June 6
I got up early to watch the sun rise over the lake that day. It was beautiful. I wish I had had/taken more opportunities to do that. There was a dog that followed me down the beach. I was under the impression he wanted food. I had no food to give him.
Dog and sunrise.
This was an intense day. We saw everything. And hiked Gamla. Crazy. First we went to a place called Jacob’s Ford. There was a crusader fortress which had been built by Baldwin against Saladin. Saladin had offered to pay Baldwin to stop building it, but he refused. Saladin attacked the fortress with great success. He sent sappers in to weaken the walls of the fortress and attacked from both the Northeast and West. He was able to conquer the fortress in less than 5 days – had he taken longer than that, reinforcements would have appeared. This was the place where Kate, one of the archeologists working on our dig, had done work for her Ph.D. It was a treasure trove for bodies apparently. They found many human skeletons and at least 4 horse skeletons. One of the human’s had a cache of 160 coins! That was a really big find.
One of the biggest problems archeologists face is funding. This particular site had an interesting patron for its first couple of years. One of the geological organization (I don’t know exactly which one) funded it for the first few seasons because this site provided important information about the tectonic shifts occurring in Israel. There are two plates in this area (the Jordan River is on the fault line if I recall correctly). The eastern plate is moving to the north while the western plate is staying still. This means that Israel has large earthquakes every 100 years or so (unless it was 300 years or so – not sure). In any case, they are waiting for another big one. This fort is important in studies done about that because it was built along the fault line so there is a crack in the building that indicates how far the plates have moved. Since we know the exact date the fort was built (at least someone does. I am not that someone), we can figure out exactly how far the plates have moved in that given time period. We had to walk through prickly weeds to see the crack. That was an adventure.
The crack caused by the fault line.

Jacob's Ford - this is me trying to avoid getting pricked by the weeds.
Our next stop was supposed to be Qatzrim, but it was closed for Shabbat. It was important for something or other. I don’t remember what.
Next we went to Gamla. Probably one of my favorite spots despite the large amount of walking we did. We walked the ancient trail; the one most tourists DON’T do. It was rocky and steep. We climbed down and then up and then some of us climbed down further to see an extra area. That turned out to be a bad idea on my part. I almost did not make it to the top. I had to stop and pause for a while because my heart rate got a little too high. It was not comfortable, and I did not want to pass out. The view was really pretty when I did finally get there though. (We made the mistake of putting Justin in the front while we were climbing this thing. We didn’t know then how fast he walked…)
The historical significance of Gamla is pretty interesting. It was a place where Jewish people lived to stay away from the Romans. It has great natural defenses (would work well against Zombies), but the Romans were able to overcome them. When the Romans came, the citizens of Gamla ran to the highest point and then threw themselves off the cliff rather than become slaves to the Romans. (Not the choice I would have made, but whatever. I’m not being chased by Romans.) On the way back, we took a break, and I asked Nate read the Hebrew prayer for seeing the beauty of nature. That was pretty cool.
Gamla
After we hiked, we at lunch there and Lauren and I talked with the bus driver. He was a Palestinian Christian (I felt like all the Palestinians I met were Christians. I wonder how that was skewing our vision of what was happening.) Lauren launched into a string of questions about the issues between the Israelis and the Palestinians which he did his best to answer. His children were in private school, a goal most parents seemed to have for their children.
After Gamla, when we were all very tired, we went to two more places that had lots of rocks, Banias and Tel Dan. They are the locations for the streams that feed the Jordan River. Banias is also known as Caesarea Philippi. There were lots of rocks, and Nate got scolded for something or other. I was really tired and hot. That is what I remember most from these places. And we just kept walking. We went to see the waterfall. That was cool except there were more rocks and more stairs, and I had a splinter.
After that we went to Tel Dan. That got to be a bit of a problem because we were on a tight schedule and some of us didn’t get started right away. We had a bit of a communication gap going on during this trip. I was hot, tired and in general had kind of a bad attitude. (I would like to state that everything we did at Tel Dan was completely legal and did not involve sneaking over boarders or Lebanon.) We also went to a scenic lookout via Syrian bunker. That was also pretty cool. THEN, we got to leave. Nate and I booked it out of there whilst everyone else took their time.
Tel Dan - notice the rocks...
After that we got back, and it was time for dinner. I finally met Haley (a girl who had come on Wednesday, but I didn’t get a change to meet until Saturday.) She is really cool. She went to a small, Christian college in Indiana and studied to be a worship leader (kind of like a DCE it sounds like). Pretty much doing what I thought I wanted to do at one point. She had been granted a fellowship to come dig and then she was spending sometime in Jerusalem and then her dad was coming up to visit. (I found out later her mom had died about 5 weeks before she left on this trip.)
That night was probably the best night I spent at the Kibbutz. We went down to the Sea as usual for drinks and conversation. Eventually a group of us ended up sitting in the Sea (on chairs with our feet in the water.) We started out listing our favorite memories from the first week of digging (Elizabeth and Nic were popular answers). Then we decided to have a bible study in which we went around the circle, said what our favorite bible passages were and why. Eventually it dwindled down to Nick, Tony, Nic, Lauren and I in the water and Johnny and Justin on the beach. Later still Nick, Johnny and Justin left. Then the real fun began.
Definitely the best conversation of my life. We talked about so many important things. We shared our struggles and our faith stories. I talked about things I haven’t shared with people all year. Mom’s surgery, all the people who died this year, the time God locked me into my dorm room. It was a liberating and healing experience to talk about God and his faithfulness with these people. I was absolutely not being judged nor was I judging. I was finally comfortable enough to embrace the vulnerability idea that the LSF girls had been harping on. I think being on the “Ocean of Freaken Galilee” with a full moon helped. It was so wonderful to see where these other people were on their faith journey. Tony had come with no expectations faith-wise. He was there as an academic. (This conversation was a pleasant surprise for him.) Nic, on the other hand, is about as far away from academics as you can get. He was there because he heard about the trip from Elizabeth during a Bible Study and “got the bug.” He sold his horse and his dog to get there (though he kept saying he was going to sell them anyway. He was thinking about moving to New Mexico so he may have been telling the truth. He was super humble though; hated talking about himself.) I don’t know what Lauren was expecting, but I know she took away a lot as well.
It was just an intense, overwhelming, but peaceful and calming, beautiful and wonderful time. We sang songs: worship songs, Christmas songs, children’s songs. It was awesome. There was a couple from Germany down there as well and we talked to time for a few minutes before leaving.
The conversation wasn’t completely serious. Nic did give Lauren tips for peeing outside. She actually did. I waited until we were in Jordan to make use of that information…
It was over all really cool. We were out until 1 a.m. and we had to be on the bus by 7 the next day. Yep.
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