20 March 2006

Today we went to St George's Monastery, Jericho, driving up the Roman road to Emmaus, Upper and Lower Beth Heron, and High Point of Gibeon. I'll leave you with some pictures along the way, but i'll try not to bore you.

First was St George's pictured just above in the Wadi Qelt ('q's without 'u's make sense here). This monastery is Eastern Orthodox and built in the 17th century but the site was founded about 480 but destroyed and abandoned by the Persians in 614. Really a beautiful place and quite a hike down, which made the the hike up purely aweful. In the picture you can see a small cross across the valley, and that is where we started.

(above are candles holders hanging from the ceiling)

The monastery is beautifully decorated and the monks are quite nice, as i guess you would expect of monks. I dont think i ever truely understood an oasis until i came to this country. There is desert for miles and miles, and then there is one spring, and palm trees everywhere. Also preserved in this monastery, and on display, are the bone of many of the monks from its first years of existence which i personally feel is a bit creapy.

All day we were driving on a bus (7am-6pm), interesting the majority of the time you can still see Jerusalem or the Mt of Olives which has three distinct towers. The whole country is so small, and especially narrow right where we are, that we have yet to be more than a day's walk away.

The other big stop for our day was Jericho. Though Jericho is known as the oldest city in the world, so we went and looked at some old bricks. There are two sets of ruins of note, one from just around the bc/ad transition and the other from the stone age . The former are pictured above, note the 'housing' surrounding the site. At Jericho we find ourselves back in the West Bank where the feel is much different than Jerusalem. East Jerusalem has a distinct European feel where the Old City is largely religious and tourist: in neither is there significant poverty so far as i have seen. The West Bank, however, requires you to pass through security (such that will not allow many folk from the West Bank) and is separated by a large and growing concrete wall. It is a difficult place to visit. While the site above is not on most tourist trips, it has great archeological significance, and from the time we got out of the bus we were followed by local kids. Two yr high boys offering us rides on donkeys, and about five younger kids just begging for anything. Some of them live in the shantys you can see in the above picture. I cannot imagine living in such a place, and several times a day groups like us get of a huge air conditioned bus all carrying cameras and bliggin things. Some of our group (not ones not from my school) were complaining about the kids and telling the kids that they themselves were poor college students. Granted they are a bit of a nusannce and make it more difficult to listen to the prof when they are begging and grabbing anything of yours that is shiney or loose, but what else can we expect them to do? There were a few in my group (Mike and Amy) that choose not to walk over to the site and instead to talk and visit with the kids. Another (Jessica in the picture above) who is arguably more given to kids than i, played with the kids and was talking for quite some time on the bus about their smiles. It is a difficult situation and cannot simply be fixed by tourists emptying their pocket upon everyone who asks for a shekle, but it seems that there would be soemthing to do.

below are some other pictures, arguably as heart rending as the ones above. The place we stopped to eat was in the desert east of Jerusalem where Jesus is said to have been tempted: hence the temptation theme. Sorry Boyd, i didn't have money for the place mats. gag me