Changes at Home

When I arrived home on Sunday, the first change I noticed as I drove up the hill to our house, was that the neighbor that lives below us had a bunch of their trees taken out. They had just started having it done the day we left, so it wasn't a total surprise, although I had forgotten about it while we were gone. They had some trees taken out in both their front and back yards. The really noticeable difference is from our windows that look down on their house, we used to barely be able to see their house because of all the trees, but now we have a clear view of everything that goes on in their yard. I can see that they would want to have some trees taken out to give them more light in their house, but I wouldn't like my neighbor being able to see so clearly into my yard. Maybe they'll put in some new trees or something to give them more privacy, I'm feeling inclined to do that and I'm the one looking down into their yard.

The next thing that happened was Mon. morning. I heard and saw some people and equipment digging in the ditch in front of our house. I went out and asked what was going on and they said that another neighbor, a couple of houses up the street from us, had called them and complained about water backing up in their ditch. So, they came out and cleaned out the ditch and the culverts, in the process digging a much deeper ditch, so the water would flow better away from the other house.
They said it looked like it hadn't been done in quite awhile. I said, that we had lived here over 20 years and it had never been done. Ken usually mows the grass in the ditch and I'm not sure how he is going to be able to do that now. They said they would be coming back out to hydro seed it, but I don't know when that will be.
The rest of these pictures are for Ken, who is still in Europe and isn't getting to see these plants bloom this year.

It seems like this azalea and snowball bush have more blooms on them this year. They are gorgeous!

Trip to Israel - Part 11

I bet you thought that part 10 was going to be the last posting about our trip. Surprise! I've had a few thoughts about the trip that I wanted to add, plus a few pictures from our afternoon in Paris. Some things I'm going to mention are unique to Israel and others relate to any travels overseas. Some things are just things I forgot to mention at the time and want to write down so I don't totally forget them. So, here I go, one of the first things that happened that I thought was unique was at the airport when we first arrived in Israel. Ken's colleque, Ishai, met us at the airport and asked if I had been to Israel before and when I said no, he whipped out a small Israeli flag and presented it to me saying, "Welcome to Israel." We were welcomed to Israel several different times, when someone asked if it was our first visit. We were also jokingly, I think, told that the United States has 51 states, not 50, they said Israel is the 51st state. We were told that by a couple of different people. I mentioned how food could not be cooked during Shabbat, we found that to differ in the different hotels we were in, the first one did that, but the others didn't. The hotel by the Dead Sea served cooked items on their buffet during the holiday we were there, but you couldn't use the hand operated juice squeezer. Also, they had a special Shabbat elevator that would stop at every floor and wouldn't respond when you pushed a button for a certain floor. I guess pushing a button for a floor is to much like work. We learned to avoid that elevator. We noticed early in our trip, that there were stray cats hanging around everywhere we went. Ishai said that no one has cats in their homes, that all cats are wild. We did see a couple of people by a resturant at the Dead Sea feeding the cats that were hanging around, but most of the cats are on their own. Speaking of the Dead Sea, I goofed up on my first trip into the water and wore my pedometer into the water. It not only got water in it, but it totally rusted the battery even though I noticed I had it on after just a couple of minutes and took it off. I don't know if it is going to work again, but will try it after getting a new battery. That's just one example of how potent the Dead Sea is. Ken actually put a drop on his tongue and couldn't believe how strong and salty it tasted. One last thing in regards to Israel is a comment about the shopowners in the Old City. There are a lot of tiny, almost hole-in-the-wall type of shops, some of the shopowners, just sit by their store and wait for someone to come inside. Others are determined to get you inside their shop and follow you down the street, asking you to come in and want to give you their card, etc. I found them extremely annoying, especially when we told them "No!", several times and they continued to follow us. They would eventually give up, but you had to keep going otherwise you would be persued. It was so bad that I was afraid to stop and look at anything, because as soon as you showed an interest in anything, someone would be following you around the store, trying to persuade you to buy something.

