Day 78

My little room in the Kibbutz

Whitney, Lindsay, and me on the Sea of Galilee

2000 year old boat

Tabgha

View from Mount of Beatitudes

Beatitudes with Lauren and Maddie

Teaching by the Sea of Galilee next to the Mount of Beatitudes

Sea of Galilee with Kaite

Sea of Galilee

The synagogue in Capernaum

Capernaum with Whitney, right behind us is excavated
completely to the time of Jesus. So he could have actually
walked in that spot.

The Modern church built over Peter's house.

Inside the Modern Church with Lauren, you can look through
the floor into Peter's house.

The oldest depiction in Israel of the Arc of the Covenant.

Capernaum! Thomas, me, Whitney, Caleb, Katharine, Kimberly

Kursi

Kursi with Brielle and AnnaLeah

Tuesday. The 15^th of November.

Breakfast started at six-thirty this morning, but one of my favorite roommates was in our teeny-tiny bathroom for half an hour getting ready with the door closed. Eventually she got out, but then three of us still had to get ready. I am not a fan of this. I’m having a hard time with the roommates I got. Who ever decides on the roommate list obviously hates me. We hurried through breakfast then only my class had to be on the bus by 7:30, the other class had to stay at the hotel all day and have class. We drove for a couple minutes over to a port where we boarded this little boat. The boat men played us some super upbeat Christian songs, i.e. ‘My God is an Awesome God.’ Everyone was having a blast dancing on the boat and stuff. But I was not happy because of the whole roommate thing and the speaking thing. I’m just super stressed out. We stopped in the middle of the Sea of Galilee and had a lecture. On our way to shore a boat came by and made a few big waves and soaked two kids, it was pretty funny. Once we were at the other side we went to a little museum type thing where they have the Nof Ginosar ancient boat. It is a boat they found in the Sea that is over two-thousand years old. They spent about twenty years trying to preserve the boat to put it on display. Next we went to Tabgha, where Christ fed the two fish and five loafs of bread with the five thousand people. We went down to the shore here, had another lecture, took some pictures. We then went to the Mt. of Beatitudes, where Christ gave his sermon on the mount. We had another lecture and then had some free time to just sit. I really enjoyed this site, it had been grown into a really nice garden and was super peaceful. Once we left I was in a better mood, mainly because I decided on what I was going to speak on. I’m thinking of just talking about the beatitudes. We had another really short drive to Capernaum after. All of the sites are super close together, the longest time we spent on the bus at any one time was probably twenty-minutes. I was pretty excited for Capernaum because that is where I did my site report on. We ran into another Mormon tour group while we were there, they always know someone in our group. Capernaum is the place that Jesus spent the beginning of his ministry, it was his home town basically. He healed and blessed a ton of people here. I could write three more pages about it, but I’ll spare you. We got to see the two Synagogues and house of Peter. I also went and found the oldest known depiction of the Arc of the Covenant on a stone. Our professors didn’t tell us about it, so I felt pretty smart knowing what it was. We went to our last site at Kursi next. Kursi is the place where Jesus cast the evil spirits out of Legion and into the swine’s (pigs), who then ran into the ocean and drowned. We messed around there for a while because we were an hour ahead of schedule. Professor Huntsman had us run in a few pig races, which I did not participate in. But they were pretty funny. Also almost all of the girls drew mustaches onto our fingers and took pictures with them. Because a handful of the boys here are participating in no shave November and are sporting some nasty mustaches. Before we came out to Galilee there were posters all over the JC with campaigns for and against the facial hair. They are hilarious posters. Anyways we left Kursi and went back to Ein Gev. I sat on the beach for a while talking with Melissa, Whitney, and Leslie. Well really we were ‘speculating’ about couples, but then a few random kids walked by and wouldn’t leave so the conversation pretty much died. We then had dinner, which was pretty good. They have really good soup here. After dinner I worked on my computer for a little while, then we had a bonfire. We had smores and all sat around the fire. But there was eighty of us and a small fire, so it really wasn’t very warm. Some kids started telling scary stories, it was fun listening to them. But we have a handful of obnoxious kids that have to make comments about everything and kept ruining the stories. Despite those few kids it was still a good night. Once the bonfire was over I went to Whitney’s little shack to shower. Because I reeked of smoke and we have no warm water at our place, it is literally impossible to take a shower in my place without dying of hypothermia. I tried to get some of my reading done after that, but fell right asleep.