Spring Break Road Trip #2 - The Golan, Galilee, etc.

We spent ~ 1.5 days around the Sea of Galilee and the Golan Heights. It was very enlightening... some of the things we learned included:

1) Little fridges aren't very exciting to watch (Anabelle insisted that I join her in it...)


2) If you ever are having a great deep and lengthy conversation in the car with your spouse, stop immediately, because something is seriously wrong with that picture! When we hit that point, I turned around and saw this:After a few wet-wipes and half a day of running around...

3) The Nimrod Fortress doesn't really have nimrods in it. It's a cool fortress, but Anabelle was disappointed that there weren't any nimrod princesses there.
#2 enjoyed the fortress too... as far as we could tell...



4) Mosquitos like old crusader-era cisterns.


5) Even though Cesarea Philippi was a pagan city where human sacrifices were done to the god Pan, it is considered special in the Christian world since near it Christ asked his disciples what he thought of him. I thought it was cool because a nice-sized river suddenly appears at the base of a rocky cliff a few feet above where this picture was taken... (think... living waters gushing forth from a rock...)

6) Lizards are cool... espcially when running around on a really old basalt synagogue at Chorazin.

7) Like what happened to Jesus there, almost nobody in Chorazin listened to Anabelle as she preached at the Basalt Synagogue... though maybe it was because we were the only ones there.

8) Jesus was baptized in this river... but Anabelle has to wait until she's bigger.

9) Ostriches can deliver a kick up to 500 pounds per square inch. Don't worry... we didn't learn this through experience... we read it on a sign on the ostrich farm door.

10) There are now churches where ~all significant New Testament stories took place... this is the Mount of the Beatitudes church (see Matthew 5).

11) Peter lived under a big church... The shade must have been really nice during those hot Galilean summers. He also lived down the street from this big, white synagogue... no wonder he was so religious (not really... it's a 4th or 5th century synagogue, though the are remains of an older one under it).

12) Israeli cars can't go into Jericho.

13) Since it happened here, it's ok to throw rocks, because one might fly into a cave and break an old jar, thereby leading to the discovery of lots of old scriptures... (Dead Sea scrolls at Qumran).

14) I was surprised to see a sign pointing me to my parents' house, but they weren't home... in fact,despite the sign, I couldn't find St. George...At least there was a cool monastery down that road in Wadi Qelt.

Spring Break Road Trip #1 - Haifa and Hof Dor

Over Pesach break (Passover break), we decided to take a road trip. The first day we went up to Haifa to see the beautiful Baha'i gardens and the shrine of the Bab.



Near there, we went to a beach resort (Hof Dor) where there was a museum for Tel Dor, a mound with all sorts of ruins there found at the bottom of the sea.


However, we went for a special presentation on Tekhelet, a blue dye they use on tassels on Jewish garments. This dye is mentioned 48 times in the Tanakh (Jewish Bible). The interesting thing is that not just any blue dye can be used. The Tanakh is very clear about specific requirements that the dye must meet. Thus, not all Jews wear this blue thread on their Tzitzit. In this presentation they discussed how it was recently found that the dye from certain snails off of the beach in Hof Dor meet all the requirements listed in the Tanakh. There is a great push for this practice to resume in Jewish tradition because it is a commandment in the Torah: ""Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, that they shall make themselves fringes on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and they shall put on the corner fringe a blue (tekhelet) thread." So, our tour was educational as well as religiously inclined. They discussed all sorts of stuff including its chemistry, so naturally I was enthralled.


After the discussion they took us snorkeling to find the snails. They quickly ran out of snorkeling equipment, so I just waded through the water and looked for them. I immediately found more than 5... most were empty or had hermit crabs in them.


However, one of them had a snail! He was hiding though, so you can only see its little protective plug on the hole.


Anabelle didn't find many snails, but made a few new friends.


After snorkeling they let us use the purified chemicals to dye some wool, while they read some of the scriptures to us. Anabelle had a blast during this small "chemistry" experiment.


We ended the day at Burger King, enjoying special Pesach hamburgers, complete with unleavened buns...

Easter in Jerusalem

On Easter, we headed towards Jerusalem curious as to how Christians there celebrated. Originally, our plan had been to catch a service at the Garden Tomb, but parking alone took over 30 minutes and needless to say we did not make it.

Nonetheless, as we walked along the old city, there was such a spirit of celebration and joy. It was exciting to walk around knowing that despite the many different Christian denominations represented there that day, we were all rejoicing in the living Christ. There was not a single bunny or egg in sight, nor were many people concerned in wearing their Easter best. I never realized before the extent that those things, back in the U.S., distracted us from the real celebration. I felt such pure and simple joy in my heart. Anabelle and I couldn't stop smiling and clapping every time we heard a marching band pass by (we saw at least three and heard them moving throughout the city).
Gregorian priests in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher


It made my heart happy to hear Anabelle all week talking about looking forward to Easter Sunday, and when we asked her why she would say, "that's when Jesus came back." We didn't want to take away from the day in any way and so we decided that although we wanted Anabelle to have the experience of hunting for Easter eggs we wanted to keep it Christ centered, so we added some pieces of paper with simple scriptures inside each egg along with a few pieces of candy.


Nathan did a pretty good job of hiding the eggs in interesting places around our apartment complex, but as Anabelle was trying to get one of the eggs out of its hiding place she pushed too hard and got it stuck.

Luckily I have a smart husband who figured out how to get it unstuck without having to call our local handyman, thus saving us a lecture about sticking things where they don't belong.

Anabelle's second birthday, but she turned three. Huh??

Although Anabelle had a wonderful birthday party in D.C., she wanted to celebrate with her Israel friends too. A friend told us about a new park in Herzliya and we decided to have her second party there. We couldn't believe how big it was, and yet it was free.





When it was time for cake Anabelle was quick to tell everyone that her Daddy made the cake and she decorated it (mommy helped a little too). She's been wanting a castle cake for almost nine months, since she saw a picture of one on someone else's blog. All the girls were pretty impressed, the boys just wanted to get to the eating part.



After cake the girls had fun chasing Nathan, who was chasing a little dog who kept trying to get to the cake (his owner was not too worried about it).


To finish the day everyone got a few rides on the zip line. Nate, got the last ride of the day, which was a good thing since he completely ignored the safety rules. He's such a big kid.