Galilee Day Eight--March 23, 2010

Today was a beautiful day full of very beautiful things. We were outside for all of the day hiking through the forest of northern Israel. Before I came here I would have never believed that Israel would have forests and landscapes like I saw today, but it does. Ant it is so pretty and unexpected. We started off our day in Tel Hazor. If you don't already know, a tel is a mound that has layers and ancient cities built on top of each other. At the beginning of the semester when I learned about these I thought they were so awesome and cool! Now every field trip we go on we see tels and they all look alike. Needless to say we are all pretty sick of them. So Tel Hazor was another tel, with another cistern, all the same. But at Tel Hazor I started singing "High Open Places" (like the Dixie Chicks Wide Open Spaces) to describe how ancient kings would place alters in high places, such as Hazor. So I got the inspiration to film a "music video" there with the tweaked lyrics. Starting at that site we did a music video at every site for the rest of the day. Which was actually really funny and we had to get really creative to make the lyrics fit each site.



After Tel Hazor we went to Tel Dan, which is actually much different from Tel Hazor. Tel Dan is beautiful! We hiked through the forests where there are springs, streams, and creeks everywhere. It was so green and really pretty. Dan is in the Old Testament and is the northern most part of the Kingdom of Israel.




From Tel Dan we hiked up to some waterfalls. The "Dixie Chicks" did a music video which was really funny. When we were done filming I was walking back to the bus and some young guy wanted a picture with me...I just walked away but thought it was funny. I thought to myself "he must think I'm a real celebrity after that music video". But not really. At the Banias waterfalls we were also able to partake of some of the delicious apples of the Golan Heights. These apples are kind of a joke amongst the students because our Islam teacher once mentioned how good the apples were in Golan Heights and he kind of raved about them. So I was excited to finally see how good they really were. I was pleasantly surprised.





After enjoying our delicious apples we went to Caesarea Philippi where the keys of the kingdom were promised to Peter. This was a really pretty site. My teacher actually took the picture that is in the back of the Bible and he showed us the pot he was standing at when he took it. This was a good place to sit and ponder the Priesthood and how it blesses my life.



Next we went to about the coolest place ever! It had no religious or spiritual significance, in fact we didn't really get much information about this place. It was the end of the day, the last site, and they pretty much just let us go and explore however we wanted to. This site was called Nimrod's Castle. I think it was a crusader fortress. But anyway, it was awesome. A full on castle set on cliffs. Seriously, straight out of a movie.





When we got back to Ein Gev we ate dinner and then had a class fireside. We had a devotional that was really good and then we made s'mores and scones. People told stories (I told one about when one of my friends had a funny encounter with Sinbad at Disney World) and we just grew together as a class. It was a good time. After that I went straight to bed, so exhausted, once again, from a very long day from being in the sun, thinking, and learning.