Saturday School Trip

Yesterday I went on the weekly trip that is planned by the university for all the language center students. This week the trip was to a northern city along Sea of Galilee, or rather, the ruins of a city along the Sea of Galilee. This is the same city that is mentioned in Luke 8. Although the wind was cold and it was cloudy it was still a gorgeous place to visit. The grass was green and the flowers were coming up and the views were incredible. I loved the sense of touching/seeing/experiencing a piece of history like this.

Here are just a few pictures that I took:

A shepherd with his sheep along the side of the road

Most sites like this in the U.S. would be cordoned off and restricted, but here we had almost free rein to explore to our hearts content....which of course we did. :) This is in the amphitheater. 

These flowers were growing all over the place

The road stretching through the site...it was surprisingly intact for how old it is. I'm not positive, but I'm guessing it might have led down to the Sea of Galilee from the town at the top of the hill.

We came upon this random basement-type thing as we were exploring and it gave a nice respite from the wind. I guess it might have been a crypt or something at one point, although I'm not positive on that.

The poppies were coming out here, and I have heard they will appear here in the city as well, although they haven't come up yet. 

A birds-eye view of the Sea. Directly below us were the ruins, then the Sea of Galilee, with the Golan Heights somewhere close and the Syrian border also super close. I think we could see across the border but we didn't know what we were looking at. :)

The town across the Sea is what we believe to be Tiberias, also mentioned in the Bible. And that would definitely be on the Israeli side of the border so you can see how close we were. :) Someday I'm going to get a bit closer to the Sea than we got yesterday. 

These two women were cooking their lunch when we wandered past so we stopped to say hi and for me to ask about taking a picture. :) We chatted briefly in Arabic (I didn't understand everything they said though) and then the woman with the white scarf whipped out a bottle of Pepsi and poured us both a glass. I think they would have fed us to if we had accepted. :)

There weren't many tourists there and it's such a big place that when we got off the beaten trail there was really only the two of us. We could hear the birds singing and the wind blowing through the olive trees.

It was such a nice change from the city. Living in such a big city I don't realize it, but I really am a country girl at heart. I much prefer places like this and places like Kalona to big cities. :)

My friend has some more pictures that I'll get from her soon and then I'll put them up here too.

I hope you all have a wonderful week and congrats to the IMS guys on making it to State!!! Go Reggie!