Passover

Today is Passover which is a good holiday. It celebrates the Jews leaving slavery in Egypt over a feast with the retelling of the story, lots of symbolism represented by different foods and lots of wine. The story goes that leaving Egypt there wasn't time for the bread to rise so in solidarity with the ancestors many stores in Jerusalem do not sell bread/yeast products during this week. Making the supermarkets look a little like a construction site or a haunted house with the lights on.

Sea to Sea

Did this backpacking trip with three other guys across almost the entire state of Israel. Mediterranean to Sea of Galilee. The hiking only took about 3 days and was a total of around 65 kilometers. Imagine walking from California to New York, it would take alot longer than 3 days... This really gives a perspective on how small Israel. An interesting thing about the trip was how much the scenery changed over how small a distance... from mountains to valleys, big trees to small bushes, grass areas to rocks, etc... We also ran into alot of cows

pictures...thick brush along the trail-mixed in with the flowers were these really spiky purple flower plants, cow, hippie british couple we met one night,sleeping outside, crusader ruins

Half Full

Just finished the first half of my time out here. Now its a count down instead of the count up. This trip has really given me a new insight on time. I am away for a finite amount of time, that can be slow or fast. In the morning it feels like time is frozen and by night I wonder where the day went, and to a lesser degree this is true with months and weeks. Being abroad seems like a hiatus rather than fully in the present. I think about my present days but also the future which is built on the collection of presents or the past. Someone told me that "home travels with you" and I believe this is true. If a glass is half full but untouched for long enough the water evaporates. Enjoy the present but look forward too... maybe when the water is gone you can get some juice... if that makes sense?

Going backpacking for a four days... backpack is really heavy, mostly water.

Stones

Jerusalem is a city built out of stone that today has building codes that requires all new structures fit in with the city's stone motif. This means even the mini-mart at the gas station will have stone tiles on it. Looking back over my pictures I'm amazed how many are of different stone buildings, stone walls, stone streets.... in fact I think I'm well on my way to coming back home with a full digital rock collection.

Heres a picture of another part of the western wall (not the part people pray at) half of this wall was underground until archeologists dug it out in 1967. I was amazed in how good condition the road was.

2nd pic is of how they make the stone looking structures today (there really just tiles)

Big Ancient City Model

The archeology class I'm taking only meets once a week but we met today also to make up for the class we missed on Purim. We had a field trip to the Israel Museum that has this huge outside model of "second temple period Jerusalem". These ravens were walking on top of this 1:50 scale city, so they looked like huge monster birds.

Daylight Savings

Daylight savings happens in Israel but it was a confusing to figure out when.

Its not the same day as in the US and instead of saying when it is, another day is given as a reference. Additionally, there seemed to be a historical lecture with each website that talked about daylight savings. Below is the wikipedia abridged explanation of daylight savings...some of the other explanations were a few paragraphs long.

Maybe milk and honey but certainly not the land of the simple.

I think the time change will happen out here at March 26th.

old rocks

Standing on a 2000 year old stone---

also i think i'll be able to make the pictures bigger from now on

my brother informed me all rocks are old....this is true... I guess this one was mentioned because people used it in ancient times?