SOME COOL PEOPLE

I made everybody come outside as the sun was setting on Saturday night (Sabbath) so I could take pictures of them. HERE:

Anne Marie Sloan 

 

CHANISE 

Annie, Anne Marie, Madeleine, Blake, Dante, Makenzie, Tyson, Chanise, Michael

 

Annie, Blake 

Anne Marie, Annie 

     

Kassi, Emma 

 Sarah, Amanda

 

Sarah, Amanda 

Amanda, Sarah, Makenzie, Chanise, Dante 

 my roommate Madeleine. love love love.

 Dante, Tyson, Michael, Blake

CHANNI 

Meredith, Blake, Anne Marie, Madeleine

22 October - Seder

We had a faux-Seder program and meal tonight.  This is usually done during Passover which is really in the spring time...but we did it with our Israel professor tonight so we could experience it.  Each family does it a bit differently (kind of like our Thanksgivings in the states), but they all read the story of the Israelites being delivered from ancient Egypt. It was SUPER CONFUSING. We read passages then drank "wine", then read something and ate some parsley, then read something and ate the lettuce ("bitter herbs")....we broke unleavened bread and hid it in a napkin. We washed our hands in a bin. Maybe when I've figured out what I learned there I'll add it to this post...but I just need to post some things because we have been SO BUSY.

21 October - City of David!

We had the most fun field trip today!! We took busses down to the City of David (it is within walking distance but...you know). We watched a cheesy 3D movie about the city and how David was the first to conquer it, and how it became JERUSALEM... basically more and more people came to live in the City of David because it was well fortified, and it got bigger and bigger and the walls were expanded into what we know as the Old City of Jerusalem today (VERY basic explanation, because today we actually have the Old City walls in addition to the City of David).

Above: below those houses in the rock face, you can see square holes where tombs used to be.

Dr. Muhlestein and his camel leather hat and our receiver-headset system to hear lectures

The view North from the City of David of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the southern wall of the city of Jerusalem 

 Dr. Chadwick and his Coke always in hand.

We walked through the ruins of what is most likely David's palace (they just refer to it as the "Large Stone Structure" because some people don't like using the Bible to name historical things...even though it's obvious). We saw what is referred to as the "Millo" in multiple places in the Old Testament (1 Kings 9:24, 1 Kings 11:27...) - it is a large step-stone structure that helped fortify the outer wall of David's palace. We talked about how Kathleen Kenyon accidentally dug a 10 meter wide trench through this part and ruined half of the Millo. You can see right where she went!! The nice square tower to the left there dates to the time when Nehemiah was having walls built, and there is the famous quote in Nehemiah 6:3 "I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you?" So all of this was buried in 10-20 meters of Roman dump and other debris before it was discovered. Crazy, right!?

 You can see here the Millo, or "step-stone structure", and behind it the square tower of Nehemiah.

Above: On the left is the trench that KK dug, ruining half the Millo. 
Below: you can see an ancient toilet seat, that square piece on the edge of the shadow with the hole in it!

We walked down a ways to a portion of a wall that is dated to be built under Melchizedek's direction. Dr. Chadwick talked to us about it for a while and we all took some photos there.

There is a great spring just on the edge of the city walls called the Gihon spring. It used to run along the outside of the city to the pool of Siloam, and then Hezekiah decided to dig and underground tunnel underneath the city to the pool of Siloam so that nobody outside of the walls could get to their water source. We got to see the base of that ancient water tower. It is way underground because ground level back then (in the Middle Bronze Age II) was around 20 meters below our ground level today. And THEN! We got to walk through the entire water tunnel! In ______ it is referred to as a "gutter" but it is much bigger than a gutter. It is 5-8 feet tall in most parts, 2-3 feet wide, and had water to our knees most of the time. It was the coolest thing!!

 

The Pool of Siloam is where Christ sent the blind man in John 9:7 to wash his face and he would see again. They found this only a few years ago when they were digging in a street to get down to a sewage line (the large black pipe in the left of the photo), and they saw some limestone so they kept digging!

We walked through another underground tunnel...it happened to be the sewage line. That was a little less exciting, but still cool to see all these underground places!  When we left, we walked past this huge excavation site!! And then driving back, we passed a checkpoint where officers were checking cars coming into West Jerusalem..!!