Are you joKing Herod? No, I'm Dead Searious.

Above you can see everybody from the rooftop in Tel Aviv checking out the pictures we have from the last couple of days. There was hiking and floating, Bedouins and camels, sun and selfies, and a lot of good times.

I would actually like to thank Ilia for making this blog post complete, because I have a picture of everybody on camelback, but it's super difficult to take a selfie on a camel! Sam suggested I make a separate post with the 23 attempts I made to get a good shot of Shekina and myself. But Ilia had the picture all along!

We'd arrived on Tuesday night at the Sde Boker (Field of Cowboys- not Field of Morning) field school guest house after dark, so the view on Wednesday morning was quite a surprise! Those are the first couple of pictures that you can see some tired boys and a really nice Facebook profile picture for Shekina.

After a visit to Ben Gurion's grave, we took the road downhill to Ein Ovdat, a canyon which dead-ends at a trickling waterfall. You hike up some stairs and ladders and get to a Mizpor - a bird's eye view. My camera was on a wacky setting so you get a blue-tinted version of that scene.

We then switched deserts and drove off to spend the night with the Bedouins at Kfar Hanokdim outside of Arad, 15 minutes from Masada. Before the bags were even unloaded from the bus, we were on camels bouncing around the desert. I think Mettannah's camel was named Simon and mine and Shekina's was named Lucas. I forget the other names, but I'm sure they were traditional Arabic ones as well.

After that we met the man with 23 children and drank his coffee and tea and played a little dirt frisbee so we could get the necessary scrapes that make the Dead Sea an authentically painful experience. We had the delicious Bedouin cuisine and a lovely bonfire sing-song. I played some camp songs and Hebrew songs, Sam played some songs from the radio, and it was all in all really really nice. There was some star gazing, and before we knew it the roosters were crowing us out of bed.

I'm really tired now. I want to write about King Herod and the last stand and Shekina's hat, but I'm going to let the photos do the talking for now. One last thing, though: the Calgarians have been keeping their own blog as well, so you can look at it by going to.... http://cja2014israeltrip.blogspot.ca

Everyone is happy and healthy and sends their love. And Ethan is planning to phone home in the morning.

The binoculars have arrived.

holaa es shekina!!!! me gusta eel Helado!!!!Que Calor!!!Lucassss el mejor!! vamos Lucassss!!