Field Trip to Shphelah - The Lowlands in Israel

This weeks photos come from our field trip to the Shphelah (the lowlands in Israel). Many Biblical stories take place here—too many to mention. What was different about this field trip to last semesters is that Pres. and Sis. Worthen (BYU President) came on part of the trip with us. They even came on the bus. They are wonderful gracious people, but it still made me a literal nervous :o) We went to Beth Shemesh first, which is where we discuss two Biblical events: the story of Samson and the story of the return of the Ark of the Covenant after it was captured by the Philistines (which is loosely the story behind the movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark). 

Our next stop was Azekah, where we look down over the valley of Elah—the place for the David and Goliath story. We took a little too long at Beth Shemesh so we had to hurry up to Azekah because we were trying to time the mirror event with Ron’s class who were at Lachish. That meant that we had to immediately do the mirrors, like we did last semester, before we did any teaching. This picture shows us signaling. 

This picture shows me teaching afterwards about the significance of the mirrors during the Babylonian conquest of Judea (with Mikey, Merrick  Ann, and Kenzie). Do you like my new hat????? I think that it looks a little more classy than my old one :o)

My class singing in the Bell Caves at Beit Guvrim. The caves are man-made. When they discovered that you could take chalk and mix it and make a hard shell to line cisterns (so that they wouldn’t leak) and houses. People would dig a hole, break through the hard crust (naarim) and then mine the limestone in every increasing circles, which led the the bell shape of the caves. The acoustics here are divine!!!! So the picture is of my class singing. In the background are a group of school students who were also in the caves. When they heard us singing they gathered to listen to us and gave us a rousing applause when we finished! I’ve found that whenever our students sing, people always stop, listen, and give very enthusiastic applause! They certainly radiate a spirit when they sing.

Tomorrow we are off again to the City of David excavations, the highlight of which for the students is going through Hezekiah’s tunnel. This trip I will be leading all by myself, which is a first for me. That means that I have to do ALL of the teaching, and I won’t have anyone to back me up if I forget something important, which is easy to do because there is SO MUCH history and archaeology associated with this place. So you can imagine what I’ve been doing for most of the day today—reading, and reading and reading! So I can only do the best that I can. If I forget something, then it’ll have to be okay :o) I am looking forward to it and I know that the students will love it. It is winter though, so we’ll see how cold the water is.