On There and Back Again

4 days ago Jeff’s class left for a four day trip north to the Galilee area. While it was going to be a fun time away, it was another 4 days that the family was going to be split up. We talked to the teacher and Michelle had a choice: either stay in the Old City on her own or rent a car and meet us in Galilee, and stay with us in kibutz’ right on the Sea of Galilee. After much prayer and deliberation (about 10 seconds) she found a great deal on a car, packed up a few things, and her and kids were on their way! Driving through Israel on her own was very different – going through checkpoints (all very safe), people using their horns every 2 seconds for no reason at all), and looking out and seeing a herd of camels right beside the road as you drive by…pretty crazy, but so much fun. Michelle navigated her way up and we found our home away from home away from home. It’s kind of funny because Reese has a name for all of our ‘homes’ these days (“Mommy, when we get back to our Jerusalem home”…”Can we see our Langley home from this big hill?” and so forth).

The sea itself is pretty cool. Every evening we would go wading/swimming to cool off. Carter’s big thing was to throw rocks and clamshells. He had so much fun doing that we’re sure that if we went home now he’d be fulfilled. Reese kept trying to hold on to her beach ball, which proved fruitless as the wind was so strong.



As part of the Jeff’s class (with Michelle and the kids joining us to much of it) they went to a number of amazing places, including Nazareth, Caesarea (pictured) (Herod built a massive port there which could hold up to 200 ships at once), Bananias (where there was a huge alter to a freaky goat-man playing a flute named Pan – honestly – who sat around in those days and came up with some of these things?), and also Bet She’an (pictured), (a large city of 45 000 people in Roman days that also had a huge hill right in the center of it which had about 25 layers of city upon city built on each other from 5000 years ago – a little more history than we have in Canada!). Some other really cool highlights were stopping at the Jordan River about where Jesus would have been baptized (and Jeff got to baptize one of his new friends from class there!), taking a boat ride across the Sea of Galilee in the very boat Jesus sailed in (just kidding, but we did take the boat ride!) and visiting Capernaum where Jesus did a lot of his teaching and miracles. All of this was surreal to take in and allowed us to see where and how some important events took place. For sure the kids’ favourite stop was at Ganha’shlosha. This is three natural springs with cool water that provided some much-needed relief to 39 degree weather. They even built a wading pool there for kids and our kids took full advantage of it!

One quick funny thing happened there…while Michelle was on the edge of one pool feeling the temperature of another Jeff thought it would be funny to push Michelle in. Reese laughed, but not Carter. He stared screaming, shaking, and crying as if Michelle was in real danger. Even though she popped out and we showed him it was funny, he never really recovered after that. He grabbed Michelle’s neck and wouldn’t let go from that point on and when Jeff tried to get close to him or Michelle, he would just push Jeff away. Talk about being a momma’s boy! Luckily he forgot all about it soon after... kind of.