Jerusalem

The Knesset is Israel’s legislative branch of government and some of us went there today for a little tour and something to do on a fabulous free day. The prime minister is the main leader, but there is a president too that that prime minister elects, who doesn’t have a lot of political significance. There are quite a few different parties. The Knesset (pronouced kah-ness-it) has 120 different members and is pretty much the main power in Israel.

with the street sign that points to the Knesset on a beautiful sunny Jerusalem day

picture of the main building, which had some amazing artwork by Marc Chagall inside

Carly and I and our sweet, camel leather, 50 shekel, 12 dollar Jerusalem cruisers, as we were waiting for the taxi

Today is the day to celebrate love. I am celebrating.…….

I love my most favorite brother in the entire world. Of all of the brothers in the world, this one is my favorite. I love it when he emails or calls me. It completely makes my day. I love his geniusness. What a smart boy that Jakey Bob is. I love fishing with my dear brother. He is one of the greatest captains and I love watching him. I love his Sigler mobile, and how he can pull it off like no one else can. I love going on adventures to haunted houses and taking old bikes from them with my dear brother. Jakey Bob is quite a cool dude. My life would have such a void without him. I love when he beats me up. It is pretty fun stuff. I like to try to do what I can to attack him back, but am usually uneffective. I love when he shoves nasty beef stick salami in my face at New Years. I have fun fun with dearest Jakey boy. I love little N Girl. Natalie Ann Keintz is the cutest little girl. She brings so much joy to my life. My goodness she is so cute. I can’t get over it. I am so happy she is in my life. I am so blessed that I got to see her come into the world. I love her big toe. I love her little haircut. I love how she’s a carnivore. What a crazy cutie patootey little girl. Oh my, I love her so much.
I love Baby Katy. Katy Lynn Keintz is the most precious and sweet soul that I currently know of in the world at this present moment. I love this little baby. I love holding her. I love watching her sleep. I love her little who nose. I love her baby fingers. I love her baby toes. I love my baby niece. I love my Carlita lobster. Carla is the greatest friend in the world. Honestly, she is the best. I love her so much. She makes me so happy. Every single time we are together is pure happiness. We are girl soul mates, bosom friends, best friends. I love how similar we are. I love how good she is to me. I love how we have stayed best friends even though we haven’t been around each other much for a long time. But everytime we are back together, it’s exactly like it was in elementary, and middle school, and a little bit of high school, and it is amazing. You don’t come across good friends like this every day. I love this beautiful girl so so much. I love me some Cala Cala.

Of course I love Robby Reeves too! How could you not love this cool kid? I love how happy he is. He is always content with whatever he haves and whatever he gets. He is happy with whatever life gives him. He wants others to be happy to. He always wants everyone to be happy. Rob is so good. I love him. I miss being around him. He makes me happy. I am so happy he is in my life. I love Robby Reeves, that crazy dude.

I love love.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

I love Friday the 13th! What’s with people saying it’s a bad luck day anyway? It’s the greatest day ever. And in the history of my experiences at the JC, it’s definitely the best night ever.

We had a Friday the 13th dance party/dress up crazy weirdo party. Carly, Lauren, and I did whatever we could to out hair, loaded up on the eye makeup, put on black shirts, and majorly rocked the genie pants. Uno word, fabulous.

What pretty girlies!

Aren’t you absolutely in love with genie pants?

I love dance parties. I love dress up parties. I love eyeliner all over my eyes. I love buns all over my head. Tonight was a good night.

Everyone looked so crazy good. Emilie is definitely included in that bunch of fabulous dressed/make upped people.

…………

After the dance party was over, Nycole, Lauren, Chelsie, and I saw two fine boys with a flashlight on the search for a “cave.” So we foolishly and naively followed them. Clearly we were slightly frightened to be wandering around outside at midnight. This is us in the cave/place under the JC.

AHHH!!! We took a picture of the empty room to get some more light and there was a creepy man just sitting against the wall! We ran screaming up the stairs as fast as our little leggies would go.

Only to found out shortly after that it was Jeff sitting there like a creeper with a pillowcase over his head. Matt, Josh, and Jeff just wanted to scare some helpless girls that evening. They got us goooooood.

