from me for a few days, it’s because I’m lost in the Jerusalem bus system). My excuse for going is that I need some mascara but the real reason is because I need a day wandering around a mall by myself.

If I sounded a little low in my last email it’s because I was.   I was having a little dump,  I do miss home, friends and family.  I was being hard on Don and he said that I needed a friend, probably so I’d leave him alone and let him study,  and he was right, I needed my friends.  Thanks again for all the responses, I’m OK now.

Don made reservations for a week in Greece during Spring break.  It gets crowded here during Easter week,  this year the Pope is coming so it promises to be mobbed.   We’re getting out of town, a lot of the students are.  We will be spending a week on the Island of Rhodes and a few days in Athens.  For a while we had the reservations for the stay but couldn’t get a flight there,  they were all filled up.  We were considering what it would be like to swim the  Mediterranean while dragging suitcases behind us when our travel agent came through with a flight for us.   I’m very excited about this trip.

More later............................

Love and Shalom..............Bernice

Rain

It’s a rainy drizzly day today and I’m glad that I don’t have to go out.  Don went over to the school this morning to spend some time in the library, and then has class this afternoon.  Some of the books he needs to read can’t be checked out, so he copies the pages he needs and then brings them home to read.  This way he can highlight all he wants.  We are getting quite a library of copied pages.

Sunday was a long field study day. One of the many stops was at Jacob’s well, where Jesus spoke with the Samaritan women.  There is a church built over it now,  but it is still a working well.  We drew water and all of us took a drink.   There was some construction going on around the church and three men were sitting and hand tooling the stones for the building.  The buildings here are all stone and concrete and most of the stones are hand tooled.  Windows have metal frames and doors are metal, you see almost no wood on buildings.

Today is laundry day and between loads all I have been doing is reading.  There is a used book store near, full of novels.   The lady in the store is real nice and speaks English well.  It’s nice to talk to her, so many of the places I go into they don’t speak much English, and I understand almost no Hebrew, so the conversations can get very complicated.  When I’m through reading the book, I can sell it back to her.

Have you ever eaten in a vegetarian, kosher Pizza Hut !!????  We have!  The pizza was different, but still good.  Bethlehem is in Palestine area now, so if we go to Bethlehem, we can get unkosher pizza.  It’s worth the trip.

It’s cold today and I think I’ll curl up on the couch and read some more.

Miss Ya’all..........

Shalom............Bernice

(the same day, this arrived)

I just got a great email telling me about the arrival of spring in Tennessee.  Would some one please tell me about spring in Georgia?

I’m missing it.  It’s not spring here yet, we’ve only had a few days into the 60 ies,  most days in the 50 ies,  and yesterday it didn’t get above 45.  I’m longing for Dogwoods, Daffodils.   and bare feet.  Has spring come to California, Pennsylvania, or Tulsa yet?

Shalom.........Bernice

Another field study

Yesterday was another all day field study.  We went to a number of interesting tels, saw where Samson (of Samson and Delilah) lived,  and the valley where David was when he slew Goliath.  Both of these areas were full of wild flowers, red poppies and other yellow, purple and white wild flowers.  There are a lot of rocks on these hills and the wild flowers push their way up between them and then spread out over the rich soil.  It was so pretty there,  I had wished I had my paints with me and could have stay all day.

We also went to Ashkelon, a city on the coast of the Mediterranean.  In the cliffs above the beach are layers of antiquity, some of the students climbed up the cliff and pulled pieces of broken pottery out of a layer about half way up the cliff.  I picked up some pieces including a pot handle that still had part of the pot attached to it.  These pieces are probably from the Roman period 37 AD to 180 AD.  The sky was clear but there was a cool breeze,  a couple of the girls had worn their bathing suits under their clothes, they stripped off there clothes and ran into the water.  The swim was very short.  The water was cold.  I took off my shoes and sox and waded in the water and sorted through the piles of shells that had  been washed up onto the beach from the last few storms.  I would have liked to stay here all day too.

This morning Don and I found another “Waffle House”.  The breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs,  fresh vegetables and fruit, olives (of course), a French bagel with creamed cheese and  seasoned olive oil, coffee, juice and a cookie.  It was a lot of breakfast so we skipped lunch.  We eat well here, when I say well,  I mean healthy.  With all the hiking and healthy food,  we should be in great shape after two years.

The lady next door is sharing her cleaning lady with me.  She will be here every other week and next door every other week.  It doesn’t cost much, 125 shekalim (divide that by 4 to get dollars) and she does a good job.  Boy am I getting lazy!!!!

We hope you all are doing OK, we miss you a lot..................

