gondola granola

overlook of the oasis of jericho with gondolas

jericho is an oasis because of the spring of elijah (he threw salt in it and cleaned it up)

foundation of the wall of ancient jericho at the time of joshua and the israelite conquest (bottom left)

gondola (upper right)

gondola (left and right) cool monestary (middle-ish)

a closer, but gondola-less view of the monastery

inside/half inside the monastery

merciful bedouin child

series of panaramics

disclaimer: these photos would be much cooler at a higher resolution, but right now the my connection is sooooo slow that this is as good as it gets even though they're only 1/10 actual size. click on them and then zoom for a slightly better experience

view from the balcony behind my room

this is the judean wilderness

(think 4o days of fasting or john the baptist eating locusts)

an even better view of jerusalem

scavenging callings

disclaimer: these photos would be much cooler at a higher resolution,but right now the my connection is sooooo slow that this is as good as it getseven though they're only 1/10 actual size.click on them and then zoom for a slightly better experience

the krew

some of the categories included: picture of the funkiest yamaka, most orthodox looking jew, best gelato eating picture, and most airborne. as you can see from the following pictures, my group got a good airborne picture which ended with blood. i watched it all from my camera's lens.

the jump

(both of these kids are well over 6 feet

so tall that you can't see the word "jump" above/behind them)

the result: 4 stitches for nate

my fhe group with some jewish boyz

a little gelato on the face-all in good "taste"

a few of us stayed a little later for a little jerusalem-flavored line dancing in the mall we even found some girls in the lines that were our age and wanted to talk to us mom: you'll be sad to know that we aren't allowed to date people outside of our little community

so no luck

first post ever

ok...this is for you mom...for mother's day. otherwise there would be no reason why i would be making a blog......so i'm living in jerusalem, which could seem cool to some people but not really being here cause everyone else i know lives in jerusalem. i've done a lot of really cool things that i should have written about, but haven't. unfortunate, but i'm going to skip to those. sufficeth it to say that i've been to sweet jewish bonfires and danced at the western wall with soldiers and orthodox jews, and seen a lot of really old stuff. this place is really fun.

so for current events, today we visited some tombs.

one of them is purported to be the tomb of absalom, king david's son, but it actually probably isn't because archealogists think it is too old. we also went to the church of church of dormition where mary supposedly lived after the crucifixion.