Just a couple of reminders to myself for the next time I go overseas, most hotels don't have clocks or washcloths, so I need to bring them, since I usually like to have both items. The shows on TV are terrible and you don't have many choices of English speaking shows to watch, so bring some DVD's to watch, if you are bringing a computer. One last thing that I can't bring with me, but I miss whenever I'm overseas, is ice. There is rarely any ice given for drinks. I think in 2 weeks, I was given ice twice in the resturants we went to. You can't get ice at the hotels either, no ice machines like we are used to. I even ordered ice tea once, thinking it would have ice, but it didn't have any either.

One last picture of Israel from the day we drove to the Dead Sea and I said how much it looked like Eastern WA. It was only this one area that reminded me of eastern Wa, the other areas as you've seen were dry and rocky.

On to our afternoon in Paris. I didn't want to do anything that involved much walking, so we decided to go on a tour boat cruise of the Seine River. The boat above is like the one we went on, just us and a thousand or so of our closest friends.
It was a gorgeous spring Saturday in Paris, so there were people sitting along the concrete riverbank all along the river.

This was a former palace of some of the kings of France.

Almost every bridge we went under was a very ornate bridge. Here is one with the Eiffel Tower in the background.

Trip to Israel - Part 10

Today was our last day in Israel, we had a few last things we wanted to see and do. Unfortunately, one of the things we were planning on doing today was closed. We had made a list on Wed. of things that were only open on Thurs. and tried to do all of them on that day. The guidebook we have been using said that the Tower of David, also known as the Citadel, was open on Fridays, so we saved it to do today. However, when we arrived there we discovered that it's not open on Fri. after all, so we moved on to the next place on our list.

Our next stop was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I have finally figured out that all these places relating to Christ's life are actually aimed at Catholics and similar religions, that set a high value on artifacts.

This person was bowing and kissing the supposed stone where they put Jesus burial cloths on him. Doing that to all these different artifacts or supposed places, just isn't the Protestant way, at least not the way the people in the churches I've been in act. I think that may be why these places haven't affected me the way they seemed to for a lot of the people we saw.
This is the slab of rock where Jesus is supposed to be laid on after his death. I definately related more to the Garden Tomb, than this ornate tomb. Everything seen in the church was built on top of the supposed places, like this tomb and Golgotha, which is pictured below.

People were again kneeling and kissing the glass that ws supposed to be covering Golgotha.

After finishing at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, we tried to follow the stations of the cross down the Via Delarosa (another Catholic tradition), but were able to find a couple of the marked stations. Ken said it was like going on a treasure hunt to try and find them and we didn't do to well on the hunt. After lunch we went back to the Wailing Wall and took the time to go down and pray. I have an aqua scarf on and am wearing tan capris.

We then tried to get up high above the wall, which was a suggestion by Kari. We found a place on top of a building and read some Psalms to each other. About 3pm we arrived at our new hotel and thought we were done with our sightseeing. A guy at our new hotel asked if we had been to Bethlehem, and when we said that we hadn't been there, he said he could make arrangements for us to go if we wanted to.

At first I wasn't inclined to go, but after talking about it some, we decided to go ahead and do it. It actually turned out to be a good decision We had an excellent guide, but our camera was almost out of batteries, so we didn't get all the pictures we wanted. This is the Church of the Nativity, so now we have seen the supposed place of Jesus birth, where he grew up, parts of where he ministered, where he died, was buried and where he ascended into heaven.

This is the wall separating the Israelis and the Palestinians. Since Bethlehem is on the Palestinian side, our driver dropped us off to walk through the check point, while he drove through. I don't really know why he did it that way, but that's what he wanted us to do. It worked out OK, although going through the check point was a little confusing. Just another adventure! See you soon back in Washington!

Trip to Israel - Part 9

Oh my gosh! I don't think I have ever walked so much in my life! We turned in our rental car, so now, we walk or take a taxi if we want to get somewhere. Kari told us walking around the Old City wasn't that, bad because it is pretty small. Well, after 1 and a half days of walking around it, I think it has grown since she was here (impossible though that is). It has been very tiring to walk around Jerusalem, but very interesting also. We are in a nice guest house that is on the grounds of a historical protestant church. As I sit here doing my blog, we are serenaded by music coming from the church.

One of the first things we did on Wednesday, was make our way down to the Wailing Wall. It was still the holiday I mentioned in my last blog, so there were a lot of people milling around. It is so fun to see the different Jewish sects, how they dress, etc. I especially love seeing a whole family heading out somewhere, with all the kids in their Shabat clothes.