Shalom.....................Bernice

The Mall

Today was a special day for Bernice.  After class we went to the Mall by bus.  What an experience.  First we got on the no 6 bus.  We went one stop and the driver said that was the end of the line.  We went across the street and caught it in the other direction.  After a long trip, including waiting for someone who had parked almost blocking the street (the driver kept honking his horn but nobody came to move their car) finally he worked his way past the cars and we went on toward the Mall.  We got off at the stop our map kind of indicated we should get of at.  We had over shoot.  We waited first on one side of the street and then on the other.  finally some kids came by and they (all of them talking at once, some said one bus and some said another bus, one had good English and some had kind of eh English, and some were discussing which bus in Hebrew) said we were on the wrong side of the street .  We crossed the street and caught the 24 bus.  It got us there.  We then went Mall prowling.  We found an office depot and were buying some paper and stuff.  Low and behold some of the other students we knew from JUC there also.  Small world when you are shopping in a Mall in a foreign country and run into someone you know. After that I waited while Bernice went through the remaining two levels  of the Mall we had not seen. To get home we had to take the 31 bus and the 8.  I was carrying the paper (6 reams, it was a deal I couldn’t pass up) and Bernice was carrying the other stuff.  Finally we got home, had dinner and I went to school to get some papers and books I had left there earlier.  Bernice is complaining about her legs bothering her this evening.  It was all that walking through the mall that did it.  Se ya.

Don and Bernice Tuttle

Are you still trying to down load all of those pictures?     I’m sorry to send so many at the same time,  I won’t do that again,  I promise.

I was mistaken when I said the field study was going to be on Sunday,  it was Saturday  (good we got that straightened out, we would have missed the bus).    It was a beautiful day, most of the day,  and we learned a lot.    I will send an attachment {previous post, ed} of my impressions of the trip, no pictures, if I can figure out how to.    If I don’t figure this out, I’ll get Don to do it for me when he gets home.  Don gets so frustrated with me that I am not catching on to this computer faster.  Tuesday is turning out to be laundry day and a good time to send email because Don is at school most of the day and I have the house to myself.    Also, today I need to pick up some things at the market, so I’ll get my little wheeled basket and do the bag lady thing again.

The map work is fun and Don and I have been doing it together, but I have been doing only some of the reading for our class,   some of this stuff is way over my head and there is LOTS of reading assigned.

Last week I found a novel in the student lounge and it was good reading,   tomorrow when I go over to the school I will check in the lounge for another good book.    The library has books,  but they are mostly information for the classes.   In the lounge, students have left books of all kinds for others to help them self to.  I hope I find another book as good as the last one was.

The TV stays off most of the time, there isn’t all that much in English.  Lately the TV has been pooping out on us too, every so often the picture collapses into a thin horizontal line. We don’t miss it enough to mention it to the land lady. The news is easy to get on the internet, and Don check’s the news there every day.  It’s nice to not be bombarded with all the news we would get in the States especially now that election time is here.

Don and Bernice Tuttle

Field Study

My Impressions

Over the Mount of Olives along the Old Roman Road and to the wilderness we rode.  It seemed appropriate that the bus driver’s name was Moses.  It was early morning, the sun was out, and we all were anticipating a great day.

The road to Jericho is about 150 meters,  along the way we saw round hills with vegetation on them and the more rugged terrain where sheep grazed.  The recent rains brought new green growth to hills that would be brown and desolate most of the time.  The bus descended, the dirt was a rich red, we were on the decent of Automean.  This tough and dangerous road is the road that the parable of The Wounded Man on the side of the road was talking about. 

We came to a stop, this is where we would start hiking, a two hour hike.  There were venders selling water and oranges., we were going to follow the old route..  The path we followed was between the top of the hill and the Wadi below, some times very narrow,  and almost no vegetation.  The closes thing I could liken it to is the Grand Canyon in the U.S.   

We came to a wide spot in the path with trees, we stopped to rest and Doctor Wright talked about the terrain, the difficulties of living in this area,  and some of the benefits of living here.    A little farther up the hill from our rest in the shade was the Monastery of Saint George.  In the monastery we were treated to juice and oranges,  then back on the path down to Jericho.    The stones along the path had sharp edges, but as we came down into Jericho the stones were rounded as if they had been washed a long distance down the Wadi. 

We saw the hill that is traditionally the place of Jesus’ temptation, and ruins of a city dated to be 10,000 years old,  the oldest city on the face of the earth.  We saw where the city of Jericho would have been, and talked about the fact that no remains were found to prove or disprove the story of Joshua breaking down the walls.  We had some discussion about whether the Bible can be proven to be right or proven to be wrong.  For me, the Bible does not have to be proven.  If the Bible were proven then it would not take faith to believe, and God puts a lot of emphasis the need for us to have faith.     Arco logy and history give me a greater understanding of God’s word,  but I don’t need it for faith.

