Life is Beautiful

Another week came and went...just as beautiful as the one before! If a picture is worth a thousand words, then I think I'll just post pictures this week so you can see for yourself the beauty of my new life.  :) The first one below is of the old city Jaffa, or Joppa, in Tel Aviv.  This name may ring a bell as the city where Jonah was sent to preach at before he was swallowed by the whale. It looks nice from afar, but even prettier up close!

mmmmm :) It's so magical!

Jericho: the lowest place on earth. 1300 feet below sea level. 10,000 years old. Unfortunately, we did not march around the city and blow trumpets.  But Devin and I did take a cute photo... :) Here we read in the Bible when it talks about the palm trees around Jericho and the luscious valley it is nestled in.  It is still like that today!

This is what it all looks like! Haha some parts of Jericho are more excavated than others.  We saw the oldest tower on earth!

And below is a special little resort I like to call Kind Herod's Winter Palace. Jerusalem gets cold in the winter, so he built this palace somewhere it stays warmer year round..and man, was it hot! Ha. There was some incredible work that went into his personal resort like his fish-net brick laying, and heated pools that are still standing.  Despite the fact that he was very mean and hated ruler, his buildings are grand.  

St. George's Monastery: A spot nestled in a crevice in the Judean Wilderness in the Wadi Qilt.  This diamond in the rough commemorates the time Jesus spent in the wilderness.  I literally never want to be trapped in the Judean Wilderness ever.  It's so dry and hot and it all looks the same: brown mountains of barren sand.  I almost went crazy and thought I was hallucinating the Bedouin people out in the middle of nowhere offering us donkey rides. Turns out they were real. 

But all in all, this graffiti in Tel Aviv reminded me one thing: life is beautiful! Every place I visit is different and maybe I don't every want to live there, but it has its own unique beauty.  Israel is beautiful!