"My Seminary teacher said...."

Yesterday included a fieldtrip to JERICHO!

(Which, just a fun fact, Jericho is the lowest inhabited place on the planet at 800 feet below sea level!)

We drove past the "Sea Level" marker on the side of the road (it's like a huge plaque haha) and I really wanted to take a picture with it.... but we were on a tight schedule.... sad day. :(

We went to the Tel es-Sultan (which is a ginormous pile of dirt that has accumulated from settlements from thousands of years...). At the tel, they have excavated a whole bunch of cool things including the Tower of Jericho. In some of their excavation pits, there were stairs and other random things and since we were all so tired, some crazies in our group were talking about how when you are in a discussion (i.e. argument) with someone and you quote your seminary teacher as saying something, it becomes automatically legit.

So they kept saying "My Seminary teacher said that those stairs were the stairs to Adam's bathroom." Or sometimes they would use President Monson instead of seminary teacher. It was funny.

It was also fun because we assumed that everything we saw was ancient. Especially the trash. It was super exciting to see an ancient Nestle water bottle.

Anyway, after the tel, we went to (a fake) Tree of Zacchaeus (where a vendor got REALLY mad at us.... for no reason) and then we went to Herod's Winter Palace which was cool because they don't really protect it so we could walk all through it. And sit in his little hot tub. It was pretty cool (but not temperature wise because it was probably in the mid 90's with 90% humidity. boo).

Finally, we went to the Wadi Qelt overlook which is basically just looking at a crazy dried up riverbed. And there is a crazy monastery stuck to the side of the valley wall. It was intense.

After that, we left the Judean Wilderness (look in the back of your Bible at the pictures of the Judean Winderness: that's where we were) and headed back to Jru for lunch-bunch.

Supes exciting.