« Just in Time | Main | A Little Behind »

April 18, 2005

The Miracles Never Cease Here on the Sea of Galilee

My friends and I had quite the adventure this weekend. I was really looking forward to the trip because it would be the first time I had been to Israel but the trip was much more exciting than I could have ever predicted.

After my two tests on Thursday, Adel, Sam, Rob, and I took a taxi to the northern border crossing into Israel. Leaving Jordan wasn't a problem and it took us about 15 minutes to go through all the checkpoints. When we got to the Israeli side, however, a woman immediately took our passports and started looking at us suspiciously. We made it through the metal detectors without any problems but we couldn't proceede on to passport control because we still hadn't received our passports back. After several minutes of staring at our passports, the woman decided we were definitely suspicious and that she needed to question us individually. She took me aside first and asked me lots of crazy questions about where I was going and why I had been in Jordan. I definitely tried the "I go to BRANDEIS" bit but it didn't seem to help.

Oh, and while she was questioning us, she figured out that we all had two passports and requested to see them all. I wasn't worried because mine doesn't have any stamps from forbidden countries but Sam has been to Syria five times and Adel has been to Lebanon. This led to even more questioning and the realization that we were going to be there for a while.

The border guards finally gave us back our passports and let Rob and I through the border after about an hour and a half. Sam and Adel, however, spent about another hour and a half being questioned and examined inside the border. Rob and I did our best not to panic as we imagined them being tortured or deported or worse!

We finally all made it through the border so we grabbed a taxi and headed to Nazareth. In Nazareth we stayed in a youth hostel inside a Convent that is built over the suspected house of Joseph. It was a great place to stay and was right in the center of the city. That night we saw some of the sights including Mary's well and some awesome churches. In the morning we went exploring and then took a tour of the ruins under the Convent.

After our tour, we found the bus that would take us to Tiberius and make the one hour trip. In Tiberius we explored the shopping areas and the waterfront and found a nice hostel just a few blocks from downtown. There aren't very many sites to see in Tiberius so we just kind of hung out for most of the afternoon. The funniest part was watching all the shops close down at 4pm because Shabbat was comming! I felt right at home watching the Jews of Tiberius walk to services. Although, I was a bit worried that we wouldn't get dinner which also reminded me of Brandeis. . .

We decided that the next day, instead of paying an arm and a leg to explore the Golan Heights, we would bike around around the Sea of Galilee. The guide book said it was a great way to get around and should only take us about 4-5 hours at a pretty comfortable pace. We rented our bikes and set our alarms for 6:30am so we could be on the road by 7am.

Everything was going smoothly until I realized that my bike wouldn't shift into high gear. Although frustrating, I figured that it wouldn't be too big of a problem. The first site we stopped at was the ancient Galilee boat also known as the "Jesus Boat". It was the only thing I really wanted to see so we watied the half an hour for the place to open. The boat was amazing and the entire process of digging it out of the mud was really cool to watch. It took 11 years to get the boat ready to display and now it is stable enough to sit in a museum without protection.

After the boat, we went to two different churches. The first was supposedly where Jesus feed the 5000 and the second is where Jesus told his diciples to fish on the other side of the boat. The first church was actually closed so we didn't see the actual rock but we got to walk around out side. The second place was really nice and even had a place where you could walk into the water if you wanted to. I did not walk in the water but I did steal a rock from the shore. I never thought I would get to see any of these places so it was awesome to see where Jesus actually walked, even if the places aren't exact.

Just after this church was about the point that I realized that we wern't going to make it around the lake in 4 or 5 hours. We were about 1/6th of the way done and it had taken us almost three hours already! The ride was a lot harder than the guidebook described.

At about 1:30, we arrived half way around the lake in a town called Ein Gev. The town is Kibbutz that hosts a lot of tourists and supposedly has a ferry across the lake. Hopeing to take advantage of this ferry, we stopped in the town and went to ask about the boat. Of course, when we asked we got a confused look that basically said "It's Saturday, there is no transportation available on Saturdays!". We exhausted all of the taxis and busses they could suggest but we wern't getting anywhere until the boys went to talk to one of the tourist boats that were waiting on the beach. After about 45 minutes, we were promised that if there was room we could take one of the boats to Tiberius. We finally ended up on a giant wodden boat that was taking Swedish religious pilgrims across the lake. We even stopped to pray in the middle. . . :)

The whole adventure was quite tiring but we finally make it back to the hostel and found a taxi back to the border. Everything went fine at the border and we were all so glad to be back in Jordan where we can at least pretend to speak the language and know where we are going!

We thought that was the end of our journey, but we wern't two miles from the border when I was in my first major car accident. Don't worry mom, we are all ok, but neither of the cars were going anywhere any time soon. What happend is a truck pulled out in front of us and although our driver tried to stop and honked his horn neither of the cars could stop in time. We were a little shaken up but still in one piece and thankful that we were on our way home. The driver called another taxi and we headed, uneventfully, back to Amman.

It was awesome to see how beautiful Israel is and to hang out with another culture that I at least try to understand. The people I went with are all pretty pro-Palestinian so I felt a bit akward at times because I was really enjoying the Israeli experience. I dont' think that anyone will ever be happy with my opinions because they aren't extreme enough on any side. At least now I can use first hand experiences to back up my arguments when I talk about the conflict.

Posted by rcollins at April 18, 2005 6:55 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://test.gutwin.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/216

Comments

Posted by: Barbara at April 18, 2005 9:50 AM

Posted by: Sean at April 18, 2005 11:00 AM