Today we had a comparatively lighter day. Some travel in the morning as it was time to leave Jerusalem and travel back up north to stay in Nazareth. We had a very nice hotel at the Ramada in Nazareth, best food yet…I loved the little footballs of deliciousness called kebuh, although they are called by other names, too. It’s like hamburger wrapped with fried bulgar wheat. Not bad.
As we drove to Nazareth first thing in the morning, pastor pointed out the terraces used for farming. The soil in this area is not great, so to grow healthy olive trees and other plants, people terraced the hillsides, which were rocky and not conducive to growing anything, and then filled them in from topsoil from other, more-fertile areas. Can you image, wagon full by wagon full of top soil being carted in from other areas of the world that had better soil. Like hundreds of miles away. Sounds so tedious to me!
This picture shows the terraces, and the barbed wire fence along part of the area of the Palestinian wall. The culture and story involved around this wall and the people we met from Bethlehem was very sad and moving. Definitely interesting to hear about the life of those who live there. 
Here is a watchtower used to make sure people are not crossing the border. It’s like a maximum security prison. I don’t feel like this is the forum to share more about this subject, but if you’d like to hear more, you can ask me or any of the other pilgrims and we’ll have some stories to tell.
Lastly, I thought I would share one of the in-between moments of the day. We went to the Orthodox Church of the Annunciation and we arrived just as services were ending. We had just a little time to kill as the parishioners cleared out, so we went in the worst of all the bathrooms we visited in Israel, (one of our group almost got locked in one stall, and there were no seats on the toilets), and then stood in the rain as we waited. This sweet kitten was trying to find a dry place to sleep, and she got a little love from our group. Evan was dubbed “the cat whisperer” while we were there since he was willing to pet and give a snack even if possible, to whatever cats we saw, nevermind the germs. Proud mama, I raised a cat lover. Aww.