I will continue to blog

My time in Israel had a tremendous impact on my life.  Most importantly it changed the way I read the Bible, in an extraordinarily positive way. But it also changed my attitude towards life, my goals and desires, and somehow changed my content living life in America.  I don't know how else to say it.
My trip abroad ignited in me a great desire for traveling. So that is what i hope to do for a large majority of my time on earth. So, as i hope to do this, i will continue to blog here, as i remember my time in Israel and continue with the life ahead of me.

The End

Mt. Nebo...Not much of a view really.

We're back from a four day field study in Jordan.  It was such a good trip! Its hard to say that it was the best because they have all been amazing and unique in their own ways.  This trip was different because in Jordan it is illegal to travel around to the different big tourists sites and even to the sites that most tourists aren't interested in, without a Jordanian Tour Guide.  Also, because we were on an extended trip far into another country trying to cover lots of land, each night we stayed in a different hotel and for every meal we ate at a restaurant.  The hotels started out nice and got worse and worse each night.  Our tour guide was nice, he let Dr. Wright speak at the sites and worked with us and helped us out.  It was interesting being in a different country and i added more stamps to my passport. we had a good time.
We started just south of the Sea of Galilee on the Transjordan side of the Rift Valley.  We moved south from there and went as far south as Petra.  Petra was a lot of fun.  It was basically a fun trip with free time, but we didn't really have a lot of time, so my friends and i literally ran all over Petra visiting the sites we thought were most interesting.  But of course afterward we were tired.  The Bible isn't directly linked to Petra so Dr. Wright had nothing to say there, but he did lecture for a bit on the bus and i learned some really cool stuff.  Actually, i think we spent as much in the bus as we did at sites.  We had a lot of land to cover so the bus rides were quite long.
We ended the Jordan trip standing on the mountain where tradition puts Moses and Mt. Nebo.  It may not be the exact mountain that Moses stood on looking into all of the promised land, but it is a good view from there and very well could be where Moses was.  So, that is where we ended the last day, of the last field study of this semester.  (I do have week long field study in Egypt, but thats for a different class).  So we talked about the end of Moses' life there and the nearing end of our time in Israel.  I am down to three weeks now, and i'm sure they'll go by faster than the 2 months ive been here!
Its been an awesome class and I am anxious but now also sad that the end is so close.  Between this class (Physical Settings), Ancient Egypt, and Ancient Israel, I've learned so much about Ancient Israel and the beginnings of them as a people and as a nation.  I'm even in a class called "History of the Jews from Medieval to Modern Times" AND "Palestinian Society and Politics" which deals a lot with Israel.  So this semester has been an intense, in depth, but short, look at the creation of Israel as a people and as a land; From Abraham to Benjamin Netenyahu.
We ended the Physical Settings class by standing on Mt. Nebo looking over the Rift Valley into the promised land and read the last part of the story of Moses' life.  In December, as we leave Egypt we'll climb onto the top of Mt. Sinai and shout the ten commandments.  It is quite a blessing to have this opportunity and to follow Moses around the desert.  The timeline didn't work perfectly out, it may have been cool to start at Mt. Sinai and end at Mt. Nebo, but i'll take this and enjoy it just as much.
So as Mt. Nebo marked the soon coming end of Moses' life, it also marks the end of my semester, which means I have papers to write. lol.  So i'll keep this short.
Sorry for not blogging more. I hope you have enjoyed it though.  I plan on updating a few more times but as the end of the semester gets closer and closer i'll have less and less time.  In 3 weeks i'm going to Egypt, afterward my friend Josh Houston and I are going to be traveling through Greece, Turkey and Cyprus for three weeks and then back to the US!  I'm looking forward to coming back and I have changed my mind about transferring.  (i know no one is surprised, lol).  But i will be coming back to IWU.  I'm already registered and everything.  My plane is scheduled to land in Chicago Jan. 10th, around 9:30 am.  My first class at IWU starts at 7:50am, Jan. 11th.  Hopefully I make it!  We will see.
Goodbye for now. Here are some pictures

Ammon Jordan

A Museum in Ammon..."hmm, we should go to Petra."

