Life is sweet! ...and a little bit out of control

I haven't written in a while and a lot has gone on, but I should probably just pick a few of my favorite.

Last Sunday a whole bus of us went to Machtesh HaKatan in the Negev. A machtesh is a crater-like form in the dessert. It was pretty sweet, I've never hiked in anything like it. Maybe it's my midwest childhood (not that I'm not proud of the midwest), but it felt like something straight out of National Geographic. The hike to the machtesh had some good hills, but the rest was pretty much all down hill into the crater. I took about a million pictures and have them posted on Picasa, so feel free to look at them.

We also had another field trip around the Jerusalem area, moving further into the surrounding land with vantage points that gave us a better idea of how the geography played a role, and still plays a role, in the land of the Bible. We also went to Bethlehem and the Herodian. The Herodian is this mountain-like structure that Herod built a palace/spa. There were actually two hills and he took one and put it right on top of the other so that he was pretty much above everything else around the land. I honestly think it's pretty ridiculous but some of the guys in the class found it ingenious. Just recently (in the last year) archeologists found Herod's tomb inside the mountain. It was Shabbat when we were there and no one was working or around so we crawled under the fence and explored the area. We went into the cave that lead to the tomb (we figure) but we didn't have a head lamp. I think we'll have to go back with some lights and chalk so we can explore without the threat of getting hopelessly lost inside a mountain tomb.

A couple of days ago I went to Hezekiah's tunnel on the eastern hill (City of David). It's the tunnel Hezekiah built to improve the water system. It brought water from the Gehon Spring up to the Pool of Silom. The tunnel still has water flowing through it and it's a lot of fun to go through. There were about five of us I think and we all waded through the dark tunnel with head lamps. Its pretty amazing that we can still walk through something man-made that hasn't really changed since it was created by Hezekiah in 701 BC. The water was pretty cold and I got good and wet but it was worth it. We want to go back again and try to get through with out headlamps.

Today I went over to Bethlehem for a meeting with the principle of a school that I will be volunteering at. The school is called Jerusalem Beit Jalla School. It's got Jerusalem stuck in the title because there used to be just the one school in Jerusalem, but when the wall went up and people couldn't really travel back and forth between the two cities, they had to build a second campus. The meeting didn't really get me too far with finding out what I will actually be doing. I went with four others, three of whom will be volunteering also, and it sounds like they will definitely have work for us to do. It got me pretty excited for working there some.

Well, that's some of the highlights of the last few days. There's so many things to do and see it's hard to keep up. I'm loving it, but I'm also realizing that I won't be able to do everything I want to do. Having too much awesome stuff to do in three months isn't really a bad thing, but sometimes a little frustrating none the less.

Oh, and one last thing. I just joined a Bible study with a few other girls here. A grad student's wife, Christy, started it and we meet in their home in the Old City. She's pretty awesome and so are the other girls.