Highlights of Week One - Jerusalem, Part One

Shalom from Jerusalem!

Y'all have no idea how many places we've been and seen this week! We do so much during the end of  the day that it's hard to keep it all straight.

Our schedule is: breakfast at 6:30
                           devotions at 8:00
                           departure 8:15
Then we walk and walk and walk and WALK, until around 4:30 usually.
                            dinner 6:30
                            lecture 7:30
                                               after lecture.............CRASH!


I am going to be very brief and hit the highlights for this week. Everything we see here is still new and exciting, but we have been to a lot of well-known places this week also. I cannot cover them all because my camera ran out of battery a couple days this week. I am so thankful to finally be able to charge it with the help of a friend here. Now I'm praying that the camera has enough memory for the whole trip.

First Night's Menu:

All of the meals served at Mt. Zion hotel are Mediterranean buffet style like this. We certainly are not starving. *Note of interest: This is a kosher hotel = cannot mix dairy and non-dairy. We have dairy for breakfast and no dairy at dinner. I don't know how they make the desserts.

We called the first day "Grave Day."

HEROD'S FAMILY TOMB

I think this tomb is a great example of a 1st century tomb. You can see the round stone behind the entrance that would have been rolled to close the tomb. 

HOLOCAUST MUSEUM - YAD VASHEM

(cried through the whole thing)

We were not allowed to take pictures in the actual museum, so these are pictures from the surrounding grounds and building. 

Janusz Korczak refused sanctuary for himself when the SS came to annihilate 

the children in his orphanage. He died with them instead. 

Train car used to round-up Jews. Imported from Europe.
New Israeli Defense Force soldiers finding shade underneath the tracks.

Statue memorializing Jewish insurrection and 
resistance during the holocaust.

Tomb to the six million.

Maybe my favorite part of the holocaust museum was the memorial to the children. Inside a pitch black room were lit 6 candles, each representing a murdered million. However, fragmented mirrors from floor to ceiling of the building split the flames into millions of tiny, surrounding points of light. This was beautiful. It was also one of the most sobering and frightening exhibits for me. 

GETHSEMANE

    

We were informed by Arnold that the "Garden of Gethsemane" would have actually been a large area of olive trees that were specially grown so their oil could be used in the temple. Only a small part of this "garden" remains today but it is beautiful. The olive tree pictured at bottom right was very interesting to me. As the tree gets old, new shoots grow from the tree to keep it alive.

GARDEN TOMB

- Golgotha -    ...........................

Many of my pictures from this trip turned out blurry, but it was a special trip. We were allowed to enter the tomb though our guide is skeptical that this was indeed the place of Jesus death and burial. We later visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher which is believed to mark the accurate place of Jesus crucifixion and 3-day burial. I do not have any pictures of that trip and am kind of glad. The Catholic Church has desecrated the spot with their "sanctification."

Okay - That's the end of Part One! My next post will come soon with some of the serious/famous places that we've been as well as more basics on life in Israel......such as hand washing clothes!