A Roman Decapolis

My Professor and I illustrating the story of Jacbo wrestling with a man while trying to cross the Jabbok River

Morning, Chilling at the Hotel

My Best Friends, Arnon Canyon below

Dr. Wright, Josh H. and myself at Mt. Nebo

Petra

Petra!

A Camel

More of Petra! Actually this is the coolest thing there.

Ah, Here I am, down below is the Jabbok.

More About the Galilee

Its cool this morning and it feels great. Its even trying to rain.  Its Friday and I'm facing a free weekend! hmmm, what should I do?  Oh, and its Halloween weekend isn't it? How nice, I wonder what you all will be doing. Here we'll be of course observing the sabbath on friday and saturday, and i think sunday we are having a "fall festival" whatever that means.  But we're all gonna dress up in our costumes and what not.  I'm going to be a columbian drug lord. it should be a lot of fun.
Well as promised, i am writing more on my trip to the Galilee...
Hmm, where did i leave off...
Oh dear, i only got to Caesarea...that was our first stop of the entire trip! I have a lot to write about.  And I have been purposely omitting all of the theological lessons i've learned from the land.  I've left them out for different reasons but i hope i get to share them with all of you.  I guess i should add a few into my blog.
Well, our second stop on Saturday (the first day) was on top of the Carmel Range, on Mt. Carmel.  The focus of the day was the Jezreel Valley and we looked at all the high points and surround the valley.  This stop really wasn't that exciting.  We looked at some Old Testament stories of things happening in the valley and of course read the stories in light of the geographical realities.  So it was good up there.
here are some pictures

This is the Canaanite god Baal. Mt. Carmel is his mountain

Jezreel Valley

us in awe of the valley

Alrighty, moving on...Our next stop was pretty interesting. We stopped at the ancient site of Megiddo. Its an important place in ancient history.  Thutmose III said "taking Megiddo is like taking 1,000 cities" So theres the value of Megiddo.  Megiddo is also thought by some to the place of the Armageddon.  There are different reasons why and such but Dr. Wright says Megiddo is probably just another name for Jerusalem.  After that we went to another spot in the valley and I can't remember where we were and what we talked about. lol.  SO, that was Saturday.  Caesarea was by far the best spot of the day and I definitely have more to say about it, but Ill have to save it for later.

Don't be too much of a pagan this weekend

Galilee Field Study

Lake Galilee

Hello Again!
I have returned from the Galilee.  I'm back on campus in Jerusalem.  We had another wonderful field study, the longest one of the semester.  We stayed at the En Gev Resort!  A nice place located on the shore of Lake Galilee and we stayed there every night, which was much nicer than having to pack up every night and move somewhere else.  Our first day we went from sea to shinning sea, starting at Caesarea and ending at En Gev.  But through the entire four days we went up, down, and across the Galilee, we even climbed 3200ft up onto a volcanic cone and looked into Syria and Lebanon - we were as far north as possible.  Most of our field studies have been Old Testament focused, including parts of this one, but obviously there is a great amount of very interesting things happening in the Galilee during the New Testament...like the ministry of Jesus!  That made this trip unique and very special to me.  We traced the movement of Jesus and his ministry finding realities that could only be found in historical geography and how that plays into culture and society.  So, that is a basic overall look at our trip.  I'll go into some details about my favorite parts and show some pictures.

Our first stop was at the New Testament site of Caeserea.  Its an awesome Herod the Great city built up by him to impress Rome and to satisfy his ego.  He built crazy palaces there, temples, and theaters. So here it is, the west at its best on the shore of the holy land, Hellenism moving in.  We sat in what could have been a prison cell, perhaps Paul's cell, and read some stories out of Acts.  Another awesome find at Caeserea was this stone with an inscription on it and with Pontius Pilate's name on it! Until that stone was found scholars weren't sure of the reality of Pontius Pilate and his role.  So thats a pretty cool stone.  I meant to take a picture of it, and never did.  But the stone at Caesarea is just a replica, the real one is at the museum here in Jerusalem. so i need to go there.
Here are some pictures of Caesarea

Herod's Aqueduct

Caesarea

The Palace. Small rooms here, like prison cells

Theater

 

Ok. I'm gonna "publish" this post and keep editing it as I have time. So there will be more coming, either in addition to this post, or new posts. so keep yourself updated!

