Beth In Egypt

Today was a long driving day.  We left Tiberius early in order to get on the road.  We had to start driving back South.  We stopped at the Nahariyim memorial.  The Jordanian and Israeli built a power plant together along the border.  This was a memorial set up by the Israeli government after 7 junior high girls were killed by a Jordanian soldier.  The memorial was really pretty, but it was really sad to hear about what happened there.  We got back on the bus, and kept driving, driving, driving…

We drove up to the top of Mount Gilboa, and saw some beautiful scenery.  In the spring, people drive up to Gilboa to look for the Gilboa iris.  It only blooms a few weeks a year.  Fortunately, there were not hundreds of people up there while we were.  But it was sure pretty!

We drove some more and arrived at Qumran.  This is the area where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.  The Scrolls, are not there now, obviously, but they do have a large store from which you can buy Dead Sea products!  I thought it was funny that they package mud and then sell is for $15 a bag!  Mud is FREE!!  I could also say the same thing about the salt…but hey, someone needs to make a living!  I can say that I spent a minimal amount of money at this store =)

After we went shopping, we drove to the Dead Sea.  We missed our Dead Sea “swimming” on the way into Israel, but we had a nice time there today.  The beach was kind of busy, but it was really fun!  We got all mudded up (with FREE mud, by the way!), and then floated in the water!  I couldn’t believe how easy it is to float!  You really couldn’t help BUT float!  Then it was time to wash off all the mud.  It is sticky stuff!  I made the mistake of putting it on my face, and when I went to wash it off, I got salt water in my eyes and it BURNED!  Not to mention the terrible taste!  But it all worked out in the end because my skin has never felt SO good!  All of the salt and minerals just soaked right in!  We kept talking on the bus about how good our skin felt.  I was glad I bought (only 1!) pack of mud at the store so I can experience that nice, mineral enriched skin again!

We drove to our hostel, which is at the base of Mount Masada.  We had dinner, and then played a game of Jesus Jeopardy!  Cindy (grade 3 teacher) decided we needed to have a quiz show from everything on the trip, so we wrote up a bunch of questions, and had a few other people write up questions as well.  We announced the game at dinner, and there was another group there in the room with us.  I’m not sure what country they were from, but they wanted to play too!  So, they gave us some questions, too.  I thought it was funny.  They didn’t end up playing, but we were more than willing to have them play!  The game was quite fun =)  Cindy and I wrote up questions for a second round, but we never got to play.  Too bad!

Tomorrow, we are going to climb Mount Masada at sunrise!  According to the tour guide, the climb is VERY difficult, but I’m not worried.  She was very emphatic about not even attempting to climb it if you have ANY health problems.  It was pretty funny to watch her make her speech…I’m sure we will be ok.  I guess you’ll find out tomorrow!