Little Bit of the Daily Life

Sometimes life is a little rough in class... you have to do what you can in class. Talia Finley, my friend, she enjoys taking videos of our crazy professors and the funny things that we do in class. Sometimes you have to do something different to keep you awake.

Once a week we have a service project where we put together hygiene kits. We always have a little service playlist and we sometimes  have the locals join us.

I will miss going into the city so much. Thank goodness we have an awesome teacher that gave us a big long list of the sites that we should visit, so we got to go out into the city all the time.

This is my favorite type of learning. We go to all kinds of museums and get to learn all the things hands on!

Also... there is always a dance party on the bus... no matter where we go, and you never know what goes on during a bus dance party.

Olive Press

We had the cool chance to get to do the Olive Presses at the center. The JC has a cool Biblical Garden that they have set up with all of the presses and the tress. We all got to go out and pick the olives from the trees and then they had to soak in these baths for about a week.

Then there is this huge stone wheel that crushes the olives into this mash. (Wow, I just looked at this photo and I thought it was Talon... creepy... I never thought that we looked alike)

This last picture shows the last step that is the actual press. It squeezes the juice out of the mash and it drains into the two holes where the oil separates. we each got a little bottle of the oil that we made ourselves. It was pretty cool.

Herodian/ Sheperds' Fields

These fields are near the separation wall between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. These would have been very similar to the fields that the angels appeared to the shepherds in. We had a little Christmas program in November. Not too early, is it?!

I thought that this place was so awesome! The Herodian is part of the huge building project that Herod the Great started in Judea. I had no clue that he was one of the greatest builders the world has ever seen. You can see above us these strangely shaped hill. Well, it existed before him, but he took part of the hill that was next to it and built this one even higher so he could have a fortress on top. He also had this huge palace at the base of the hill. We got to go up to the top of the fortress and explore up there.

The view was amazing from up there. You could see all around into the Judean wilderness. In the background you can the Dead Sea. SO BEAUTIFUL!!!

Eilat

There is this awesome place right on the border of Israel and Egypt called Eilat. It is right on the Red Sea. It is a paradise, so all the students picked a free day and we all took buses down to spend a day in heaven. We rented some snorkeling gear and had a great day

We also had a party bus on the way home. We had another classic bus dance party on the way that was a blast. The ratio doesn't get much better than this!

One of my favorite pictures EVER!!! Classic, getting the dog to carry his own toys to the beach.

Another one of my favorite pictures. We found this stuff in one of the stores. I am sure Perry would appreciate this one. It is called Nuts Protective Oil, we couldn't quite figure out what it meant.

Isn't it beautiful?! I could stay here a little longer. Is that an option?