Broncos

Snippet from a conversation with my good friend, K.R.:

Me: We were on a ranch once, and my brother kept saying he wanted to ride a bucking bronco. Of course, as soon as he was on one and it jumped two inches, he was halfway off it again.

KR: Huh. I didn't know people rode cows.

Me: .... Come again?

KR: Your brother rode a bronco.

Me: Yes.....

KR: I didn't know people rode cows.

Me: Um, well a bronco is a horse.

KR: Really? Not cows?

Indiana Custer, Part III

Final installment: There were so many sites we saw during our two weeks of class and travel that I cannot possibly cover them all. So, I'll touch on some of the more meaningful ones that stuck out in my memory. 

Of course, there was the group baptism. 14 people in our group had never been baptized before or only as infants and wanted to declare their dedication to Christ. Since we were near the Jordan River, it seemed perfect to do it there. The second picture here is on a cliff near Nazareth overlooking the Jezreel Valley. What was cool there was when our tour guide went through story after story that took place there. "Over to the left is where Deborah and Barak assembled the Israelites to fight Sisera ... the river flooded and washed out the valley ... and there's En-Dor where Saul snuck around that hill in disguise ... Gideon encircled the Midianites' camp with merely 300 men ... Jesus raised a young man back to life as he was being carried to his funeral ...."

Across the Sea of Galilee here you see the sun setting behind the Cliffs of Arbel. Those cliffs contain a ton of caves where some rebels hid out during the Jewish Revolt in the 1st century. We got to climb down the steep side which was enormously fun! Some of the caves were still black from where the Romans had smoked out the rebels. The third picture here contains older ruins from the time of King Ahab (bad king but smart builder). It's the city of Hazor up in northern Galilee.

Speaking of Jewish rebels, they really did leave remnants everywhere. Here we're at Herodian, one of Herod the Great's fortresses that he could withdraw to when his enemies got too close. (Later, the revolters dug tunnels to hide in as well.) The next picture is another fortress way off in the distance: Masada, quite famous, too for what the Jewish rebels did there.

Masada is located in the Dead Sea Valley which is where these next three pictures were taken. That was a beautiful day! The view was tremendous (as you can see) even though it was about 108 degrees! We stopped at Qumran, which is the second picture, and could see from afar one of the caves in which most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. They weren't going to take us swimming, but we begged and begged to float around for a little bit, and they finally let us. It was such a unique experience because it really is hard to stand; you have to float. And if you flip over onto your stomach, it's nearly impossible to flip back. I think in this picture we have rocks on our bellies, and we're still not sinking. 

Back in Jerusalem! This is a shot from a walk we did along the walls of the Old City. You can see Damascus Gate which enters into the Moslem Quarter, and on Saturdays, the gate is turned into a marketplace. Finally, I watched the sun set over Jerusalem almost every night. It was easily one of the highlights of my day.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading and caring! :-)

Indiana Custer, Part II

So, I finally got my flashdrive back with some more pictures. On our way from the dig down to Jerusalem, we stopped at Megiddo. That stone circle in the first picture is actually a very ancient pagan altar. The second picture shows the water system of Megiddo, which is amazing when you think that people dug it nearly 3,000 years ago, and it's not only enormous, but goes down deep enough to store tons of water.

Here we made it to Jerusalem. We lived in the dorms at Jerusalem University College, and my favorite thing to do was sitting on the swing and watching people in the courtyard. The school is on Mount Zion just outside the Old City walls which you can see in the second picture. Sadly these walls "only" go back to Crusader times.

These next pictures were our first real day in Jerusalem and one of my personal highlights. When we rounded the corner and saw the golden dome, it was so surreal to actually see a building I had seen over and over so many times. But it was the Temple Mount itself, or what was still left from the 1st century, that was really fascinating. I couldn't believe the ruins still there, and learning all about what the place would have been like in Jesus' time just made it all so real. The picture of me touching the wall isn't the real Wailing Wall, but it was close and did have the rolled up prayers sticking out of the stones. The third picture is the cornerstone of the entire Temple Mount, and in the last one, I'm sitting on the Huldah Steps, the Southern and probably once main entrance up to the Temple Mount; they were known as a site where rabbis and teachers stood and lectured. In fact, there are records of Gamaliel (Paul's tutor) being here.

Putting up pictures is hard work and takes time. Sorry, but it's late, so you'll have to wait for more ... again. Thanks!

Indiana Custer

I only have pictures from Week 1, but I thought I might as well post some. So, here you see us at the archeaological excavation just north of the Sea of Galilee. First our whole group and then some of the girls on my team. We had to get up super early in order to not have to work in the heat of the day, but we had gorgeous sunrises.

The archeaologist is pretty sure the site can be identified as Bethsaida, the hometown of Peter, Andrew, and Philip, three of Jesus' disciples. Even though the site is no longer directly on the lake's shores, they've found plenty of fishing tools including heavy weights and anchors to suggest at one time the lake was closer.

Our job was to move a lot of dirt and rocks. I got assigned to the sifter, which I LOVED! Every bucket we carried up to the sifters was an opportunity for a really cool find!

The only not-so-fun part was having to shovel out the sand from underneath the sifters every 30 minutes or so. That was back-breaking, but we tried to make it fun.

Since they opened up a new locus (square for digging) for our group, we spent the first two days moving rocks and digging through top-layer stuff. Finally we got down to some 1st century Roman finds. Even so, we did better with more "recent" discoveries. Some of our cool finds (besides gobs and gobs of everyday pottery) included a piece of an oil lamp rim (actually old), a 1962 Syrian coin (hey, I found that one, so let me enjoy my glory), and an 18th cenutry Austrian coin (can you imagine how excited I was to get to help read it with the archeaologist!!!):

Finding coins was always highlight! At the end of every day, all the finds - pottery, flint, fishing weights, grinding stones, coins, Roman glass, animal bones, and anything else special - was washed and taken back to camp where we had "pottery reading" every afternoon. This was when the archaeologist, Rami Arav, went through each locus' find and took out the things he wanted to keep, dated them, and explained the significance for us. Here you see me sorting and counting a locus' find (sometimes over 1,000 pieces of pottery!), Rami explaning some pieces to us, and the photographer taking pictures of the ones worth keeping:

Well, that's most of the stuff from the excavation. More of Israel to come.