Last Friday a group of us went into West Jerusalem just to hang out and we were surprised when we got there and saw a bunch of people dressed up as trees and people dancing and bands playing. Turns out it was tree day. One creepy guy dressed in green even threw flowers to me and a couple of my friends from the balcony (as you can see from the picture above). It was an unexpectedly exciting time! Haha! Then Saturday night we had a bonfire and night hike! We hiked for about 45 mins to this fortress from before the time of Jesus... it was a cold and windy night (probably didn't help that we were on top of a hill) but the sky looked amazing! It was a full moon, there were clouds in front of it occasionally and the stars were bright! We sat there and shared some funny stories before heading back. We all had fun so a bunch of people decided we would go on an over night camp-out the next night! One group went back to the fortress and the other planned on going to a cave that was across the valley from the moshav... I went with the cave group! No one in our group had been to the cave before but we had heard about it (not all good things... there were bats mentioned) and decided it would be the better option considering there was a chance of rain that night. So our group of 11 set out to find the cave... but after more than an hour and a half of walking down hill and noticing that the terrain had changed we realized we were lost! After trying a couple different paths that were dead ends we decided just to retrace our steps back to the Moshav. So we walked back (up-hill the whole way... uggh) and finally made it back at 10:30 at night... about 3hrs after we had left. 6 people decided to head back out to look for it but I was one of the 5 who decided to stay behind... I was too tired to hike for what was supposed to be another hour to find the cave. Even though I never reached the destination I had a lot of fun for the most part (there were also some scary moments that I wont mention here)!
Today we went on another field trip to Jerusalem... this time for the New Testament walk. We got to the Dome of the Rock just as it began pouring rain so we were wet and cold for the rest of the day. We also got to visit the Western Wall (aka Wailing Wall), the Mount of Olives, and we got to help archeologists sift rocks from the City of David. We found LOTS of pottery, bones, and "special rocks". Our group even found 3 coins! So it was quite a fun and eventful day!
Thanks for reading this! And thanks for all those people who have been praying for me while I'm over here... I really appreciate it!
Jerusalem Time