It's been a while.

Ok. So I admit that I haven't been a very good blogger lately. I've decided that I hate taking pictures. I often forget that I should be taking them, and then its just annoying to have to dig in my backpack to find my camera and pull it out for one or two pictures at each place. But whatever, these pictures are from the limited amount that I took on our field study in the places immediately surrounding Jerusalem.

We started off at the Mount of Olives and saw these first century tombs on the hillside.

Then we headed to the traditional site of the garden of Gethsemane and saw all of the olive trees. There were a bunch of guys selling olive branches outside of the garden because people aren't allowed to pick them from inside.

After Gethsemane, our group hiked up the Herodian and stopped by Herod's palace.

After seeing Herod's palace, we went down into the cisterns and tunnels underneath. It was so deep and there were so many stairs. It felt kind of like a maze.

We made a group stop in the cistern to talk about the history of Herod and also to enjoy the coolness of the underground.

On the way to Bethlehem we stopped at an ancient threshing floor next to grain fields. It was so weird to have learned about these in Sunday School and then to actually be standing in one. This is probably only a little less than half of the one we went to.

Our last stop was Bethlehem where we visited the Church of the Nativity, which remembers the place where Christ was born. The entrance was super small, and only one person could go in at a time.

So that was our last field trip, and I'll hopefully be getting pictures from my hiking trip in En Gedi to post later. That's all folks!