Who's still reading this?

Hello Everyone,
Did you enjoy my story of my Jesus Trail Hike?  I sure hope you did.  Who is reading this from IWU?  I miss you guys and I see that fall break is coming up.  Thats nice, I hope you all enjoy your break and your FALL.  Its still hot here. Hasn't cooled down any.  This past week I realized how much I really do enjoy all of the things that i despise about America, such as: Cars, Wal-Marts, and drive-thurs. So enjoy it for me, but limit your enjoyment for the sake of your own overall health.
Midterms are over for me!  Now I chill out a little bit and kind of coast to the end.  I am getting anxious to reach the end, but when I get back the US i'll probably miss Israel and dwell on how fast the time went by here.  But I do get an extra 3 weeks to travel Greece and Turkey and I'm nervous and excited about that too.
Tonight we are going to see some stuff going on in the Old City.  October is a popular tourist month and so there are tons of people around all the time.  There is also some special stuff going on in the city during this month.  So once I see it all I guess then I can write about it.
Tomorrow will be an average Friday:  wake up whenever, class at 1:00-3:30, Ultimate Frisbee from 3:30 till 5:30 or so. then Shabbat Dinner and welcome the Sabbath.  We'll have some sort of worship service together on campus and then sit around and play games.  Then back to the Galilee for me!
We have another field study this weekend.  This time it'll be 4 days long! wow.  We'll see a lot and I'll have a lot to share.  I'll make sure to blog all about it as soon as possible.
So I'm sure all of us will do doing different things this weekend. Traveling, relaxing, maybe doing something new and fun, or maybe doing the same-old same-old.  Whatever you do, make it worthwhile and enjoy it.  If you get real bored, open up your Bible and read about Jesus and all the stuff that was going on up in the Galilee, then try and imagine your friend Josh there, climbing the mountains and swimming in the sea.

theres the city wall standing above the trees. The little square building on the right is JUC. The tower behind JUC is the Dormition Abbey

sunrise over Sea of Galilee

Well now that I have finished all my midterms and they have all been turned in, I have officially crossed the halfway mark.  I only have 7 regular weeks left in the semester, then finals week, and then a week long trip to Egypt! That is still class time, but it'll be awesome.  So time is moving very quickly as expected.  So of course the big question of whats next is still something I think about too much.  But something that I may have already said and that i keep reminding myself is that I need to focus much more on today and what I am doing now, and that is exploring Israel.  This past weekend was free for us. Usually we have a field study going on, but this past weekend the whole thing was free for us.  I made it more free my skipping my History of Jews class which is on Fridays 1:00-3:30pm. So my two friends, Joe and Josh, and myself went up to the Galilee and hiked a trail known here as the "Jesus Trail"  Its about a 40 mile walk from Nazareth to Capernaum.  The main purpose of the walk, for us, was to seek God in a new and different way so we decided to fast during the journey.  We ate our last meal, lunch on Friday, left Jerusalem in the afternoon and didn't end up getting to Nazareth until about 6:00pm cuz of some travel difficulty.  When we got off the bus we had no idea where we were.  Well, we knew we were in Nazareth. lol.  We had a compass and a like, free map that was for tourists and business ads. (not that helpful) So, with actually little trouble, we found the trail and started our journey.  The sun had already set by now so we walked just far enough to get out of the city and pitch our tent out in the hill country.  Saturday was the hunk of our trip.  We walked for about 13 hours.  After we packed up our stuff and got back on the trail, we made a wrong turn like 30 feet after we started walking, which we ended up doing a lot through the trip. But we were very able to make our own trail.
We ended up walking along side a major highway for a while to bypass some of the actual trail.  We came to a big intersection and across the street from us was a McDonalds! haha.  We wanted to stop, give up, and eat.  So we sat a bus pick-up spot and debated what we were going to do.  Ended up sleeping/debating there for like an hour.  We finally got the strength to continue without eating.
The rest of the day after that was difficult in plenty of ways.
We wanted to hike through the night and get to capernaum so that in the morning we could eat.  We decided that while we were sitting down in a valley as the sun was setting.  We picked up and started walking again.  Now the sun had set again and we were came to a mountain we had to climb to get out of the wadi.  Just as we started we heard howling, coyotes i guess.  Whatever it was it was kind of scary, but at the same time really hilarious.  It took us like 20 minutes to get out of the wadi and then we decided we couldn't go any longer. lol. this was about an hour after we had decided to finish the trip in the night!
Well Sunday was crazy, but we got to Capernaum and sadly our trip was far from over. There was nothing there. No food and no public transportation. We walked along side the road with our thumbs out hoping to get picked up.  That didnt work. lol. We made it to another bus pick-up place along the road and waited there. Luckily a taxi passed by, so we got a ride to the nearest big city. Again - we still had a lot to do to get back home, to Jerusalem. But. it was fun.

