So it’s the end of day three, New Year’s Eve!! Well, as I type this, it is now New Years Day here in Jerusalem!!! Happy New Year everyone! I was too tired after supper tonight to do anything other than go directly to bed. Seriously. Tired. I wasn’t really functional. I have now had an almost 3 hour nap and woke up to ring in the new year with Evan, who fell asleep less than one minute after he laid down, not even exaggerating. I got a quick 12:00 on the dot picture with him, right before he fell asleep.
It has been a good day! I woke up this morning at 4:30AM and couldn’t go back to sleep, even though our wake up call was at 5:45. So I packed, and prayed, and waited for the day to begin. We were in Tiberius yet for breakfast at the hotel, and were on the bus and headed south before the sun came up. Breakfast was yummy!
Pancakes the chef was cooking fresh, that pale rectangle thing is a cheese blintz. The round thing is a mushroom quiche with quite a bit of dill. The sesame seed triangle thing was like a croissant “grilled cheese” so had melted cheese in the center. Every morning the buffet has a huge variety of cheese and bread, waffles and pancakes, cold fish and veggies, and some other more supper-like things like pasta and au gratin potatoes. The coffee is yummy, I like it.
The sun rose over the Sea of Galilee while we were on the bus headed south toward Bethlehem. This is the Jordan River Valley and while we didn’t stop anywhere, Mike said that this area was where Jacob wrestled with God. I was hoping we would get to go to Jacob’s Well while we were here, but it is in the middle of a Palestinian refugee camp and it is a volatile area. Like if something bad happens while you’re there, they ask you to stay indefinitely. Although it would be really cool to see, not worth a risk like that!!!
Not a bad site to see! About one hour into our drive south, we stopped near Mt. Gilboa, to see Gideon’s Spring. I’ll post more about that in a minute. Then we continued south along Highway 90 toward the Dead Sea, Jericho, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem. The drive was along the Jordanian border and through the West Bank. It was pretty amazing that in 1994 this was a war-torn area. Now Mike says that the soldiers who are positioned on either side of the Jordan river, which forms the border, know each other, wave to each other, and even cross over into each other’s countries for visits. At one point we saw some soldiers talking to some Bedouins along the side of the road. It was too quick for a picture. I also saw a tank with no tracks…looked like it had likely been there for the 25 years. Wild. Again, it came and went too quick for a picture. I did get a picture of a monument to that conflict as we passed by:
It’s like a missile bunker that now is a monument. Along the road we also saw the prison called “Sha’ta” which means “hot peppers.” It is a prison for political people….the hot peppers. Yikes.
This was right out front of the hotel…it looked cool. There are lots of neat things to see. I saw a teal blue hummingbird getting off the boat ride yesterday, so odd to see a bird that color. 
Here is a crop duster that was working along the road we were traveling. He was like a daredevil dude. This is also near the area where Saul defeated the Philistines (so like David and Goliath kind of stuff), and where Saul chased David around trying to capture/kill him. It was really cool to imagine the landscape of that stuff. On the way south too, was lots of farming in the valley, desert mountain areas, and bedouin shepherds. Herding goats, cattle, sheep, and we even saw a few camels and donkeys.
Didn’t get a pic of the camels. Evan took some screenshots of us on the map:
So this is when we were near Jericho and got a quick glimpse of the Dead Sea from the road. We didn’t stop…we’re going there tomorrow along with Masala. Bethlehem is just south of Jerusalem, so that’s where we went first. There was a checkpoint to go into Jerusalem and the soldiers guarding the checkpoint walked through the bus with their machine guns to check us out. It was very quick, they were nice and told us to have a good time, and that was that. Pastor said that those were the good guys with guns, so not to be afraid. Still a tad unnerving. You don’t take pictures of those guys. Going into Bethlehem through the wall was another adventure. They had no problems with us. We got a less invasive step-onto-the-bus-and-ask-us-where-we-were-from-thumbs-up kind of stop on the way out. The politics of all of that are super complicated. Mike was trying to explain it some, but it’s so much. The visas/passports in this country for its citizens is so weird. Anyway, we saw this on the way out.
And it’s blurry, but I shot this quick too…not in a dangerous way…
That’s the checkpoint guard guy with his large gun.
So quite the adventure today, and that was just the bus ride kind of stuff! Next up is Gideon’s Spring, the Church of the Nativity, a shopping excursion, and the Shepherd’s Field.