Galilee 10: Chorizin, Sepphoris, Akko (Knights Hall, al-Jazzar Mosque, Old Akko Walk)

November 23,2010

Oh gosh guys, so so much happens in my day it’s a bit overwhelming just to catch up on one day, let alone THREE! Gosh. Okay, here it goes.

The day started so so early 5:45 to my phone blasting; I almost fell out of the bunk I was on, which Caitlyn wouldn’t have been happy about. So I rushed down the ladder with my roommates in the other room yelling, “What the heck is that?” It was pretty hilarious. I got that shut off and started to get ready. I remembered an email mom had sent me the evening before. She challenged me to go the whole day to try and be thankful for EVERYTHING. She told me she tried it, and it made such a difference. Yep, things change when only positive thoughts are going through your head.

Now I was to be thankful for the blasting phone, okay yeah. How did the pioneers wake up? I don’t know. I am so blessed to have an alarm clock to make me punctual. I showered and soon realized I had NO idea where my head phones were. This may sound little, but it’s no small matter. We use our headphones ALL day on our field trip days. From 7:30-5:00 every we have a field trip. This is important especially because we were joining the other group, which means I really needed to find it. 80 people can’t crowd around one person. I showered putting it off, trying to see if Caitlyn would wake up by the time I got out. Ah, I don’t thank Heavenly Father enough for hot water. I love showers. I took a little too long, but it was totally worth it.

Then I started my digging. I’d dig through my bags for about 5 minutes and do a little bit of make up, then repeat that about 4 times. I was getting frustrated. Ran to Jacquelines room to have her braid my hair. Poor girl has been so sick, the Kibbutz’s lunches are nastly… they didn’t settle well with her. She lost it through the night. Then I came back as it was time to go to breakfast. Couldn’t find it. Then the thought popped into my head, “say a prayer” oh gosh, why didn’t I think of this before? I said a quick one, and of course within 30 seconds I remembered I was wearing different pants than the pocket I’d worn that day. Gosh. Of course. This has happened so many times in Galilee.

Breakfast was incredible. I thought about oranges… They have always kind of fascinated me the beauty, and how all the little pockets of yummy juice are so perfectly packed into a peel. How does that happen? It grows that way! I can’t wait to learn how to create an orange, one day when I get to build worlds.

We loaded the bus and I told Amy about my plan to be grateful. This was a good idea. I am very easily influenced by people’s emotions around me, and Amy and I are together a LOT, so it’s a good thing we were both going to be positive today.

First was the city Chorizin, that has a LOT of Basalt rock. A lot of things were made of basalt around here. It’s such a hard rock to carve in (fancy that huh?), and the intricate designs are gorgeous of the city we visited! We first headed to a synagogue that was built about 200-300 years after Christ. It was beautiful, and black! There housed the “chair of moses” that the Sanhedrin would sit on when they had a trial of a case. We wandered all around and found some awesome things. One of which were arches. Sounds silly, but there are so many arches here in the Holy Land. I’ve fallen in love with them, maybe become the home we live in is famous for it’s arches. I liked the massive trees there too =)

Next was Sepphoris, which I had a really really hard time concentrating. I did see a LOT of mosaics. They were beautiful. 2 outrageous (Sort of) goals for my life: 1. Make a mosaic floor of my house 2. Learn to play the Saxophone. I saw a collage of a plethora of designs and stuff, and it totally reminded me of my sister Melissa. I tend to relate most things I see to people, and it made me so happy, cause I found her here!

Sepphoris

1. Which king and his son were based in Sepphoris?

Antipater and Herod.

2. Explain what the members of the Sanhedrin accomplished in Sepphoris.

Wrote the Mishnah (the oral law)

 This is a town that is very likely that Christ actually worked at with his dad. How cool is that? I was where Christ could have worked. The “likely” always seems iffy, but you know we can never know. It’s possible he is a lot of places, but our teachers have good evidence to back up their beliefs.

 Funny event: Jacqueline dropped her pen in a drain gate, and Jonathan was determined to get it… It’s a pen.. But then again, you can get pretty attached to a pen, you know? It’s been so many places with you! I’m protective of my pens, maybe I’m just weird. So Jonathan took 4 head phones and tried to lasso this pen. They tried for about 10 minutes with no avail. Dang, but he gave his pen to her, so that was sweet. I’m grateful for nice people.

 The Land of Cana is over yonder

 We headed into a building that showed a super cool place where “royalty” ate their food. This was also the style that Christ and his Disciples would have had the last supper in.

Next we headed to the Mediterranean Sea. The bus ride was kinda long, and we had already read everything there was to read about all the palces we were visiting, so Amy and I started making a list of things we’ll miss once we’re gone. It was so uplifting and I remembered how great of a place we live. It eventually lead to the traditions we want to do when we have a family. She’s such a nurturer, and will be such an incredible mom. I’m learning so much from her, even without any kids. We made goals for General Conference, meals, holidays, scripture prayer etc for our future families. What roles we should play as wives, and what roles men should have. We got to Akko, the coastal city in record time, or so it felt because we talked about so many fun things. When we got there we talked on top of a crusader wall, and I totally got lost in the waves. The ocean mesmerizes me. Don’t tell, but it was so hard to concentrate to our teachers when I had this ocean to look at. Also, I found a lighthouse and fell in love. Gosh, I’m turning into my mom more and more every day. There is so much gospel relation with light houses.

