Peace in the Middle East.

I think I could write 100 different blogs on my trip to Israel and Egypt.
I only have 10 minutes right now to blog, so I just wanted to say that I am back in Greece! and we are in full force classes! So I am really busy...which means the 2000 pictures I took will take a long time to edit and put up! but I will try to have some up by the end of this week!

If there was one thing I hope everyone does before they die, it is GO TO ISRAEL! It is by far the most amazing place I have ever been in my life thus far. And I would not be surprised if it stays the most amazing place for the rest of my life.

For right now I will tell you my favorite part of the trip and then my least favorite part of the trip.

My favorite part of the trip was all the times I interacted with the people in Israel. Of course I loved all the places we went except for a few, but the part that made the most impact on my life was when I talked to God's people. First, we had a tour guide that was a Christian, and had been touring through Israel for almost 20 years. He knew everything there is to know about the Holy Land. He can speak 5 languages, and read 8. He is one of the most intelligent men I have known. One night in Jerusalem, at our hotel, we were eating dinner and a few of my friends and I saw that Walid, the tour guide, was sitting by himself. We decided to go over and sit with him. One of the best decisions I made on that trip. That conversation was so enlightening. Walid talked about how ignorant Americans are. He said I know more about your country than most Americans know. He also talked about how the downfall of the American economy and how it is effecting everypart of the world. He said he prays that the economy does not crash because the whole world would suffer. I had never thought about how much the American Economy effects the rest of the world. He talked about how everyone drives huge SUVs in America, and in Israel that is unheard of. Then he talked about Gaza....but i have to go....so...
TO BE CONTINUED.................

alright and now to finish the story...
So Walid started to talk about the war in Gaza, and when he ended we all just sat there not knowing what to say because we were all take back. Walid told us how he watches the ARabic news and how they don't censor anything and they showed 2 year olds with bullets in their chest. He also told us about how 500 children had been killed because an missile from one of the air strikes landed on a preschool. He talked about how the people in Gaza have absolutely nothing. There are no jobs, and the people are literally stuck there. They can not leave. Basically they are trapped. It was the saddest thing I have heard in a very long time. He was like those are my people. Those are the people of my country, but people don't see that we are all the same.

The world over there is a completely different place.
But where I was I was never scared, or anything close. I felt completely at home. I loved Israel. I wish I had time to write more about my adventures...there are just so many and I kept a journal of everything while I was over there, and I wrote a lot so I am sort of tired of journaling.

But my least favorite thing, or the part that I was most disappointed in was how much influence the Catholic Church, well at that time it was the Bestinines, have on the Holy Land sites. At almost every site there was a church built ontop of the site. It was disappointing. My favorite places were the Sea of Galilee, The Garden Tomb, The Mount of the Beatitudes (where scholars say Jesus would have given the sermon not where the church is), Mount Arabel when we climbed around in the caves, En Gedi where King Solomon took his lover and wrote about in Song of Songs and where David hid from Saul in the cave and then cut a piece of Saul's cloak off, and the Dead Sea.

I loved those places.

Israel is such an amazing country with warm welcoming people. I cannot say enough about how kind the people were. There was not one person I ran into or talked to that was not beyond kind.

I have uploaded pictures on facebook...I have to many to put on here. So look on facebook I have about 5 albums so far and I am only halfway done.