camping in a fertile valley

on the trail

almost there

So that was an awesome trip in many ways.  Its Tuesday now aand I'm just wasting time.  THere are still plenty of things I haven't seen or done yet.  So I'm planning to get some work done and then make some time for more site seeing.  We have another big field study this weekend.  Its actually in the Galilee so i'll be going back there and probably seeing a few things for the second time. 
I got a 90 on my Egypt  midterm.  That  was good.  We only have 3 grades for that class. So i'm doing fairly well. lol. uhhhhhhhh.  I guess thats all for now.
I still don't REALLY know what I'm doing next semester. I thought I knew. But I don't.  No matter what, If you're reading this I will and cannot wait to see you in January.
Bye

WOW! Whatta Weekend.

lol - remember that saying from LIVE Weekend?
So, Its been one week since my "quick update" and a ton has happened since then.  Most of it comes from this weekend.  We had a 3 day field study for the Physical Settings class.  We traveled southward to the Biblical Negev and then moved West to East seeing different ancients sites and big tourists spots.  The first day was awesome, it was refreshing getting out of Jerusalem and seeing different landscape.  Most of our field studies have been in the hill country or the wilderness up until now.  The first day we went to the shephelah, which simply means "the lowland"  It is the land between the hill country of Judah and the coastal plain.  The hills and valleys are broad and open creating fertile flatlands that are filled with rich green produce.  It was nice seeing green.  It is also in this area that the state of Israel is trying to preserve forests and create national parks, so there are a lot of green trees here too.

Here is us starting our hike down into the Shiloh Wadi System.  I don't think I ever really described what a wadi is. I probably should. They are very important to the land of the bible and to my field studies. lol.  In short - they are valleys that are usually dry except during the rainy season.  So here in the picture above we are at the top of a ridge and going down.  Here was our first stop...

Here we are a ways down into a valley on the side of the hill there is a natural cave in the shade of these ever-green trees...looks like a perfect place for a house!  This would have been a nice home for a family during the time of Solomon, when everyone lived in safety, each man under his own vine and fig tree, and everyone ate, drank, and were happy. (1 Kings 4:20-25).  I thought about what life would be like here in a cave, under my own vine and fig tree.  Just hanging, taking care of a few of my crops, vines and trees and whatnot. I wonder what I would do for fun, or if I would get bored with life.  I suppose there were some back then who preferred city life - life in Jerusalem that is.  I guess its not that different than life in America now...where everyone lives in safety under grocery stores and malls, everyone ate (too much), drank (too much) and were miserable. - a few differences. Anyway, moving on.
Our next stop was Beth Shemesh - Samson's "stomping grounds"  So we read his story and imagined him setting the wheat field on fire with foxes as we looked over the shephelah into the Sorek valley.

