It's been Fun!

My time here in Jerusalem has been full of many incredible experiences, many of which I will remember for the rest of my life. I have made great friends that have made this experience even cooler. This picture is of a few of them. I look forward to seeing everyone back at home soon!

Dead Sea and the HOTTEST day ever

The region is having a record setting heat wave right now, and coincidentally, we went to the hottest part of Israel today as well.  I drank over 4 liters of water and never went to the bathroom once! = HOT! Nonetheless, it was really fun. We visited Masada, which is on top of the cliffs and one of the more impressive places to visit in the country. It was the last Jewish holdout before they were conquered by the Romans. The inhabitants (around 7000 people) all committed suicide the night before the Romans entered the city. Crazy! Then we went to the Dead Sea. Even the water was hot—about shower temperature. But it was worth it! I could tread and be straight up in the water…my upper chest, shoulders, and head would all be out of the water as if I were standing on rocks. When I laid down, all my body was on top of the water. The Dead Sea is also famous for its mud, I took full advantage of it as you can tell. Later we went to Qumran where the Dead Sea scrolls were found.  It was a full fun day!

Jordan River

On the way home from Jordan we stopped at the Jordan River in the spot where Christ was baptized. It is just north of the Dead Sea and is very hot. The river itself is smaller than the Provo River, especially in summer. The picture that shows no water is the actual spot some people claim is where John baptized Christ. Notice the flag in the background of the other picture. We were on the Jordanian side and 15 feet away is the Israeli bank. There were soldiers on both sides making sure nobody crossed the border. Instead, we had to drive south for a while and wait in line for an hour and a half. Also, in the other picture is one of the original Dead Sea scrolls-the oldest written copy of the Bible.

Back a few thousand years...

While visiting Gerash, we saw a cool reenactment of Roman soldiers fighting, a real gladiator fight (minus the lions), and a chariot race. One of the BYU students, Ramzi, somehow got to be a gladiator. He’s the one helping me kick the bucket in this picture here. It was pretty cool to see, and very gory too since they even had fake blood. 

Gerash City

Near Amman is this old roman city called Gerash. It is considered to be the best preserved Roman City outside of Italy. We spent several hours seeing the  two theatres, the chariot racing place, the streets, and the temple. To make it a little more fun, everybody switched sunglasses, hence the picture below where everyone is pointing to the person they got the glasses from. In both of the amplitheatres we saw a small show, in one a guy was playing bagpipes. In the other (only 5 of us ventured far enough to find it) there was a group of young boys doing a skit for their class. It was pretty funny to watch the same 15 second murder scene over and over.

Petra

Petra was amazing, although instead of finding the Holy Grail inside the treasury, it was only an empty room that smelled like a urinal. It is considered one of the seven new wonders of the world. I hiked two of the small mountains to get a birds eye view of everything and that was pretty cool. On one of the mountains there is an alter where humans were sacrificed by throwing them over the cliff. For the first hour BYU students were the only ones in the whole park so we have some cools pictures without anyone in them...the trick is going early...we were all there waiting at the gate at 6:00 am. The buildings are carved with tons of detail and it is impressive to see. Well worth it!

Amman, Jordan!

For the past three and half days we've been in Jordan seeing what it has to offer. It was pretty dang cool to say the least! Jordan is cool because it's clean, modern and the people are nice. The weather was perfect, around 85 degrees and windy. There were lots of people from all over the middle east, including lots of wealthy Iraqi's that fled here during the war. King Hussein, who was king when David was here, still has his pictures EVERYWHERE. But there are even more pictures of his even more popular son King Abdullah, who still looks like David, as you can tell from the picture here.