Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Bet-Shemesh, Micah Caves, and the Central Hills of Israel

We had a great fieldtrip into the central hill area of Israel the other day, and it was amazing!  Everything was so wonderful and green everywhere we looked.  That was probably due partly to the rains we got a few weeks ago, and also just that it is the green season.  Looking out over the lush green rolling hills it's hard to imagine them being brown and dead.  I'm sure glad we got to see it in the green season.












Near the Micah Caves there are tons of underground structures carved into the soft limestone.  Here is an underground room with 3 giant oil presses and an olive crusher.  There were also dwelling rooms and cisterns in the same complex.  Nearby were underground barns, many large cisterns, and other rooms used for industry.  Working underground sheltered the people from the hot sun.





Monday, February 8, 2010

A Day in the Old City

I'm too sick and tired to really write much but wanted to start getting into posting again, its been a while. I have a ton of pictures from all over Israel and Egypt as well, so stay tuned for more. I'm probably going to focus just on more (slightly) artistic shots here on the blog, even tho most of my shots lately are pictures of the BYU group I'm with.




Yesterday must have been "Israeli soldiers go on tour" day, and there were tons of soldiers out and about...