Fern and Friends

Ok ok! I'm finally putting up some of the best pictures from the rest of my experience in Jerusalem. Mind you there are memories and stories and details and much more that we saw and did, but I think this is the best of what I got! And, it will be easier and much more entertaining to post a ton of pics instead of try to write it all out. No one wants to read all of that! So here goes...

Jerusalem - March and April

Anna and I at the Church of the Nativity - this is the hole in the ground where the manger apparently was.

Church of the Nativity - Bethlehem

Ceasarea! This city was once a huge port on the Mediterranean for Rome. The ruins of the marina are still visible under the water

Church of the Anunciation - Nazareth

This is the boat we took across the Sea of Galilee!

Beautiful view of Mt. Arbel from the middle of the Galilee

This is Gamla. It was so cool! It was like a camel's hump rising out of the valley. It felt like we were in Middle Earth or something.

Top of Gamla. It was a steeeep drop on all sides

Fish restaurant in Tiberias. They basically just gave us an entire fish with slits cut out. We ate the eyeballs AND brains! It was nasty haha

Oh my. Will Emmett. He was the love of every girl in the program. Look at that face!

Cool church

These prayers are written on paper and stuffed through a grate in the floor of this church.

Best field trip EVER! We got to go to this half natural pond (it was dammed) and went swimming! We had beautiful weather and a break from going all day.

Cooool Bet Shean. A huuuuge old city with tons of stuff to see. Complete with amphitheater, bath houses, main markets, public toilets, dwellings, and a synagogue on top of a mountain!

Beautiful sunset on the sea of Galilee. There's 3 of my classmates!

We found Paradise AND Winnie the Pooh's tree! What else could you ask for?

Nimrod's Fortress - WAY COOL. It's a huuuge complex on top of a steep hill and we had free reign for like an hour!

Overlooking Haifa bay above the Bahai Gardens

The Bahai Gardens. Notice our professor, Brother Hamblin, is facing away from the camera. He loves to joke around with us students who he says he despises but actually loooooves.

Palm Sunday - Ethiopian women on the roof of an Ethiopian monastery, adjacent to the Holy Sepulchre.

I believe these guys are Armenian. Cool service in an upper level of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Palm Sunday.

Above Damascus Gate, the gate we usually used to go into the Old City.

So when we left for Jordan, there was a bus stop there. When we came back, it was gone! There had been a few riots in those 4 days!

Oh man, these people were awesome. On the Palm Sunday walk they were right behind us the whole time, singing the same line to the same song and then sounding battle cries. Think OOooOO!!! While moving your outstretched tongue back and forth from one side to the other.

Thouuuusands of Christians, all coming together to celebrate Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem! Palm Sunday was quite the experience!

Terra Sancta. A BEAUTIFUL church in the Old City

Me, Anna, and Ali at Shepherd's Fields outside of Bethlehem

Garden Tomb - Easter Sunday

Anointing Rock, Holy Sepulchre - Easter Sunday. I looove this picture.

PETRAAA!!! Woooow this place was absolutely stunning! This is the treasury, which you may recognize from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This kind of thing went on for an entire valley though. It was INCREDIBLE.

At the other side of Petra lies the Monastery, which is larger than the Treasury. They spent a LOT of time carving these elaborate entrances to like a 30 square foot room.

So we followed some random staircases up some random rocks and found this! It was a cool house or something. Everywhere you looked there would be another staircase to take up through and over rocks.