"boka tov"

So I lied in my last post... kind of. I said we climbed a stteeeppppp mountain which now in retrospect, is NOTHING compared to today's journey. It seems like it's been a week packed full of stuff, but in fact it's only been two days so I'll start from the beginning and try to not make it painfully long.... (but no promises)

Wednesday morning we got up and went to Qumran where they found the Dead Sea Scrolls. We saw a movie and zipped through a quite ghetto museum and got out. From there we went to the Dead Sea!! That place is absoloutely crazy to me! As Alexis and I walked down to the shore we saw all of our classmates COVERED in mud. Completely covered from head to toe.... that doesn't sound exciting to me one bit. Aparently the mud from the Dead Sea is supposed to be AMAZING for you skin, which, is why everyone was black. We stepped into the water but because of the splippery-ness of the mud, it was more of a "fall" into the water. We got in and... well... decided to rub the mud on ourselves. By the end our our time we were covered with mud, sitting out so it would dry and then washing it off. That was also definitely hard because in the Dead Sea you float constantly! It was so amazing! (One of my friends INSISTED that he cannot float and it turns out, he can in the Dead Sea!) Have I mentioned how SALTY the Dead Sea is?!?!? It's ridiculous. It's disgusting. I'm glad I went, but probably wouldn't mind if I never went back :)After the Dead Sea we went the a Bedouin camp. What is a Bedouin?

The Bedouin, (from the Arabic badawī (بدوي), pl. badū), are predominantly Muslim, desert-dwelling Arab nomadic pastoralist, or previously nomadic group, found throughout most of the desert belt extending from the Atlantic coast of the Sahara via the Western Desert, Sinai, and Negev to the Arabian Desert.

That was cool because we were able to camp out in the middle of the desert! The stars were amazing and the lights from the city shining behind the sand mountains were beautiful. We also rode camels... have I mentioned how non-crazy I am about riding animals? Probably not because when I think about it I think "wow that would be a great idea" but then when I actually do it, it seems like a stupid decision. We got up on the massive beast (which we named Speedy Gonzalez; half because he was NEVER in line with the other camels and always wanted to find his own way down the hills and half because Alexis' last name is Gonzalez.) The camel behind me (who they named Oliver) was a biter!!!!! My feet were basically wrapped around Alexis' body the whole time (in fear) and right where my leg WOULD be, Oliver bit Speedy 3 times! It was very nerve racking, but good at the same time :) We slept in the tent, and at 4am a Bedouin man walked into our tent and said "boka tov" which means good morning. Question: What is good about a morning beginning at 4am? Well, nothing really. Why did we get up at 4am do you ask? TO CLIMB MOUNT MASADA. Fact: I don't like physical activity very much at all... especially at very early hours of the morning. I went and tried to be a good sport (as good as I can be for not being a morning person) and we climbed up and down Mount Masada. It was cool after we got done knowing we had accomplished it. We then went on a 7 1/2 hour Safari through the desert. Our driver (who I named Solomon, pronounced "shlow-mo" in hebrew-which i said) decided he didn't like the roads they had made so made his own. I'm not going to lie there were a few times I didn't think we would make it. But it was beautiful when we got to the top of the highest point in the Negev Desert and saw all of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and the Dead Sea. We went to speak to some bedouins and I met two boys named Omar and Achmed. Omar asked me to ride his donkey and then to stay with him. Haha. I declined. We came back to Casa de Amistad (where we are staying) and I am here now writing a blog. It has been an amazing last couple of days and I can't believe that I swam in the dead sea, rode a camel, slept in a bedouin tent in the middle of the desert, climbed up and down mt. masada and went on a jeep safari through the negev desert. How awesome is that?! I am thoroughly exhausted now and daylight savings time is tomorrow :-/ I hate that day, and now I have to do it twice this semester!

It seems that Israel is very slippery.. haha. I have now offically fallen down a flight of stairs, tripped over the SAME bump on the way to dinner every night now, slipped on a limestone slope, and fell in the shower tonight. Awesome! Only I would do this... it makes the trip though right??