Hey everyone -- we are having trouble posting pictures (I think we have reached our limit on this page) so go to Oldcitymennos2.blogspot.com in a couple days for more !!!
Lori

Minarets of the Mohammed Ali Mosque in Cairo

 

After about 12 hours of waiting in lines and arguing with people, we finally have our visas. 

A picture for Ron Krahn....

There are old caves where monks used to live in this pic. See this last set of photos in reverse. That is, go to the last photo posted from this new batch of photos and work backwards. 

And here we are at Marsaba. The monks here divide their daily time in 4 periods of 6 hours. 6 hours of prayer, 6 hours of work, 6 hours of free time, and 6 hours of sleep. They collect the rain water and there is no electricity. Currently there are 15 monks at the monastry....50 years ago there was about 80.

A bedouin camp. 

 

We ran into this nice old Arab shephard herding his sheep on the side of this cliff (look closely). The cliff is the Kidron Valley. Apparently when monastic life had reached its peak, monks could be found living in caves all the way from Jerusalem to Marsaba. 

Wild camels--funny looking beasts aren't they? 

 

Pretty nice scenery....In winter the desert is cold, but in summer deathly hot. The stark and empty landscape is intriguing to me, but.......if faced with the opportunity to go in summer, I think I'll always opt out for icetea and a beach 

 

 

Well, I just got back from a little excursion in the Judean desert. A couple of us from the Ecole Biblique went to Marsaba, which is a 4th century monestry. Next to Saint Cathrines in the Sinai, it is the oldest, continually occupied monestry in the world. In total, we walked about 30 kms through desert and crossed many intesting things along the way, including an Israeli tank base and their "playground." Good thing it was Shabbat..... All the pictures to our little excursion are posted above (duh).

Alright, we are now in the new millenium.....we just downloaded Skype (www.skype.com), so call us for free if you have high speed internet. Our skype name is "pennerjeremy" so just search for the name and give us a ring.

If you want to see an interesting Israeli movie, check out The Syrian Bride. I had to write about it for a class project (in Hebrew!).

In other news, it took a week and a half for our laundry to dry. Mold is growing faster than--I'm not really sure--but its growing fast. Jerusalem is brutal in winter--but, on the plus side, it will be warm again pretty soon.

That's all

The (sometimes surprising) Sights and Sounds of Jordan...

Hey everyone. We are back from Jordan and had such a great time with Eric and Traci. In all it was about a four hour process getting there -- between different buses, taxi's and the border crossing -- but everything went pretty smoothly. We headed to Jerash our first day to see the best preserved Roman City in all of the Middle East. It was also part of the Decapolis at one time and has several temples, two Roman theatres, and a massive Hippodrome.

Below: Jer and Eric at one of the Temples...

This picture of Jer gives you an idea of how big all of the pilllars actually are...

A fountain in front of the temple to Artemis

Below: Jer on the cardo (main street)

One of the more puzzling sights... an Arab man playing the bagpipes in the very empty ruins of a Roman theatre.

The "scene" or stage of the theatre...

A highlight of our trip was Eric's big jump in the Northern theatre. He had set up his camera to take a group photo and was going to jump from the seats to the stage in order to make it into the photo in time. Traci was quite worried he wasn't going to make it all the way, and so decided to take a video. He did make it over the gap, but then wiped out on the wet stage. Traci got it on video, but that is on their website. We were laughing so hard... here is the picture of us taken by the timer after Eric wipes out...

Anyway, we headed off to Amman shortly after this. Amman is the capital of Jordan and is incredibly densely populated. The population has exploded from 1.5 million to 2.5 million since many people have settled here to escape the mess in Iraq. Below is a picture of just part of a hillside in Amman...

That's a big flagVisiting more ruins: The gate to a palace in the citadel...

Jer having some fun in the remains of the Temple of Hercules...

We also visited the archeological museum on site which to Jer's surprise and delight, had hidden in a back corner, the Book of Noah, and the Genesis Apocryphon (from the Dead Sea scrolls). We then headed towards the Roman theatre which is located down the hill, right in the middle of the city. This is the largest Roman theatre we have seen yet. You can see Traci (in blue), and I (in white) on the right side at the bottom of the theatre.

After the theatre closed we decided to check out a Jordanian Mall (Mecca Mall). We were so surprised -- it was nothing like an Israeli mall -- there were predominately english named, "western" looking stores (although only about 3 we had heard of; ie. Esprit and Benetton) and to our surprise a starbucks, and a cinnabon???

Traci enjoying a treat back at the hotel...

Tired after a long day and a few games of Dutch Blitz!!

On Saturday we headed to the King Abdullah Mosque which is the largest in Amman.

Above: Traci, Eric, and I just outside the mosque.

Then we visited a cute little church across the street...

Another surprising sight was the Applebee's down the road. We decided to abandon our quest for authentic Arabic food (which we eat at home all the time anyway) and headed there for a familiar lunch. It felt like I was on Pembina Hwy -- everything was exactly the same, except of course the waitresses wore head coverings...


Our second to last stop was in Madaba to see a very famous mosaic. It was discovered in St. George's Church and is the oldest known map of the "Holy Land". When we arrived, there was a funeral just getting underway, but the service was held up so we were allowed in for a quick look. They had just covered the mosaic up with a carpet and during the service, would allow people to walk across it -- we couldn't believe it! Jer found part of Egypt under this piece of carpet...

And our last stop was Mount Nebo, where God showed Moses the "promised land" just before the Israelites conquered Jericho (sans Moses). From the mountain top you can see Jericho, the Dead Sea, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Qumran, and the Jordan River...

And then back to the border -- after 3 hours of questions, showing our passports numerous times, etc... we made it through the border to catch the last bus of the night back to Jerusalem. Good times.