Wednesday, Jan 28

Wednesday was probably my favorite day of the whole trip so far. We started out by going to a place where you overlooked the city of Jericho. Unfortunately, because the city is under Palestinian rule, we aren’t able to physically go into the city, but looking over it all was pretty cool. Our next stop was Qumran. It’s not the actual place where the Dead Sea scrolls were found, but it is possibly the place where a group of Essenes, called the Dead Sea Sect, was located. Ripped up pieces of the DDS were actually found in cave #11, which is near Qumran. Because there are countless numbers of pieces, it’s been almost impossible for the archeologists to piece them together. But as of last year, they began using DNA testing to match the skins of the animals the scrolls were written on in order to at least group them together. I thought that was pretty cool. After Qumran, we went to the Dead Sea!! Fun fun fun! Almost our entire group spread mud over their bodies and we quickly went from an all-white group of 32 to black body-builders. Well, for the guys anyway. (We let them pretend for the time being =]) The last time I went to the Dead Sea, which was the first time I came to Israel, I had a nice size injury on my knee, so I didn’t get the full experience of the sea. But this time was incredible! Some of the students and I went out pretty far and were amazed by the fact we could stand straight up and be standing on absolutely nothing. God has an amazing imagination! So…once that salty experience was over, our group headed to an experience that was added to our trip at the last minute. We drove to a Bedouin camp in the middle of Negev deserts. The Bedouins are people who survive living in the middle of the desert and live in tents and whatnot. Even though the camp we went to was more of a tourist attraction rather than a real Bedouin camp, we still got the experience. When we first arrived, you would never guess what we did. WE RODE CAMELS!! Now that’s something not everyone can say they’ve done! They sat two people per camel and there were four or five camels all attached to each other by a rope in a row. I rode with my friend Brittany and our camel was like the grandpa of all camels. He not only looked old, but he thought he was too good to walk in the line with the other camels, so walked to the side the whole trip. We decided to name him and thought George would fit well. For some reason, that turned into Jorge (sounded out like the Hispanic version of George) and we figured that since most Hispanics have 4 or 5 names anyway, so should our George. SO, his full name was Jorge Gonzalez Luis Lopez. Or for short, George Lopez. =]  The only downside to the camel ride was that the camel behind me seriously had rabies. It was like coughing up loogies (spelling?) and foaming at the mouth and almost spitting on my leg! Luckily, it never happened. After riding the camels, we set up our things in one of the tents at the camp and went to a meeting. One of the leaders at the camp talked to us about the Bedouin culture and we got to taste Bedouin tea and coffee. The tea was amazing; it was made of dates! Definitely not expected. The coffee on the other hand…ugh! I had to shoot it down because it was so bitter! I think that’s how pretty much all coffee is here though. Their culture is so interesting! For example, they believe in polygamy and can have up to 4 wives, and whenever you stay at a camp, if they give you a full cup of tea it means that they don’t like you and you aren’t welcome to stay – very different than any of us are used to. They served us dinner not too long after and it was incredible! Probably the best meal I’ve had since I’ve been on this trip. They served us a huge bowl of rice with lamb kabobs and different sauces and toppings with homemade pita bread, they all made that night. Yummm! After dinner, we were taught a number of Israeli dances by our bus driver. His name is Moti and he used to be in a professional Israeli dance group. So fun, but surprisingly tiring! A couple people took videos, so those should be interesting to watch! Not much else happened that night, but it was okay because it had been a busy day. That then leads me to our next day – Thursday.