……………..

We went back to our room and I took all of my little buns out. This hair was the result.

Lauren and I decided we hadn’t taken enough pictures for the night, so we had a mini photo shoot in the bathroom. Fun fun.

Isn’t Friday the 13th the greatest?

Wiiiiicked long field trip today, called the Shephelah FT. We left at 8 am and didn’t get back until 6. But we went to where Samson of Samson and Delilah were, and we went to the spot where David and Goliath happened, and we went to sweet caves, and crawled through caves. Oooh, and I bought little I ♥ Israel colored pencils. But not only that, but I got some excellent pictures of bugs here in the Holy Land.

pretty little baby flower

Marianne and I. I love that amazing girl. Behind us on the hill was where Samson lived, and he would come down to where we were and party it up. This is in Beth Shemesh.

I miss flowers in my hair so badly, but I’ve always got the parrot earrings. They never let me down.

Big ol’ ant carrying something pokey to the green.

another ant carrying the goods

weirdo bug with antlers/pinchers

Millipede! Ah!!!

just chillin’ in some ruins in the Sorek Valley I think, that Samson probably chilled at too

headless

Next stop: Lachish. more ruins. This is me and the most lovely Cate.

Stefanie Tanner, another amazing JC-ite

Feet!

in a chalky cave tomb thing

gotta love those cave photo ops

cool peeps posing it up

So at this place, there were these signs hanging in the trees, and I don’t understand their purpose.

more weirdo freaky bugs

huge creepy beetle… ahhh!!!

heart carved into the chalky cave

I love trees.

At the Bell Caves, where we stood in a circle and sang hymns. I love that hymn singing.

more cave posing… what good looking boys.

There was this random Mona Lisa thing, so I just had to stick my face in there. Cool beans eh?

Next we went to the Valley of Elah, where the David and Goliath story took place. “Now this man was giant.”

I love wrists.

Stefanie building the Goliath statue so that we could fling rocks at it with our little slings, just like David.

At Micah’s cave… crawling through little passages.

Then there were all these pigeon holes after going through the passage way. Thanks to my sista sista for the flashlight by the way. It was a life saver.

Then you we had to climb up the wall with the help of pigeon holes and fine young men… kinda scary.

Here’s Jayne! The last part of our spelunking adventure involved shimmying out on our backs in the tiniest little passage way ever. It was slightly frightening, definitely. It’s called the birth canal.

After I successfully made it out of the birth canal… yay! So happy to see the light of day again.

That spelunking in Micah’s Caves will most definitely make you a wee bit dirty.

Yep, we’ve got some laundry to do.

We have the coolest field trips around here. I loved going to where David and Goliath happened. It was way cool. I loved being where the Philistines came back and returned the Ark of the Covenant. I loved taking pictures of bugs. I loved the I ♥ Israel colored pencils I bought today. I loved Brother Wilson guiding us around and bestowing upon us some of his great wisdom. I loved crawling through the caves. I loved playing with the coolest peeps all day. And of course, as always, I loved coming back to the JC.

Another field trip day! Today we went to Jericho, the oldest and lowest city in the world. It’s 11,000ish years old and 850 feet below sea level. We saw a wicked old tree and the oldest manmade stone structure, and we went to a monastery where the rock that Christ was tempted at, and we went to the site of Herod’s Winter Palace.

Kara and I at this wicked old tree that has significance that I don’t remember.

Reading the Jericho story at Jericho. Whoa, these field trips are the coolest.

The oldest man made stone structure that is like 10,000 years old or something.

Moon and Chelsea living it up in Jericho! Yay for Bible stories!

I bought some love nuts too, aka sycamore nuts. But my oh my they were wicked good. I could go for some right this second. Mmmm… yummy!

At the Quruntul Monastery, where we had to dress very conservatively and they told us to cover our heads too, but I don’t know how necessary that one was.

 beautiful artwork inside the monastery

They believe this is the stone where Christ was tempted by Satan when he was fasting for 40 days. It’s so cool being here.

view of JERICHO from the monastery on the mountain side

Behind us were a bunch of caves where the people at the monastery would go and seclude themselves and kind of rededicate themselves to the Lord.

