Devin & Laura

Probably the most fun wedding of the year.

Last Day at Tel Katzir

Tommorow we are leaving the kibbutz to travel for our final week. We'll be flying back on Saturday the 13th. We fly to Frankfurt, then leave Frankfurt at 9:40am and arrive in Portland at 11:20am. So on the clock it's 1 hour and 40 minutes, and in reality it's a 10 hour flight. Crazy.

Abandoned Kitties

Three Panoramics

Jerusalem

Bethlehem
The View from the top of Kibbutz Tel Katzir

Here, there, and everywhere.

Sunsets in Israel

Dinner With Salech, Violet, Russia, and Boschiach

We were told we should go visit this particular family on the kibbutz. They are Arab, and it's apparently perfectly normal to just show up right around dinner time in their culture, which is what we did. I would have felt comfortable with this, but there were five of us, and I wondered if it wouldn't be pushing our welcome. I was quickly proved wrong. It was a wonderful evening, and neat to experience their culture, food, and wonderful children.

Mmmmm. Kabob. And yes, that is spaghetti. It seemed a little out of place amongst all the other diverse foods.

Bekah "enjoys" some Arabic coffee; black with sugar and cardamom. I am growing fond of it, as we are often treated to it from people around the kibbutz while we are working.

This barbeque was periodically kept going with a hair dryer.
Electric bellows...what a great idea!

Zippori Panoramic

Chickens!

Wheeling them in. We dumped a couple hundred thousand...
they 'll eventually have a quarter of a million chicks!
Tossing 'em in. Their bodies are soft, and combined with the sawdust
on the ground, they're not hurt by this.
Behold, the masses!
The yellow round things are feeders, the red ones are drippers.
These are raised and lowered at appropriate feeding times.
These chicken barns are about a football field long (and there's 6 of them!).

A Couple Random Pictures

Rebekah floating the dead sea. It is such strange and unique feeling. You can easily take a paper or book out and never get it wet, as you never go deeper than a foot or two.
This is a picture of the sunrise from the top of Masada. This was preceding the panoramic photo below...

This is on top of the Golan Heights, right by the Syrian Border.

We saw this desert owl when we were traveling through the Jezre'el valley.

Dead Sea Panorama

This is from the top of Mas(z)ada, an amazing hilltop fortress that was held by the Zealots until the Romans finally came and held it under siege. It's practically a cliff on all sides (1400ft), and the Romans could not capture it unless they built a road to the top. After 3 years the Romans made it to the top only to find that the Zealots (over a thousand of them) had preferred to commit mass suicide rather than be taken as slaves (or worse) by the Romans. From the top we watched the sun rise over the Dead Sea, and thought of the weightiness of the history of here.

(more from this trip to come....)

Pictures and Info

We took a trip to some interesting locations last week, one of them being Nazareth.

One of our stops was a preserved ancient town within Nazareth, complete with in character performers. Touristy, but still intriguing.
Here is Rivkah, "grinding" some olives. In taking the picture I didn't realize that there was actually ground olive residue on the stone, and leaning against it, I was slimed with olive oil and pulp.


Ironically, we had a 4th of July party in Israel, and invited friends and neighbors to partake in some traditional "American" food (hamburgers, chips, beans, and apple pie). Below, some of the ladies take part in a Chubby Bunny game. For those not familiar with this torturous event, it involves stuffing marshmellows into your mouth until you can no longer say "chubby bunny". It's gross.



Here are a couple friends from that night.



I have dubbed this week "The Week of the Scorpion", as we've had two scorpion encounters. First of all, I was startled by one crawling toward me across the bedroom floor. I caught him, then asked the girls if they wanted to see him. They didn't, but we did have a big debate whether to set him free or squish him. The first one went free.
Encounter number two: as I was picking up my guitar case and slinging it over my back, I noticed a slight movement on the part that would have been on my back, and paused to investigate. Another scorpion! This one died (as pictured below). We were informed that these darker ones aren't deadly, just ridiculously painful. It's the lighter colored ones that you really need to watch out for, as they can be fatal.

On that note, I'm done. We're going to the Dead Sea this week, so we should have some good stories soon...