Here ya go. See the flat land in the middle of the picture right under those green hills?  There, once upon a time, that was probably a burning wheat field.  We saw other ancient cities in this area, we saw where David knocked down Goliath. Here is a reenactment

Goliath on the left, David on the right, and look closely...you can see the smooth stone about to hit Goliath

We also saw some cities that Sennacherib attacked.  We eventually ended the day at the Mediterranean Sea.  So we got to swim and the waves were treacherous.  Several of us almost perished.  I've never seen such big powerful waves before, and the undertow was just insane!  If you went out too far it wasn't enjoyable, only life-threatening.  You would see this massive wave rising over you, which you could probably handle, but it was recovering and trying to get your head above water for another breath before the next wave, that was the difficult part.  Josie - I should have taken your advice.  Afterward we went back to the new city of Beersheba and slept in a Youth Hostel. It was pretty nice, ate dinner there, went to a very westernized mall.  Had a good time being Hellenists, it was great.
So the next morning we started our day at the ancient site of Beersheba.  It was pretty neat. Saw some cool things there.  I climbed the Tamarisk tree that Abraham planted (Gen 21:33).  What else...

We saw a 4 horned altar and talked all about that.  Then we moved on to Arad and did some stuff out there in the desert.  Honestly the second day of the trip (sunday) was pretty boring and i was tired and sleepy so i can't even remember all what we did.  I need my notes but i don't have them with me right now.  (its tuesday right now). But here are a few pictures of the day.

Me in the Tamarisk Tree at Beersheba

the desert...

This picture above is me in the holy of holies!...not THEE holy of holies.  But this is the holy of holies in a Israelite temple which was in Arad, a city way out in the desert....Jerusalem is supposed to be the religious center....There must have been some bad Israelites worshiping idols out here in this waste land.

Alright - That was Saturday and Sunday.  Next was Monday.  Monday was the coolest day of the trip. We began the day at Masada.  Another desert fortress built by Herod the Great, but more it is more popularly known as the place the Jews were massacred by the Romans.  Well here is a picture.

Yes, there it is, with the Dead Sea behind it.  A fortress 1200ft up on a limestone chunk.  That ramp you see is the siege ramp the Romans built to overtake the fortress.  Our professor challenged us with a race to the top. He didn't run, lol, but encouraged us to race the JUC record.  The record wasn't broken, but me and some others did try.  The record is 2:50.  I ran to the top in 3:12, so I was kinda far from the record, but I beat everyone that was racing. lol. that was good enough i guess.  So we did a bunch of awesome stuff up there, and saw cool things.  I'll have to explain it all some other time.  Here are some more pictures.

This was Herods Palace

Looking off Masada into vast desert

Chillen in Herods Palace

wow. thats a long way down.

After Masada, we went to the Dead Sea for lunch.  It was so craaaazy!!!  Swimming in the Dead Sea...it was like you could tell the water was thicker, thick with salt that is.  The oceans are about 3% or something salt, and the Dead Sea is 35% salt.  It was so insane.  You just bobbed up and down. It was a lot of fun.  Burned though, we do a ton of hiking and what not, so we are all scratched up so it didnt feel very good. lol.  And i got some in my eye. that was awful.  Then we had a nice lunch, cooked some hot dogs.  We usually just get tuna salad packed into pita bread.  So this lunch was like amazing. lol.  Then later we went into "David's Wadi"  Just another Wadi that tradition puts David.  Really its just for the sake of tourism.  It was cool though, and there we read Psalm 42, which makes better sense to me.  My professor is amazing, just as the bible was divinely written, i think my prof is a qualified divine reader. lol.
Well...This is definitely long enough and plenty here for you to enjoy.  So i'll be done for now.  Oh and remember in my quick update i said i am trying to finish my Egypt Midterm paper, well i'm still trying to finish that. lol.  So.  I hope all is well back in Indiana and up in Estonia.  I don't think i have any other readers anywhere else. lol.
Well, if you're reading this - I love you and I miss you A LOT!
Bye