Back in Jerusalem!

We are back "home" in Jerusalem. Tomorrow we move into our dorms at the Hebrew University. Other than registration, I don't have anything to do, so I'll be writing up the last of my "Issues in Development" paper for this class and then blogging away - I've got stories to tell you from the past week with my spotty internet!

Tel Dan

Tel=archaeological mound fun to explore. Dan=place in northern Israel where the Israelites put a golden calf and built a pagan Temple just after Solomon’s time. The place is incredibly close to the Lebanese and Syrian borders, so it saw a good amount of action during the wars. One of our guides got a medal for bravery in firefighting during the last conflict in 2006.
We visited the Natural Reserve located around Tel Dan and did some work. Some of us coated the fence with a protecting paint, I and others pruned an emergency path for tractors. It was fun manual labor and allowed us (well, those of us who were able to speak Hebrew) to chat with our guides on a different level than we have been. We had two Druze guides! Huzzah! I got massively excited. Yael chatted with them a good amount, so I have all sorts of fun bits of information in my head. The guide we worked with during pruning is a non-citizen. Many Druze live in communities up in the border mountains and can decide whether or not to be Israelis or Syrians. Some of them choose neither citizenship. He was able to study in both Syria and Israel (and both educations were paid for or at least subsidized by the respective state). He has training in medicine and in sociology…and is now working as a park ranger! He’s looking at a long-term career either as a sociologist or a paramedic, though. Talk about a fascinating community to have some insight into.

The Golan Heights

Monday we drove from the Negev all the way up to the Golan Heights. We’ve now gone from the southernmost tip (Eilat and the Red Sea) to the northernmost spot of Israel. From here, we can see Lebanon and Syria at the same time while standing in an Israeli Nature Reserve.
For those of you not so knowledgeable of Israel's geography...I'm currently really close to Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus did a good amount of his preaching.

The Negev Desert

We stayed two nights at the Ben Gurion Field School for Desert Studies. In his final days, Ben Gurion lived on a nearby kibbutz. Saturday night we saw his and his wife’s tombs. Sunday we hiked up a canyon onto a plateau (yay, elevation!), visited Nabatean ruins, heard from a solar energy research institute, and saw fish aquaculture (growing fish in the desert). I’ll discuss the solar energy and fish aquaculture in a forthcoming section of my Issues in Development essay. For now, though…YAY FOR RUINS! It was massively awesome. The city we visited was one of the way stations on the ancient Spice Route. We saw pagan temples that had been converted to Christian sanctuaries, tunnels, guard towers, caves for goods storage, and several houses. Roman, Byzantine, and ancient architecture…and everywhere in between! Because of its location on the Spice Route, Avdat was influenced by pretty much everyone. I had a wonderful time climbing all over the place in the desert. : )

Happy Father’s Day!

I did not have access to the internet on Father’s Day…so a belated but very heartfelt Happy Father’s Day to all the folks out there and a special shout-out to my own very wonderful Papa.

Hello! I have not forgotten you, nor have I had some horrible experience...other than a lack of easy wireless access. Rest assured that I am having a wonderful time and keeping notes on everything...and will post those notes as soon as my computer can find a signal. (I'm currently typing on a rather slow courtesy computer in one of the hotels we're staying in.)