We started by leaving the school in a tour bus at seven in the morning and went straight to the Mount of Olives. I guess a week or two ago, everyone hiked up it at four in the morning to see the sunrise. I called them all crazy till I was standing there this morning looking into the horizon at the beginnings of the wilderness. Beautiful beyond description. So here's a picture (which I'm still not sure does it justice):
We went to a few other sights to look over Jerusalem as well, but I've spent so much time overlooking that city that it wasn't quite as refreshing or exciting. Then we walked down the Mount of Olives to the remembered sight for the Garden of Gethsemane. I was happy to find it not so touristy and really well preserved. The olives trees were gnarly! No really. The older olive trees get, the more gnarled their bark is (Haha, I crack myself up sometimes). And the church that's on the site is beautiful. Though I can't imagine trying to hold a church service there with all the tourists that were walking through and taking pictures. Oh, that's also where my sunglasses were stolen. Which I found slightly ironic and funny. So at least I got a laugh out of it.
After the Mount of Olives we went outside of Jerusalem to a site called Herodion. Herodian is a mountain outside of the city, in the desert, that King Herod the Great decided wasn't tall enough. So he had his workers cut the mountain next to it shorter and place all the stones from the now shorter mountain onto his mountain. Herod liked to do a lot of things that made him feel like he was playing God. Anyways, so he made this mountain really tall and shaped "like a breast" and then built a palace on it and had pools and "pleasure fields" or something like that (all according to Josephus) built around the bottom of the mountain. So we hiked up this incredibly tall mountain to get to the top and look into his "pleasure palace" where he had bath houses, a grand dining room, where he held feasts that people ate at and drank at till they would throw up just so they could eat more, and often these feasts would entail Herod. The theory is that he built this palace out in the middle of no where so that when he wanted to get away from the religiousity of Jerusalem, he could go be a pagan for a few days and house Roman officials. I actually found it all pretty interesting. And after hearing such a story, it's no wonder Herod died from having gangrene on... inappropriate body parts. Anyways, then we went down into the cistern at Herodion, because, ya know, God forbid Herod runs away from Jerusalem and isn't spoiled with a decent water supply. Seriously. The cistern was huge! We could have easily thrown a party down there. And it was nice and cool.
Then we made our way to Bethlehem where we went to the Church of the Nativity scene - which I kind of felt the same where there that I did at the Holy Seplachur. But, I guess that's just life in Israel. When you find a Holy sight - quick! The orthodox have to get together and put a church on it so that people can pilgrim there and kiss the Holy spots! It's a little ridiculous. But! I did get to go to a place in Bethlehem called Stars and Bucks. Which is the Israeli version of Starbucks - hilarious. You can go there and get a Frope Chino. Made my day. And I have to say, that iced coffee here is way better than it is in the states because it still retains its coffee qualities while being cold, tasty, and not overtly sweet.
We ended the day Ramat Rachall, which may have been my favorite place. It's a site, in between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, that was once of importance but they have no Biblical reference of it. But it had to have been a large governmental site because of all the letters they found with seals from four major other cities. The initials of this building (because Biblical Hebrew has no vowels) is MMST, and there are no places mentioned in the Bible with those initials. What I liked about it, is that it shows that while the Bible is a history book, the history has a purpose for believers to know. Because if it wasn't meant to be specific, then it would include many other things. So seeing this site reminded me of the specificity of the Bible and it's purpose for believers, along with giving me a broader spectrum of Jerusalem - it's more than just a holy site!
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