clean linen

Day 7 began with breakfast at the hotel, then we had a little service and took communion together at one of the smaller meeting rooms in the hotel. We then set off for one of the Ahava stores at the Dead Sea. We stayed there for about an hour and I felt so pressured into buying stuff. There were just too many things to look at and at the end of the whole shopping "event", I felt that the 1 hour given was not enough time so I ended up doing impulsive shopping, which did not make me feel very good, happy or satisfied about spending so much money. Our next stop was Masada. It is sad to hear and see that the Dead Sea is slowly drying up and what used to be 1 big Sea has now split into the upper and lower parts, if you can figure it out from the photo below. Masada was amazing. What an engineering feat in that kind of arid desert environment. If you look carefully at the photo below, you will see towards the upper left corner 2 rectangles that have a black portion at th...

On our way to the Pater Noster, which is really to venerate the Lord's Prayer, just as we were getting off the bus to walk to the place, Doris and Victor were pickpocketed. Their wallets were returned to them shortly after without the cash but everything else remained inside. Immediately after the pickpocketing, Georgin and Eli made arrangements for them to make a police report. In the meantime, we walked around the church looking at all the different languages... Eli and Georgin rejoined the group after the 2 went to the police station. They would meet us at the Garden of Gethsamane later. Next stop was Mount of Olives where we took a group picture. It was really windy but the sun was out and it was nice. Next up, we took a walk down Palm Sunday Path. We walked past quite a few points, one of which was this Jewish cemetery, which is the most popular and one of the most expensive because it is just overlooking the Kidron Valley, which is also known as the Valley of the Last ...

We started a little earlier today so that we would have more time to check out and load up on the bus. It was a little bit more uneventful because 10 minutes out into our bus ride, the hotel reception called Eli to inform him that we had left behind 2 people in the hotel. We quickly turned around and in the meantime we discovered we had left behind uncle Bernard and aunty Angela! Haha With everyone firmly in the bus, we headed to our first stop of the day - the original place of baptism in the Jordan River, which is just a few kilometres away from the Dead Sea. What was interesting was that if we swim halfway into this stretch of the Jordan River, we are on the border between Jordan and Israel. Eli was joking that if we want to appear in the newspaper and start an international situation, we can swim past the halfway line and try to come back into Israel. That would be interesting to see... Haha Anyway the water was murky light brown and there were too many flies everywhere. Oppo...

Day 4 of our trip began with a short drive up to Mount of Beattitudes, where it is said that Jesus began his first Sermon. The view of the Sea of Galilee was beautiful and the weather was nice and cool with the bright shining sun lending us it's warmth. It created a really nice environment for us to spend some time with God, besides taking photographs. Next stop - Church of multiplication - we see the rock on which Jesus placed the 5 loaves and 2 fish. What is amazing is that the mosaic floor is the original from 1,500 years ago They built the modern church up, around and on the carefully restored mosaic tile floor that was discovered rather miraculously. 3rd stop of the day - Church of the Primacy of St Peter's - where Jesus reassured Peter 3 times. An amazing fact I learnt from our (amazing) guide Eli is that, in the bible, He called out to His disciples to put the net on the other side and they caught 153 fish right? The number is no coincidence as it actually t...

The above photo is the view I woke up to first thing this morning:) After breakfast, Eugene and I took a slow walk back to our rooms. We discovered a few hammocks and here's a photo of Eugene enjoying one for a little bit... We set off from the hotel around 8.10am. It was about an hour's drive to Tel Dan. We saw a cultic site which is a model of the altar Jeroboam set up. We also got the layout and saw what was left of the gatehouse and were reminded of how Absalom stole the hearts of the Israelites by sitting at the gate, or of how Boaz met with the elders in order to marry Ruth as his wife. We also saw what was called Abraham's Gate. This is one of the oldest arches in the world, which was built around 3,700 years ago. This was the last pit stop in this trail that had us walking for over an hour. Our next stop was a short distance off - The Sanctuary of Pan It is a temple Herod built for paganistic worship. It was destroyed by an earthquake but it's stil...

It was a mad day at work, especially with the sudden notification in the morning that we were to attend Court for a Judge Pre-Trial Conference (JPTC) at 2.30pm the same day. I planned to leave the office around 5.30-5.45 to take the train to the airport, but only managed to leave closer to 6... I was the second last in the group to reach the airport around 6.45pm. Checked in my very light luggage of around 9kg, then we went to the staff canteen for dinner. I ate beef noodles, but it was a little too salty for my liking. We then boarded the Thai airways flight to Bangkok. My gosh the plane was SO cold. I pretty much slept all the way save for the time where they served us a meal of curry chicken and fried rice. At Bangkok, we went through the transit customs and walked right straight to the boarding gate where it took a really long time for all of us to get through because of the questioning by the Israeli officers. The Israeli airline was quite full. Thankfully there was an empty...