On to Jericho

The last couple days have been great. Yesterday I ended up not going to Tel Aviv. Instead I went to the Western Wall again and wrote a little note to stick in a crevice in the wall. I also went to the YMCA Carillon and heard the carillon bells played and played a few notes myself. Then we went to Shaban's store on Christian Quarter Road. He loves us because we are BYU students. This time he gave us this amazing humus and homemade warm pita bread. It was quite possibly the best food I have had since coming here. It was absolutely amazing. I also bought some skirts so I can bear the heat of Egypt a little better when we go there in a next week.
Today we had another field trip. It was fantastic. We went to Jericho! It was so hot. I was sweating buckets. Well we went to the Samaritan Inn Museum. There was a dwelling that they had found on that spot that is believed to be a inn of some sort not necessarily the one in the parable. There was a museum on the site with Byzantine mosaics and ruins of a Byzantine church that had been built on the site to commemorate the parable of the Good Samaritan. Then we went to the tell of Jericho where the ancient city of Jericho would have been. We saw an excavation done by Katherine Kenyon that found a Neolithic Tower dated at 8000 BC. I saw the oldest man made structure on the Earth. I can't believe it. Jericho was so pretty. The tell was just a big mound of dirt but neat to imagine the city that once stood there. We also saw an excavation that showed a glacis that would have supported the wall and also piles of fallen bricks that looked to have fallen down--evidence of the walls of Jericho falling down flat when after the children of Israel circled around them for seven days. Then we went to the Zaccheus tree. It was a big sycamore fig tree--not the exact tree but one very similar to it. Then we went to the ruins of Herod's winter palace. Here is where he came in the winters to get away from the rain of Jerusalem and this is also where he assassinated his son and brother-in-law. Lastly we went to the Wadi Qelt Overlook and saw the Wadi Qelt--a river that travelers followed on their way from Jerusalem down to Jericho. This is where the Good Samaritan story would have taken place and where Christ would have made his lonely trip back home from Zaccheus' house to Lazarus, Mary & Martha's house in Bethany which is nearby Jerusalem. It was a great field trip but it was so hot. So much hotter there than in Jerusalem. Jericho is also 850 feet below sea level while Jerusalem is about 2500 feet above sea level. Well I'll try to post pictures sometime soon.