Well, we are back from our three day trip to the southern end of Israel. We have one more two-day trip to the Jezreel valley (central) and then our school trips are done. We’re still planning on renting a car and getting to the Galilee one weekend while we’re here.

It was a full trip. I’ll post pictures for you all Tuesday or Wednesday. We had a good time but we were definitely ready to come home.

We started in the Shephelah- central/southern part of Israel and drove out to the coast where the Philistines were. Some of the students went swimming in the Mediterranean the first night. The second day we went farther south into what’s called The Negev(b). It’s actually a Biblical term, the word for south means negev. It’s a very hot, dry, dusty, brown area and it’s HUGE. The third day we came back north and saw Masada (a huge fortress Herod built, has a sad story with it), En Gedi (a beautiful spring here), the Dead Sea, and Qumran. Now we’re back home in Jerusalem.

Since both Jenna and my aunt Chris (I’d call you favorite but since you apparently don’t read the blog that much you probably wouldn’t see it anyway 🙂 ) have asked for something other than history I’ll try to write about other stuff as well. Or if you guys have any questions feel free to ask and we’ll do our best to answer them.

As for the rest of the semester, I need to start working hard-core on my seminar project and studying for the two comprehensives I have to take and pass by the end of the semester. My seminar project is to create my own 15 day field study (basically a tour but with more emphasis on the history, geography, and archeology the most tours do) Trust me, it’s not as easy as you think, especially when the emphasis of the tour is historical geography. I have to create a historically geographcialy structured field study with reasons for why I do anything and go anywhere, and what I’d say for the most part at each stop. It’s taking some time and it’s difficult. The point is to make you research and put data together and prepare to teach it, instead of just taking in the data with a student mindset.

As for the two comprehensives, I would GREATLY appreciate your prayers as I try to prepare. I found out last week the Hebrew comp takes 4-8 hours avg to do complete. Yeah, painful. I have to basically memorize 10 chapters of the OT and be prepared to translate from memory those chapters (they’ll only pick 40 verses I think), then I need to answer questions about the passage, and then site translate 20 more verses of the Prof’s choice. At least for that one I get help with a lexicon- A Biblical Hebrew dictionary. Yeah, so that makes me nervous.

I am going to try to work really hard and get the Hebrew comp done in about 2 weeks so that I can spend the next month focused only on the seminar and my other comp. We shall see.

Well, there’s a quick update on me. Bryan is doing well, by the way 🙂
Now it’s time for dinner….