Since I last wrote we have been doing a lot of traveling. Yesterday we went to Nazareth  and visited the Church of the Annunciation and the Church of Mary. Then we rode to the Sea of Galilee and visited Capernaum, Mount of Beatitudes, and one more small church right on the lake (I forget the name). We got a chance to take some touristy picture by the lake and we all touched the water and such. The restaurant we ate at served St. Peter’s fish, so a bunch of us, including me, ate it. If you don’t know what it is, it is simply a type of fish caught in the lake that they stick in the fryer and serve with the head and all. To be honest I didn’t realize that when I ordered it.

We spend the night back in Jerusalem and in the morning we went to a church service at the Church of the Redeemer. Afterwards we had some time to do some shopping. Before I left my dad taught me how to haggle so I was excited to put my skills to use. Unfortunately, I think I let my dad down. I was too eager to buy a Keffiyeh. The man asked for 150 shekels and I got it down to 90 (about $30). I was excited that I got it down that much so I took it. I didn’t realize until after that it was way too much for what I bought.

In the afternoon we visited the organization, Rabbis for Human Rights and had an interesting talk with the executive director of the organization, Arik Acherman. Now we are all in Beit Sahour, a town five minutes from Bethlehem. Each of us are in pairs and staying with different families from the town. The family I am staying with is very nice. They have three boys who are 4, 10, and 15, and a daughter who is 18. They served us a very nice meal and then two of the boys asked Tom (the other person from our group with me) and I to teach them how to play Monopoly. We spent the rest of the night playing. They taught (or at least tried) to teach us the Arabic numbers every time we rolled, but Tom and I took a while to get some of them down. By the end, the game turned into chaos. We were all stealing each others money and finally decided to call it quits and go to bed.

طبتم مساءا (good night),

John