Okay, so the other day we went floating down the Jordan River. It was hilarious. So, originally I was going to be in a two person raft with Nate. That really wasn't a good idea on my part since Nate flipped his boat over the last time I saw him in one. It all turned out okay though because we ended up joining Justin, Jordan and Dr. Appold in a 5 person raft. I was pretty cool with that because I didn't have to do too much. I didn't really want to have to row.
Considering I was in a boat with 4 men, I foolishly thought I would be safe on this voyage down the Jordan. These men, however, including the Reverand Doctor Mark Appold, possess an adventurous (and rather mean) streak. Our raft was given two less than steller paddles to use, and Nate noticed that Loren and Richard had been given two very nice paddles for their two person raft. So, our raft snuck up on their raft and Nate jumped in and attacked them and stole on of their paddles. (All this time people are splashing each other as much as possible, with Dr. Appold's encouragement and Nate is trying to act like the captian of our raft.) So we now have three paddles, and they have one. At this point, Jordan turns around and sees that we have another paddle. He says, "oh, when did we get a new paddle?" Dr. Appold responce was, "haha, we're really in shape now."
Needless to say, Loren and Richard were not okay that we stole their paddle so as their creeped closer to ours, Richard jumped out to to try to get it back. This left Loren in their raft by herself. Nate then jumped out of our raft, pulled Loren out of their raft, jumped into it himself and rowed down the river in their boat. (Yep, we commandeered a boat on the river where Jesus was baptized.) Loren and Richard had no raft, so we let them into ours for a while. Eventually Nate came back and Richard joined him in the two person raft.
After this exciting episode, we got into small skirmishes with other rafts. Jordan and Justin jumped out to defend our raft, but took their paddles with them. So Loren, Dr. Appold and I are stuck in a 5 person raft, by ourselves, with only one paddle. We then got stuck by on a rock, and Dr. Appold fell out of the boat. So Loren and I are trying to 1. Get Dr. Appold back into the boat and 2. Get the boat unstuck. While all of this is going on, Jordan, Justin, Nate and Richard are just floating along in the two person raft we stole from Richard and Loren in the first place. Justin and Jordan did return to our boat so we didn't have to stay by ourselves. Or maybe the two person raft was just too crowded with 4 men.
A little while later, our boat hit the bottom of the river. (The Jordan is not very deep. It is only 4-5 ft deep at the most usually.) We all got out of the boat to get it to move and then attempted to jump back in. Loren and Dr. Appold made it back onto the boat in time, but Jordan and I did not. The river suddenly decided to get deeper, and then turned out to be (probably) the only part of the river that was too deep for me to touch the bottom. And I was not on the raft and had no way of pushing myself into the raft... (Jordan tried to tell me that I could touch, but then discovered the river was too deep for him to reach the bottom as well. That shut him up pretty quick :)) Loren tried to help me back into the raft, but the life jacket I had gotten didn't have a back she could grab onto. So she grabbed me by the seat of my shorts and dragged me in. It was not very comfortable, but I did get back into the boat...
Then we got everyone back in the boat, fought a few more battles over people's hats, and then returned to the Kibbutz for lunch. It was pretty cool.

And that was my Jordan River adventure. Pretty much the best thing that has happened to me on this trip.

Except, I bartered yesterday! It was pretty cool. I am ready to get to Jerusalem and practice some more.