This is the Wailing Wall, we have been to it twice now, but haven't touched it yet. The first time I wasn't dressed properly and couldn't go into the women's section. Today when we were there we were on our way to visit the Temple Mount, which was only going to be open for an hour this afternoon, then closed all day tomorrow.
After visiting the Wailing Wall on Wed., we headed back to our room via a different direction and walked along the city wall that surrounds old town.

Today the first thing we did was take a taxi to the Mount of Olives. The guidebook we have suggested we do that, then walk down the mountain looking at the sites on the way down, it was a very good suggestion! We started out at the Mosque of Ascension, which is the supposed site of Jesus ascension into heaven. There is a huge Jewish cemetary on the side of the mountain because Jews want to be as close as possible to the Valley of Jehoshaphat where they believe mankind will be resurrected on the Day of Judgment. As you can see from the picture above, they aren't buried underground, but on top of the ground.

Today I dressed in a way that allowed me to go places that had a dress code. There were some other women wearing pants, that arrived to visit the church in the picture below, at the same time we did and had to put a skirt over their pants and put on a head covering that the nuns gave them.

This church is called the Church of Mary Magdalene and is a Russian Orthodox Church. We also visited the Tomb of the Virgin Mary, the Garden of Gethsemane, and the cave of Gethsemane, which is the traditional sight of Judas' betrayal of Christ. I have pictures of most of these places, but had to choose just a few to put on my blog, it was difficult to choose just a few and I put more on here than I should, but I couldn't stop.

After leaving the Mount of Olives we walked down part of the Via Delarosa, stopping for lunch at an intersection that was a great people watching spot. These are several Muslim girls that walked by, I had never known that there were so many styles of head coverings for them. These were all wearing white, but the colors vary greatly, about any color you can think of and some even come in prints.

The Dome of the Rock, as I mentioned earlier was only going to be open for non-muslim visitors for an hour this afternoon. It is also called Temple Mount and is the tradtional site of Solomon's Temple.

The last thing we did today was go to the Garden tomb. This is a picture of what some think was Golgotha, both it and the tomb of Jesus is disputed. Some think it was here and others think it is at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which we will visit tomorrow.

We liked the Garden Tomb and thought they made a pretty good case for it being the place of Christ's death and burial. You can see in the picture where the step is that there is a groove where a stone would be rolled into place.

This sign was on the door to the tomb.

Trip to Israel - Part 8

Tuesday evening and Wed. were a holiday called Feast of the First Fruits. We knew it was coming because Ishai had told us about it, but we didn’t realize what it meant in the Dead Sea area, the picture above shows what they do. Everyone who has a tent heads to the Dead Sea and camps on the beach! We couldn’t believe that so many people showed up with their tents yesterday. It seemed like a really difficult place to camp, the ground there is very hard, and as we ate dinner last night we watched a family have their tent blow away several times. The other thing about the holiday that we didn’t realize, was that security got a lot more intense. I saw for the first time, some soldiers patrolling the beach this morning and then as we were leaving the area, there were soldiers checking the cars that were going into the area. They hadn't been doing that before either.
We made a couple of stops on our way to Jerusalem this morning. The first stop was at En Gedi. We almost didn’t stop there because we had read that it involved an hour hike and we weren’t sure if it was round trip or not, and how difficult the hike would be. We decided to start it and would turn back if it was to difficult. We are very glad that we did stop because we really enjoyed the hike. There were rock steps placed on a lot of places on the trail, I’m heading up them here.

There was a bunch of these animals in the rocks along the trail. I asked one guy what they were, but he didn’t know what they were called in English. Another guy who heard me ask, said they were called “Rock Rabbits”. They don’t have ears like the ones we are used to, but they did kind of hop like them. Ken actually looked them up when we got connected to the internet and they are called rock hyrax, so the mystery is solved.
There were several waterfalls along the trail, most of them were pretty small by our standards, but a big deal for people out here. There were a lot of people visiting En Gedi also, and whereever there was a waterfall, there was a pond, and whereever there was a pond, there were people in the pond.
This is the largest waterfall at the end of the trail (unless you hike to the top of it, which we didn't). This one is called David Falls ( look in 1 Samuel for a reference to En Gedi, David and Saul.)

