Happy Thanksgiving!!

We had a busy few days shopping and preparing for Thanksgiving this week...trying to find some traditional thanksgiving ingredients can be difficult in Israel -- we did chicken instead of turkey, and pomegranate instead of cranberries. Sara, Serena, Traci, (above) and I cooked most of the day at Traci's, and it turned out really well. We did severly miscalculate the gravy amount needed, notice below the excessive amount of gravy at the bottom left of the picture (which wasn't even all of it).

Our friends who joined us for thanksgiving, from left to right...Sara, Serena, Luke, Eric, Steve, (Jer), Audra, Amanda, and Traci.

Just a few more pictures from the weekend -- Steve, Serena, Jer and I attended the Christmas Bazaar held at the Redeemer church in the Old City, right by our place. It is a really big event and has a lot of crafts, really great food, a book sale and flea market inside the courtyard. I bought a really great apron at the flea market for 5 sheckles and Jer had some waffles for 2 sheckles each (about 50 cents).

Here are a few more pictures from the last week or two. We were bored one day and so we took a walk up the Mount of Olives just before sunset and took a few pictures. The church in the two pictures below is the Dormition Abbey. It is just outside the Old City walls.

We also headed out to Be'er Sheva this friday with two friends, Traci and Eric. It is the fourth largest city in Israel and is home to many Bedouin and Russian Immigrants. We visited the excavated old city of Be'er Sheva which was founded by Abraham and later was an important site for Solomon and King Hezekiah. It was a nice day in the Negev desert and we also had some fun shopping around the old city markets too.

I ended up chasing lizards for a while, Jer joined in. This one with Jer was pretty small, but the one below was about a foot and a half long (although it's hard to tell in the picture).

Below is Jer, Eric, and Traci heading way down into the old water system.

I guess that's all the pictures for today. I should have more by the end of the week.

Here are some pictures for Amanda of some of the Bedouin camps. The first picture is one camp in Egypt, the second just outside of Jerusalem, the third just outside of Be'er Sheva.