Here's Egypt, Day 1

Today is a day of rest at the center (9/25), which is nice because tomorrow and the next day are days of rest also. And possibly Monday. You can tell we need a lot of recuperation from our awesome adventures in Egypt. We're all so tired, but it was such a great trip. I think what I'm going to do is to write once a day in my blog for the next few days, and I'll document both that day and one of the days in Egypt, in a row. That way you can read about my week there and this coming week here. Plus, I probably won't have much to say about this week because we have a lot of classes and what not. So, here goes.

First day of the Egypt Trip 9/17/09:

On this day we were just traveling to Egypt. We didn't really get to Egypt until the 18th, but I will hopefully be able to do both days today, since I have free time before dinner (since it's our Sabbath :)) Anyway, we got up at 5:30, were on the bus by 6:30, and then we drove for an hour until we got to our first field trip stop: Beer-Sheeba. This is where Abraham lived, and where he dug a well, where he left from to go sacrifice Isaac, and actually a lot of other things. It was really interesting. We also got to go down into the Cistern system that they dug to keep their water, which is why we're all wearing yellow or white hard hats in our pictures. Okay, picture time!


This is Me, Kathryn, Lizzie, and Michelle before going into the site...


The first thing we saw was this well, which is a reconstruction of the one that Abraham built. It was pretty cool.

A tower that they've built so you can go up and overlook all the ruins. These ruins were way cool cause all the house walls and foundations were still up. That's pretty unusual for it to be this clean-cut.

This is me walking down into the cistern system (where they stored their water). Hence the hard hats that are way dorky :)

This is a reconstruction of the horned-altar that is described in the Old Testament. I say reconstructed because they were dismantled. It is actually made from the original stones, just rebuilt.

After that we went to a place called Sde Boker, which is an overlook of the Wilderness of Zin, where the children of Israel wandered for 40 years, and also David Ben Gurion's Grave, who was the first Prime Minister and first Defense minister of the State of Israel. He tried to start more of a community out in the harsh desert areas of Israel, and wasn't very succesful. Or at least after he died it went back to pretty much how it used to be.

Here are some pictures from there. The second one has Victoria, me, and Amanada. (The first is me and Kathryn...but you should know her face by now :) )

After that we went to a place called Tel Avdat. I don't know if I've told you guys, but a "Tel" is a city that is built on top of another city which was built on top of another city, and so on. They are archaeological marvels, and also puzzles because it's hard to excavate the lower levels without ruining the first levels. This tel was really cool cause it had a bunch of awesome ruins on top of it. They were ruins of Nambataean people, who were apparently really good stone workers, which is why the ruins are still there and still intact. They also date back to the time of Lehi and etc, which was pretty cool. Here are some fun pictures from there..


This is, from left to right, Victoria, Cathleen, me, Tonya, and Kathryn.

This is a baptismal font, they believe. And it's deep enough that they could be baptized by immersion....Pretty cool.

After that we got back on the bus and we went to tour a Kibbutz. (This is the first time that I've looked up the spelling. I've been spelling it "Caboots" cause that's how everyone pronounces it.) Basically what a Kibbutz is, is a utopian society where everyone works together and produces and they establish a place of complete unity. Obviously it isn't a perfect utopian society, and they receive an allowance to buy the "necessities that are unequal" (which is how it was explained to us) so everyone that likes music can buy that, or if people like more wine than others they can buy that, and etc. But they all have teams that they work on. There's the kitchen team for the cafeteria, and the field workers. The main thing they grow are dates. They actually gave us all a date to taste, and it was really interesting. The whole experience was very interesting. They told us about how you have to petition to get it, and then if you are okayed for a trial period you come to live and decide if you want to stay, while everyone decides if they want you there. Also, they're not extremists or anything, and everyone is free to come and go as they please. I just found it very interesting to tour it.

These are just pictures of an overlook of the Kibbutz. It's pretty big. In the top picture the stuff on the left is all cattle grounds. Apparently everyone told them there was no way they could raise cattle in such a barren land, and they wanted to prove that they could. I guess they have over 600 head of cattle now. They spray them down with cool water three times a day to keep them cool. Pampered cows.

After that we went to our hotel, which was another Kibbutz, I believe. The two busses we had both stayed at different Kibbutz, so we didn't see half of our group this night. Oh, I forgot. For dinner we ate at the Kibbutz Yotvata (the one we toured), where they raise cattle and are famous for their ice cream and chocolate milk. And a sample of ice cream came with dinner, it was heavenly!

Anyway, this day was really long with all the driving and stopping and getting off and everything, even though it seems short. It was also really fun.

Now I'll document yesterday, the 25th of September. Everyone mostly just stayed in yesterday and recuperated from being so worn out after a week of traveling so much. I got my laundry done, talked to a few of you, and then I did some reading homework. After dinner I worked out. They only really have bikes and weights in the gym area at the center, so I did a bike....Katy and Clayton, Kudos to you both. I did 16 or 17 miles though, I don't know if that's good? Or accurate, for that matter, but it made me feel good about myself :).