Honestly, I was lost in all the questions I had about the city, it was really hard to focus on the history we were learning about. I kinda hung back and tried to ask the teachers questions about the rocks, small details of the city, etc. There wasn’t a whole lot of biblical history, so that was a contributing factor to the lack of interest. We wandered to this garden place, gosh I love being outdoors in nature. The trees were SO big. They reminded me of Tarzan trees and I really wanted to go sliding down them to the song “man in time you’ll be” something like that… Anyways, we sat there and listened to a local Arab band set up for a concert. Next headed to an Islam Mosque. It was… great. Nothing too spectacular. We’ve seen a lot of mosques after about the 25^th they kinda all seem the same. Except, there was some super pretty rock work, and a sun dial! I haven’t seen one of those forever. The flowers were also pretty incredible. They reminded me of flowers I saw in Hawaii, our BYUH people were loving them and a big majority of the girls ended up with flowers in their ears.

 We did get to go into a MASSIVE castle though. It was super cool and huge. I’m sure that stunningly-studly-handsome knights prepared for battle in the courtyards we walked through. We got to go into a “super rad dungeon” that everyone kept talking about. They were trying to just get us psyched up for it. It was just a massive room. Pretty, but most definitely not my first pick of a place to live. Then wandered here and there. Saw some more Latrines (public bathrooms)! This one was shaped more like toilets. It was awesome. We made our own fun as we were supposed to be listening to a recording of a British lady. Yeah right, our teachers weren’t even listening. We had 21 stations to go through, which made me burst up laughing when I found out (we were on 6) because we weren’t in the mood, to say it lightly. We started making “a band” and recording ridiculous things. We had to roll with the punches on this one, because the places raised their prices, and we had to get more money. Life’s rough, get a helmet! We had originally planned to go back to the Kibbutz and watch the sunset over the Sea of Galilee as our last night. It didn’t happen, which is totally fine because we got to watch it over the Mediterranean Sea!

My days are kind of ups and downs sometimes because of all the walking, people, different relationships, and the effort that has to go into feeling like you’re included so I was just peacefully watching the sunset, just thinking about the day, trying to stay positive when one of the boys came up and said, “What’s going on? You doin’ ok?” it was such a simple act of kindness, but this boy has way more important things to do that talk to me. Plus, I didn’t think I was acting any different. He’s just really great. I brushed it off as nothing was wrong, and we just kept going with conversation, but it meant a whole lot. I watched our class do Waka Waka one more time as the sun set over the Med- Sea. It was spectacular. Again, I can’t wait to make beautiful things like these, for people to enjoy in life to come.

The bus ride home Amy and I listened to some music, which is always kind of hard for me, because so so many memories are linked with a lot of my music. I had enough and turned to think about our seminary lesson. I am so so grateful for Oliver Cowdry. Did you know that he started being Josephs scribe 2 days after he met him? So cool. Also, this is right after Martin Harris lost the 116 manuscript pages. How convenient is that? The Lord provides. It is so fun to prepare lessons for someone else… one person. I’m so excited to get to know Yaron better. I then needed to write the things I was grateful for. That changed the evening. We have SO much. I couldn’t stop writing for so so long. We arrived to Ein Gev for our last dinner here. After we had our last fire on the beach. It was good but Janelle and I decided to get some Chocolate milk in a bag, email, and get ready for our games. Janelle has a game called “The game of things” which is a pretty popular game, but I’d never played the version she did. We had little slips of paper that we were supposed to write down responses to “What does a fish think about as it is swimming in its tank?”  “What are some things you aren’t supposed to laugh at?” 

Everyone left to pack and I needed a bit more games, so we played Monopoly deal (Oh yes, what a great game. I forget how happy games make me) as we listened to the creepy Jackals across the street howl and yelp. After everyone left to sleep while Linds and I set of on a quest to do a bit of pranking. Because we have such a ready available selection of cats wandering around the Kibbutz we were going to stick some into one of the boys rooms. We didn’t know that the cats leave when the people leave at night. The cats that were left were visious! They seemed to surround us and prepare for attack hissing and all that jazz. We thought we would have no problem getting these tiny babies… we’re so wrong. We worked on catching some cats for way too long, and were afraid of getting diseases from their attacks and gave up. Maybe if we’ll get lucky Jordan will have a selection for us to prank with. We’ll just have to wait and see a couple more days.

Oh heck. It’s 1:07 this is officially the latest I’ve stayed up while I’ve been in Jerusalem. We need to get up in less than 5 hours. I’ll be regretting that tomorrow. It’s ok, I’m one day caught up. This is fun. Good night world!