Day 21 - May 31 - Tuesday

My Journal Entry:

Today we went back to Jerusalem to touch the Wailing Wall after making a couple of "humor Mr. Wilson" stops. :) One of them was the Burma Road Memorial - the Arabs blocked off roads to some city, and some people created a road up the back side of the mountain without their knowing to get food in. The second stop was Castel, which was a fortress - a fortress with a really awesome underground tunnel/cavern system! Just outside the city of Jerusalem we visited the church where Mary is supposedly buried... "according to Christian tradition" like everything else. :P We've settled into our kibbutz, which is really close to the Dead Sea. Heather is my roomie for the rest of the trip! We had dinner at a really great restaurant called Last Chance, and now it's off to bed - we have a really early start tomorrow (ready to eat by 7:00) because of a really full (and fun) day ahead. Can't wait! :)

Mr. Wilson's Details:

WAILING WALL
We returned to the Old City of Jerusalem (the Jewish Quarter), but this
time it was mobbed with thousands of school kids in the city for Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day), celebrating the recapture of Jerusalem in the Six Day War of 1967. Every street and site was filled with a mass of teen and
pre-teen humanity! I thought that Passover must have been like this in biblical times(except that there would also be sheep, goats, and donkeys in the scene.)

This time the students wanted to get all the way to the Western Wall (known as the Wailing Wall). Some of the team members went down to the wall area, on their respective sides.

JUDEAN DESERT
Leaving Jerusalem, we headed east, descending rapidly into the Judean Desert
toward the Dead Sea. Along the highway, we saw Bedouin tents and shanties, as well as the camels grazing by the roadside.

We will spend Tuesday and Wednesday nights in guest lodgings at Kibbutz Almog, just north of the Dead Sea, which is the lowest point on earth, at 1388 feet below sea level.