Day one

This trip will truly be a track race. Up bright and early, leaving the hotel at 7.45 and going until 6.00 when we arrive at the next spot.

The weather is absolutely gorgeous — 70 degrees and sunny. The Mediterranean water into which I got my feet is chilly but so nice to be able to say I have walked barefoot on the sand.

Today we went to Joppa, Caesarea Philippi (where there are the ruins of a theatre and hippodrome), Mount Carmel, Meggido where there is extensive archaeological work, including the water tunnel of King Ahab 187 steps down in the earth, hand hewn out of limestone, and then onto Mount Tabor, the Mount of Transfiguration from which one can see the valley of Meggido, the spot where supposedly Armageddon will occur.

Tonight we are at a kibbutz by the Sea of Galilee and tomorrow we will actually go out on it. We'll also go to the River Jordan where I intend to get some water for baptisms back home.

The group is 27 clergy people from across the country. I am the sole Episcopalian but there are several Methodists and Lutherans (Evangelical Lutheran Church of America) so I am not totally out of it.

Some interesting impressions — on the airplane trip over (LONG but even longer coming back), several times in the course of the flight the Orthodox Jewish men got up, put on their black coats over their prayer shawls), their black hats and took over the galley/lavatory area in the rear of the plane to pray. They would gather up a minion, close the curtains and pray for about ten minutes. At other times, they would stand in the aisle, prayer shawl over their head, like white ghosts in the dark of the night. It was kind of ethereal.

Our leader said tonight that everyone in the previous group got sick with one thing or another. I don't have time for that so truly hope I will stay healthy.

Prayers for all of you... if I could figure out how to load it up, I would post a photo... first, I cannot shrink it with the application on my iPad because the photo is too big and secondly, working in blogger on the iPad is not like being on the laptop. But at least I can send this off.

Last thing, a silly: all the instructions for blogger are in Hebrew. I can cope with Spanish and French instructions, I can even transliterate the Hebrew but I still don't understand what the word is.