November 16th, Oh Little Town of Bethlehem

Today we went to Bethlehem. Here, we went to the Nativity Church where supposedly is the site where Jesus was born. Crazy, huh? Yeah...well the crowds thought so too. There were so many people crammed into this small space and people were really rude. Basically we stood in line for over an hour trying to see the site in the bottom room of this church. It was crazy. Americans are actually really polite compared to the rest of the world. We keep our space and wait our turn. Europeans? Not so much...but never the less we got to see it! Here's a picture.

After all of that, we went to a store in Bethlehem that sold a whole bunch of Olive Wood products :) I don't want to spoil what I got for some people so I will just say that I really liked this store and got a lot of souvenirs! Just hope that they don't break in my suitcase...

Later this day, we went to the Valley of Elah where supposedly David fought Goliath. Dr. Manor and Gill re-acted the scene while Dr. James read from the bible. I got that on video...haha. Then we all chose what we thought was "the stone" that killed Goliath.

Then right next to here, Bet-shemesh which is Dr. Manor's favorite because he is the feild director of the excavators of this site. Also, Monica excavated here a little bit one summer so that was really cool too! Then we went down in the cistern and sang some songs. It was wonderful!