Goodbye Sea of Galilee & A Visit to Nazareth

 Oh Ein Gev, how we loved you. I am almost positive that this extended field trip will be one of the kids favorites (and mine too). We woke up the last morning to a quiet beautiful lake, not even a ripple on the lake. I was kind of wishing for a waterski boat, to be honest. After breakfast we extended our check out time and jumped in the water.

I love this picture because they are all laughing. 

Jake on a ride around the lake with Ellie.

Sam found a net for potatoes (I think) and used it to catch the little fish swimming around. He caught quite a few.

They were huge right?

Here is his net and the bait, like any good fisherman at the Sea of Galilee- Pita bread. Those little fish couldn't resist the yummy pita bread.

You want to mess with this?

 Looking at the Sea as we drove away, you would think you are looking down at Bear Lake Utah, but the lake is 20 degrees warmer. We were sad to leave the Sea of Galilee. It was a very welcome break and time to relax.

On our way home to Jerusalem, we decided to detour a bit and go Nazareth, were Jesus grew up. Nazareth has the Church of the Annunciation, but we had heard of a little site called Nazareth Village. It is a little village set up like the days of Christ. We had been told that it was a great site for the kids. It took us a little longer to get to Nazareth than we thought and the last tour was at 3 and we got there are 2:30 but hadn't eaten lunch. Seth and Ellie claimed their organs were going into failure, so we knew we needed some food. There was a very nice Arabic restaurant below the entrance to the Nazareth Village, so we sat and ordered hoping it would be quick to eat there. It wasn't and we got a call 5 minutes later saying if we wanted to join the last tour we had to come then. So we all grabbed a pita and left Seth with the rest of this huge meal. It ended up being a blessing in disguise to have a nice place for Seth to eat while we toured because the terrain would have been tricky for him to hike through. 

Off on the tour we went...us and 30 people from Singapore. They were super nice and took as many picture of the kids as they did the sites. Whenever I would have the kids stop for a picture, everyone would stop and take a picture of them too. :)

Jakey loved the little donkey in the field.

 The toothless Shepard. The sheep and goats were obviously use to the tourist and would walk right up around us. Jake climbed up me when they got too close. 

Above was the watch tower like in days of old. Jake was waving to the watchman. 

The grapes were almost ready to harvest. 

Its a bit hard to see here but this is were they would press their grapes. They would crush the grapes with their feet, being careful not to break the seeds and end up with bitter wine. In the rainy season the press would also capture water. 

Up the hill we hiked through the little mountain side village.

The dessert blossoms. 

This basket was the first part of the Olive press. They would press the olives in these woven baskets and then wring out the olives and the very finest oil would come out of it and collected. 

Then the olives would be put in this press for the second and third press. This oil wasn't as pure and was used for lamps and other uses. This press was quite intricate, a replica for what they used thousands of years ago.

One of the young villagers with the girls.

Next stop was the carpenter's hut. We read in the Bible that Joseph, Jesus earthly father, was a carpenter. But the word there was no word that translated into carpenter, but the word that would translate to an "architect." So Joseph was probably some kind of builder.  This builder's name was also Joseph. He was happy to have the kids come see his tools.

And they always love the little man.

Jayne is sitting in the kitchen area...the oven and stove in the corner.

We stopped at the weavers. They were pretty amazing working, making and dying the wool.

They told us about dying the yarn with different organic material. Certain colors were easy and inexpensive to make because the materials were easily accessible. But the colors like blue and purple were very expensive to make, that is why only royalty wore them. The purple was made from a sea snail-- they would squeeze one drop of dye out of each snail. Thus making it hard to make. (And a little yucky in my opinion. Snail juice dyed clothes?)

The last stop was at the replica synagogue, built like it might have been in the first century. It was nice and cool when you walked in with the ceiling ventilation to push the hot air out. The synagogue was originally used as a meeting place, before it became a religious meeting place.

Nazareth Village was a great site for the kids. It gave a little perspective of what things looked like and how they worked in the time of Christ. 

It took us another two hours to travel home to Jerusalem. With an hour left of driving Jake said he no longer wanted to be in the car, that he wanted to walk. It was a long day in the car and he continued to try to convince us to let him out to walk. 

We drove straight to the BYU Jerusalem Center so Sam could go to his Young Mens activity and Seth could get his stitches out. He is cuts have heal so quickly. You can barely tell he even has a scratch. I will take a picture to show you and post it later. Thanks to our friends Dr. B and Dr C who help with Seth's recovery. We came home and fell into bed. It was a three day adventure.