Sunshine Notes

Mikale

I love Saturdays. Don't get me wrong, the other days of waking up early and working all day and sitting in traffic and learning all there is to know about patience are good too, but for some reason it's nice to have something different for the weekend.
I got to see some great friends last night, spent some time in VA at Odie's for dinner and then Camille and Melissa's for a birthday party. Arlington holds a very special place in my heart, i just feel good when I'm down there. It's definitely the people- my friends are so good to me and I feel lucky to have what I have here in MD as well as down there.

I know it's a lame way to report back about the trip but here is a day's worth of events and some more pics :)

Dec 24, 2008 Ein Gev, Israel 7:00am

Dude, this is crazy! I'm reading Mark 8 where Christ enters onto a ship, when he walked on the sea, and I'm looking out my window at the very place it happened. It's a very wet, very cold, very windy day so today might be less than what we hoped for in terms of seeing the sights around here- the Mount of Beatitudes, Capernaum, the Mount of Transfiguration, Nazareth, and other sea side places. But we'll make the rounds nonetheless. The Sea of Galilee. Amazing. Christ taught here. Peter dropped his net on these shore. Christ walked on these waters.

The thunder was intense last night. I can only imagine the disciples on a ship in a storm like this, terrified of it sinking. "Master, the Tempest is Raging" takes on a very different meaning. Two thousand years later, here I am in that very same spot, with tempests raging in my own life, calling upon the very same Master. And he does, he calms my seas as strange as that sounds. Oh, it is wonderful.

8:00pm

What a day. Let me preface by saying if I don't sound coherent it's cuz whiplash and fatigue have gotten the best of me. We had a great day planned to the T with the grand finale being returning our rental car to Jerusalem tonight and enjoying Christmas Eve so we didn't have to worry about it tomorrow. It ended up being quite possibly the most entertaining story of the this trip thus far and not at all in the way i expected.

We met up with the tour group for breakfast this morning- thank heaven for toast and yogurt. They serve all this raw fish and cucumbers and feta cheese in the mornings- I guess i haven't refined my taste buds enough for green olives at 8am (or ever). Mama raised me on PB&J and I'll gladly live in that world. We talked to Amos about travel plans and set out in our lovely Avis rental car. All of the main tourist sights lie right around the lake so you just start driving till you find a treasure somewhere along the road.

The first was Capernaum, "Christ's city," where he lived most of this ministry. He taught the bread of life sermon there, healed people, performed miracles, and it's where Peter's house was, ect. Even though I was standing in the rain, it was perfect just to look out over the water and on the shore and see mountains through the clouds on the other side in the distance. There are still ruins at Capernaum, city built upon city has been left there over the hundreds of years. It is kind of neat, too, to see how close in proximity all of these small cities were. Bethsaida was very close, as was the Mount of Beatitudes and the Loaves and Fishes (that we never could find despite attempts at breaking into German hotels).

Man, that fish was good last night.

Every sight has at least on church/cathedral dedicated to it- an attempt to keep holy sights holy. They are beautiful, though at times it would have been nice to see the place without it. Then again, it if wasn't a church, who knows what it would be now after 2000 years.

We traveled on to Nazareth. Mary is my hero in the scriptures. I think she must have been such an amazing young girl, even from her youth, to react the way she did to the angel Gabriel, with such poise and such willingness to obey and be able and willing to be the mother of the Savior. I know that seems like such an obvious statement but every little thing it tells about her in the scriptures I admire so much. So to be in Nazareth was kind of a cool thing for me. Al wasn't quite so thrilled, the driving there was extremely high stress and it was the first time this trip I've actually felt nervous around the native people here. We kind of just got tangled up in the street system and couldn't get out. At one point this man gets out of his car and starts shouting something to Al in Arabic, who then responds with a very dignified, "Oh," and books the car down the street in reverse. The traffic patterns have no seen rhyme or reason to them- it's very much every man for himself. We finally made our way out of there and were headed to see the Mount of Transfiguration. The rain had been on and off all day and our shoes/pants were covered in thick mud.

So then for the kicker- we were stopped at a stoplight when from behind us we hear a car screech- not an uncommon occurrence seeing as blaring horns are a constant. But i look away from our trusty GPS and into the side mirror just in time to brace myself and gasp as a car behind us collides into the back of our car, pushing us into the car in front of us before pulling left and stopping. Awesome. Car wreck. 3 car pile-up. Israel. In the rain. Glad i got full coverage. Whiplash.

I think when i happened my first reaction was, "of course that just happened. why would i ever expect NOT to get in a car accident in the middle of israel?" Then my second reaction was to laugh really hard, but judging the look on Al's face I decided to suppress the laughter as much as possible. such is the way of my life. We got out of the car to start the long process of trying to get information from people who spoke little-to-no English, who were writing things in Hebrew so we certainly have no idea if we even have the correct information, ect. Calling Avis proved to help only T-Mobile rack up some pretty nice charges against me... they couldn't tell us much of anything and then suggested we drive a totaled car to the next city (which we did) and then ask people around there where the location of their office was because it was "too hard to explain over the phone." Al kicked the fender off the front tire and we hobbled our way to Tiberius where, first things first! we need to fill our car up with petrol. A totaled car, probably never used again, go fill it with gas. Brilliant.

Moral of the story, we made it back down here 4 minutes too late to turn it in and now have to have the hassle of getting it back tomorrow. We tried to find Nikki's place up on the Mount of Olives but my directionless self failed completely and we're back to the hotel. It'll be better to recoup and relax and get over these blasted headaches on Christmas Eve anyway.

Missing my family lots. Missing any sign of Christmas, actually. Nothing on TV even related to santa or mistletoe or anything of the sort. But again, i've said this before but I've thought about the people in my family more on this trip than perhaps i would if i were even with them. They're here, they are my Christmas Eve and it's awesome to be able to reminisce about Christmases past. I know theirs is quite small this year and wherever they are, I hope they know i'm thinking about them.