The next place we went was to the Qumran National Park. The first thing we saw when we pulled into the parking lot was this sign. It seemed to indicate that the pink lid covered a bomb disposal site.

We were a little disappointed in this park because they didn't really tell you which cave was the one where they found the Dead Sea Scrolls. We had read that you could hike up to them and there was a sign showing you where the trail began, so we figured it was one of the 2 caves in the picture above.

But then, we arrived at a sign that said that the cave below, (the one that's in this picture) was where some Bedouins found some scrolls. But we didn't know if those were other scrolls that were found or the Dead Sea Scrolls. They had a book they were trying to sell and I figured that if we bought the book, it might give us more info, but we didn't want to buy the book after paying to get in, so I just took a picture of every cave in sight and hopefully one of them is the right one! We arrived in Jerusalem safely and found our way to where we will be staying with no problem, even though the sign we had expected to use to find our way didn't exist. We couldn't beleive we found our way so easily, and told God thank you for it. We walked around some and took a bunch of pictures, but I'm going to wait until tomorrow to start the Jerusalem section.

Trip to Israel - Part 7

I am in the hotel lobby again to do this blog, but this time, I'm doing it before dinner instead of afterwards like last night. So far, so good, no annoying loud music to distract me!

Today we went to Masada.I don't know about you, but I didn't really know much about Masada before looking into what we wanted to see on our trip. Masada is a National Park here and it refers to the the mountain in the picture. Apparently, Herod built a palace here with other buildings, to take care of his needs, and the people that would be needed to take care of him. Later in history, it became the last stronghold of the Jews against Rome. Can you imagine laying seige to a group of around 1,000 men, women and children, that were holed up on top of this mountain?

That's exactly what the Romans did! If you look closely on the left hand side of the picture, you can see a rectangle on the ground, that is where one of the Roman camps was located. You can also see a trail winding it's way up the mountain, it's called the snake trail. A lot of people walked up that trail to the top of the mountain (Kari told us that she had walked up it when she was in Israel, in order to see the sun rise over the Dead Sea). Since we are older, wiser, and less energetic, we waited until 8am to go and rode a cable car to the top of the mountain!
In order to have what he needed when he visited Masada, Herod had several large storage halls built to store supplies.
This is where Herod's palace was built, right on the side of the mountain.

Back to the Roman seige. The way they were able to conquer the Jews at Masada was to build a ramp up the mountain and push a ram up the ramp. They lit the entrance gate on fire, then rammed it, breaking down the gate. However, before the Romans broke down the gate, all the Jews had committed suicide, so everyone was dead when they made their entrance. No slaves were gained that day, but the rebellion of the Jews was destroyed. The picture above shows the ramp that they built.

We decided to try and find some good examples of how the salt crystals grow on everything that is in the lake. These 2 pictures were the best ones.

We went a little further down the road and discovered a salt factory. Salt is pouring off of both conveyor belts. Notice the tractor driving around on top of the mound of salt. Tomorrow, we head to Jerusalem and again, I don't know if I'll be able to blog from there.

Trip to Israel - Part 6

Today we drove to the Dead Sea. I was surprised to see that a lot of the countryside that we drove through reminded me a lot of Eastern WA, especially the wheat fields areas. One thing we saw that you don't see much of in Eastern Wa is signs like the one above...
...or animals in the field like those above. We saw several groups of camels standing in the countryside, but didn't see any trying to cross the road.

As we started down the road to the Dead Sea, we saw a sign that said we were 500 meters above sea level, then when we got down here we found the sign saying how far below sea level we were. Ken said that 400 meters below sea level is the same as 1430 feet.

Swimming in the Dead Sea is really weird! Actually I didn't try to swim after the first try because it was difficult to put my feet back down. I mainly just floated around in a sitting position. No matter how deep you go and I went out where I couldn't touch the bottom, your shoulders are still above water.

When you are able to touch the bottom, you are walking on salt crystals, like these. It was very hot today, 102 degrees is what the temperature read at a lifeguard tower that was displaying the time and temperature. I'm making this short tonight because the only internet access is in the hotel lobby and there is a guy singing very loudly right behind me and it is very annoying.