Matt 360ing at the site of Herod’s Winter Palace

more desert wilderness

Field trip today was cool. I went to the oldest and lowest city in the world, which is the coolest of cool. And the love nuts I bought today were so exceptionally delish. Love me some love nuts. 

I woke up Thursday morning after sleeping 11 hours and felt so sick. My body was just sore and exhausted, my throat was sore, I was coughing, and I was full of snot. Despite being sick and feeling like death, I still went around on the tours and things because I didn’t want to miss out. But after I was out, I wish I would just stayed in.
     

    

The first place we went was the Karnak Temple complex, which is supposedly amazing. I couldn’t give you any details though, because I felt like crap and had no energy to walk around. We also went to the Luxor Temple. I took very few pictures that day and I don’t know which pictures are of which, because I had zero desire to be there. All of the temples and columns and statues and hieroglyphs became the same to me anyway after seeing so many. And all I wanted to do was sleep and lay down. 

 

This is a picture of a chair, one that I wanted to sit in and not move from for the rest of the day. But instead of doing that, I just sat on the ground in the dirt as our Habibi guide talked to us.

 

an obelisk at Karnak or Luxor

Here’s the great Ramses II, in charge of lots of building projects. I love that he’s smiling.

Don’t know where this is, Karnak or Luxor, since all the temples and all the hieroglyphs were the same after I’d seen so many and while I was feeling like death. I didn’t take hardly any pictures on this day. But hooray! Pharaoah and his wife are the same height. She’s not just a little afterthought that goes up to his knees.

After the exhausting visits to the Karnak and Luxor temples, we rode horsey carriages back to the hotel. Here’s my roomie Shamra and the driver of their carriage.

That night we rode some train back to Cairo. I wished we were riding on the Hogwarts Express, but instead it was just a regular, non-magical train. I pretty much just took some drugs for feeling like crap and then I slept the whole ride. From what I hear though, people didn’t have very good experiences on the train.

 

Back in Cairo we went to the Egyptian Museum, where I saw a lot a lot of oooooolllllllddddd mummies and a lot of other cool things. But we couldn’t take any pictures, not that I wanted to anyway. All I wanted to do was sleep.

 

Then we stopped at an Egyptian bazaar and shopping place in Cairo. I didn’t even get off the bus. I was so exhausted and not feeling well that I slept away my valuable Egyptian shopping time. So many pashminas to buy too…

  

After the museum and shopping, we went to the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch, where I didn’t want to be and where I wanted to be in bed instead. I didn’t want to eat, weird.

Unfortunately I had no appetite again. I did have some soup though. Mmmm… I love soup, especially Holly Girl’s yummy yumkins soups.

 

Saturday I woke up feeling much better! I was still totally sick, but just with a normal old cold. Yay. I no longer walked around and felt all dizzy. I just felt snotty and stuffy and was hacking up mucus quite often. But oh, I was feeling much much better. I wanted to take pictures that day even. I think I was maybe feeling less sick because it was my dear sister’s birthday.

 

31st of January, 1982 – Holly girl came into the world. Happy Birthday to my most amazing sister! She’s such an excellent sister to me and I love her so much. And I’m so excited to go home in three months to see her, and her little girlies, and to eat her vegetable chowder! Yay! Yummy yumkins. Happy Birthday, Sister!

 

We went to a mosque and some churches on this lovely January 31st. The mosque was pretty amazing. Here’s a few pictures of it.

We all had to take our shoes off inside since it’s such a holy place of worship to Muslims. 

Then we went to this Christian church. It was a church where there was a cave underneath where Mary and Joseph and Jesus sought refuge way back in the day, I think. I don’t really know. There’s so many things about all the places we went and all of these facts are just mumble jumbled together in my head.

The last few days in Egypt were jam packed of course, and I felt awful. But it was so amazing being there and seeing everything anyway. What a lucky ducky I am. Happy Birthday Holly girl!

After shopping, we went back to the hotel for dinner at like 8 pm. But I was starting to feel like I was dying and I had no appetite whatsoever, so I just went to bed. I was sleepy and exhausted and did not feel so good. But Luxor is pretty cool beans.