The Guys in Galilee

Last weekend, four of us guys took a trip up to the Galilee. Ben, Benaiah, John, and myself realized sometime around wednesday night that we had a free weekend coming up, which doesn't happen often, and decided to head up to the Galilee. Rather than plan out the entire weekend, we opted to just head north and see what happened. So it was that Friday afternoon we hopped in a car the size of my bike, tried to work our way through the city to the highway, and worked our way North to the Sea of Galilee. By the time we got there the sun had set behind the mountains and we didn't have anywhere to sleep. Thankfully, we stumbled across a local camping site along the Sea that was free to stay at and we settled down for the night. The next day we woke up and wandered around the Galilee and Golan - you know, no big deal, just hanging out in Israel!! In a word, it was fantastical. Of course, being guys, we had a blast doing guy stuff the entire day. That night we slept on the cliffs of Arbel and woke up to the first sign of rain we had seen since we got here. On the drive home it rained profusely until we got back "home" to Jerusalem. I love being able to say that : )

Here are some pictures:

Beginning the trip. Most of ya'll know them by now but from left to right they are Ben, John, myself, and Benaiah

Cooking hotdogs over our pathetically miniscule fire. We tried... but it's hard when there's no firewood.

The Hexigonal Pools. These pools are awesome. The rocks behind us look like hexigons, but they weren't carved out; they naturally look that way. And the water's great... and no one else was there!

so we made ourselves manly.... or tried : )

The water looked great...

which naturally means we jumped.

Someone told us to hike half an hour in to see what was supposedly a neat waterfall. The waterfall ended up being uber tall with less water coming out than our faucets here at school. We set up a standing stone to commemorate the event of our trip.

We also stopped by the Jordan River. Not incredibly exciting. It's the end of the dry season.

Mount Hermon, the northern-most extreme of Israel. This is likely the mountain Jesus was transfigured on. It also happens to be the border between Israel and Syria, and perhaps Lebanon. Basically just a fun place to hang out.

Being so close, we figured we may as well invade Syria, which is immediately behind us on the horizon. Instead i bought some Golan honey for our bread the next morning. That's some good stuff.

We camped Saturday night on the cliffs of Arbel over looking the Sea of Galilee. Apparently there's a sign that says "no camping" but by the time we got there it was dark and we didn't see the sign until the morning. This is Galilee in the morning. We brought the tent in case it rained - we needed it for aobut half an hour - but mainly we slept outside on the ground.

Ben and I that morning. We're a bit groggy seeing as how we just woke up.

I have to say, reading through the gospels about the life of Jesus was sitting on a cliff edge overlooking the place where the stories happened is an experience i can't describe. There's nothing magic about Israel, but the stories become real in a different way when you can look at the place where they happened.

Finally, a quote from George MacDonald for your reading pleasure:

"However strange it may well seem, to do one's duty will make any one conceited who only does it sometimes. Those who do it always would as soon think of being conceited of eating their dinner as of doing their duty. What honest boy would pride himself on not picking pockets? A thief who was trying to reform would. To be conceited of doing one's duty is then a sign of how little one does it, and how little one sees what a contemptible thing it is not to do it. Could any but a low creature be conceited of not being contemptible? Until our duty becomes to us common as breathing, we are poor creatures."

- from "A Double Story" which i would recommend as a short story worth reading.