Well, can you believe it?  I am actually telling about today.  We left Tiberias today and headed for the Jordan River, Jericho and a float in the Dead Sea.

These first pictures are of the courtyard at the Cosa Nova Guesthouse.  There was a picturesque small Catholic Church in the courtyard, which beckoned us to pray often.

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Inside was a marvelous wood carved statue of Jesus telling Peter to "Feed my sheep", and on the ceiling another picture of Peter.  It was difficult to leave this place.

There were many people being baptised today,  from all over the world.  Since this is Easter week there are people from all over the world here.  In Tiberias, we heard German, French, Nigerian, Norwegian, Japanese, Irish, Italian, Russian, Israeli, Palestinian and many more.

These pictures aren't very clear.  It was prettier than it appears.

We're on our way to Jericho.  It is very desolate here and we saw many Syrian military building that were abandoned in the 1967 war.

We have a little resort of sorts here.  Again, lots of people from different countries were represented.

Here we are in all our glory.  You can't swim, you can only float and it's hard to stand back up.

The mud from the Dead Sea is supposed to be very therapuetic, so people slather it all over themselves and let it sit for a while.  That was an unusual and unexpected sight. Our host family gave me some mud, so if you want to get together and....................let me know.

The first picture is an Israeli checkpoint to enter Jericho. We were not supposed to take pictures at checkpoints, so I was careful.  They are all carrying machine guns.  Jericho claims that it is the oldest city on earth and is the only town that is totally Palestinian. The middle picture is where we had lunch.  Up behind us was the "Mount of Temptation", where Jesus was tempted in the wilderness.  You could take a cable car up to the top where there was a monastery.  That appealed to me,  but will have to save it for another time.  The next few pictures are of the city of Jericho.

    Town square

Now we travel the barren hills back up to Jerusalem.  We go from the lowest point on earth, below sea level, to a mile high.  Can you imagine wandering around in hills like this for forty years?

Believe it or not, in among these hills are Bedouin communities.  These pictures aren't too clear because the bus driver evidently didn't see the importance of stopping the bus so we could get better pictures. Notice the water tanker. The middle picture is of sheep and goats.  How they find enough to eat here is beyond me.

And we arrive back in Jerusalem about 4:00pm while you were peacefully sleeping at 6:00am.  Tomorrow is a free day and we hope to visit with our host families' friends here in Jerusalem.  We also want to take a walk around the ramparts of the Old City Wall and walk around the Old City again.  Days are slipping by too quickly!  We hope to go to the Temple Mount on Monday before we leave, which will be late afternoon.

Bless you all,

Jim and Jeanne