Then a bus ride to the top of a hill to have lunch,  the wind was strong and cold, we had to hold tight to our sandwiches or they would blow away.  We traveled to other suites and the weather was changing to cold and rain but we pressed on.   

I got more from this field study than the others.  I think it is hard for me to learn when I am fighting off rain, wind or cold.

Bernice Tuttle

Little Butchy

I’ve become one of those ladies that you see walking down the street dragging a wheeled basket full of groceries and etc.  I guess you could say that I am a bag lady.  This wheeled basket will allow me to get groceries with out Don’s help.  I know he will appreciate that.

You can buy bus passes that give unlimited rides anywhere in the city for a month.  This will be good,  if I get on the wrong bus, I can get off and try another at no extra cost.  There are lots of bus routes in this city and it can be confusing.  Eventually I’ll catch on.

Since the hair cut, Don calls me Little Butchy  (not to be mistaken for Bitchy).  I thought that I could go into the Old City unescorted, and not feel venerable, but Don says that I have tell tale “bumps” and I will not get away with it.  I go into the New City alone, but it’s best to be with a group of about three or more, or have a man with you, in the Old City.  It’s also best not to look Arab men in the eye, they can take it wrong,  I don’t want to get the reputation of being a loose women.    I decided that wearing dark glasses will enable me to look into people’s faces with out them knowing, faces are interesting to me, it’s hard not to look.

There was a test in our Psychical Settings class,  since I am auditing the class,  I don’t have to take tests.  I could have, but didn’t.  I am still not doing very well with the reading assignments,  it is heavy reading and I get overwhelmed and confused.

I guess I’m not up to this collage and graduate level material.   Much of it I understand and find fascinating, and I am learning a lot.  What I am learning is like a lot of wonderful puzzle pieces, I  just haven’t figured out how to put those pieces together into one big picture yet.

Today at noon there is a discussion group meeting with one of the professors, since the weather is nice, I think I’ll walk over and check it out.

Yesterday started out clear and sunny, but by 1:00 PM  it was poring down rain. The weather changes fast here in the spring,  and since we must walk in it,  we must be prepared for anything,  it’s not like jumping into a car.

Don ran off to the school this morning, when he gets back this afternoon, I will have him send the pictures he took on our last field study.

More later.................

Shalom......................Bernice

Jerusalem

There is a nice little beauty shop about 5 minutes from our apartment so I thought I would try it.  The guys in the shop looked like they would understand what I wanted,   I even took a picture to show them.  Either he didn’t understand or he just ignored me, because I now have the shortest hair cut I have ever had.  Just call me Butch!!!  Don thought I made a mistake and went into a barber shop. Well..........at least my hair grows fast.

Sunday the field study started with walking through the Old City, and lasted all morning.  We saw parts of the Broad Wall as mentioned in Nehemiah 3:8,  and foundation from a home that was destroyed in order to build that wall.   We also saw and walked on steps which are the original steps from the temple.    It’s amazing to think of all that happened there and who must have stood on those steps before us.

In the afternoon we took a bus to Bethlehem  and  saw some of the area surrounding the city. Outside of Bethlehem King Herod built a mountain palace fortress.   We climbed the mountain and saw the remains of Herod’s fortress. Very interesting. In Bethlehem a church has been built where Jesus was supposed to have been born, there are a lot of theories,  but there is no real evidence of the exact place of His birth.   We walked through that church. This area had lots of tour busses,  tourists and tourist shops.

To get to Bethlehem  we must go through a check point (Bethlehem is now in a Palestine area)  but our bus was not stopped going or coming back. Also during this trip we went past the place where the Israelites are building a settlement and the Palestinians are objecting to it, this is the place that you have heard about in the news.

I know how to make it rain in Jerusalem........ plan a field study.   Yes, it rained on us all day Sunday.   It rained yesterday too, but today was sunny and wonderful.  Everyone is happy about the winter and spring rains here, rain is always welcome. This  seems to be a good year.

More later.................

Shalom.................

Bernice

One week before leaving

Only one week until we leave for Jerusalem.  We will fly from Atlanta to Frankford, and then to Tel Aviv, from Tel Aviv we will take a short (taxi) to Jerusalem.   The first few days we will stay in The Old City Jerusalem while we look at apartments that have been found for us.  Not all of our preparations are complete but we are on schedule and should be ready by the 19th.   We are getting excited, the time is getting so close......................Bernice