Some pics of the Holy Land

A few years ago I was blessed to go on the Middle EastTravel Seminar (METS) and traveled through Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, Israel/Palestine, and Greece. It was an amazing 3 weeks learning history, archeology, religion, politics, and from the diversity of my fellow bus mates. I have been thinking a lot about my trip because we are doing camp curriculum on the Ten Commandments and I keep thinking of our trip up Mt. Sinai. I finally loaded the pics onto my new computer and so I thought I'd post a few....

The city of Palymyra, Syria. All the green you see is Palm Trees. Most of the landscape in that area of the world is a nice taupe/beige....desert (a.k.a. wilderness), desert, and more desert, and then all of the sudden you come around a mountain and you see the beauty of Palmyra--a true desert oasis--not a single palm tree with a trickle of water for the sun-stroked traveler, but acres and acres of Palm trees to lure you in....

Sunrise at Mt. Sinai, Egypt. We got up (for those who went to bed) around 1:30 am to take the bus to the base of Sinai, where we each hitched a ride on a camel through the dark of night to the halfway point on the hill. Then we hiked the 800+ carved steps to the top to await the glory of the morning sun.

Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem, Israel. I assume this Mosque is well known enough that it doesn't require much explanation....

Petra, Jordan. This ancient city was just voted as one of the new 7 wonders of the world. It is absolutely incredible to see. All of it is carved into the rock--no pillars etc brought in, all carved out of the rock....and many of the areas were carved just for burial--it was hard to wrap my head around putting so much work (I could imagine a life time) simply so you could die and lay there....

I'll probably post more on a later date, for now enjoy!