The First Weekend: Nazareth and Galilee

Another catch up post:

Day 6: June 20, 2008

While our first “weekend” was only one day (1 p.m. on Friday to 8:30 pm on Saturday), we certainly made the most of it. Ben (from Vanderbilt) managed to secure us a cab from the kibbutz to Nazareth and a hostel for the night, so Ashley, Caleb, Lisa, Alexander, Ben, Joel, Tiffany, and I all made out way to Nazareth around 3:30 p.m. after a full day of digging. It was a bit of an adventure, since the cab driver did not speak English, but we survived and were taken directly to the hostel. Given that my only previous experience with a hostel was the two horror movies, I was pleasantly surprised by the conditions of the place. Apparently, the entire hostel used to be an Arab mansion and thus was very nice, almost castle like. We dropped our stuff off and made our way to the Basilica of the Annunciation, which is the supposed site where the angel Gabriel appear to Mary announcing that she was pregnant with Christ. It was a beautiful church from the outside, but we could only get into the basement were there are ruins from a 5th century Byzantine church. Located beneath the main sanctuary with a hole in the roof, we could hear the mass going on above us. After shopping at some vendors, we made our way to dinner and I enjoyed a chicken kabob – my first Israeli meal outside of the Kibbutz – it really was great. Given our full day of digging, we decided it was best to sleep a little early that night after drinking some beer back at the hostel. Our hostel had a gorgeous view of Nazareth – especially at night.

Day 6: June 20, 2008

Suprisingly, I got to sleep until 6:30 a.m. today - a nice extra two hours of sleeping in. The reason for getting up early was that Ben had found out about a mass at the Basilica of the Annunciation, and I thought I would attend with a couple of the fellow diggers. We got there right at 7:15 only to discover that the mass was being done in the basement in front of the ruins and in Korean! One of the girls was Catholic, however, so given the standardization of the Catholic mass, she could explain what exactly was happening.

After the mass, we rushed back to the hostel, checked out, and grabbed a cabto Tiberius – a city on the Sea of Galilee. We stayed there only briefly so that we could catch another cab to Taghba were we saw the Church of the Multiplication of Fish and Loafs (a church built upon the rock where Jesus multiplied the fish and loafs of bread) and the church built on the location where the apostle Peter was conferred. We were also able to walk down to the sea and try to walk on the water – don’t worry none of us were able to! Then from there we walked (at least 5 kilometers in 100+ degree, sunny weather with no wind) along the Sea of Galilee to Capernaum. I don’t know how the Apostles did it in sandals. This is an archaeological site where Peter’s house is supposedly located and one of the temples were Jesus had given a sermon. After finding the taxi we had called in the mass chaos of tour buses at Capernaum, we had our driver stop for 15 minutes at the Mount of the Beatitudes were Jesus also gave a famous sermon. The church was rather small, but the view from the top was gorgeous.

After making our way back to the kibbutz – we cooled down by the pool and just relaxed. Rafi (my friend from GW and a native born Dutch man) had to watch the Euro soccar match between Holland and Russia, so I decided to tag along. Bad call when the game starts at 9:45 p.m. and goes into two overtimes only for Holland to lose. Oh well, going to sleep at 12:30 isn’t that bad, right?