flight, day 1

So first off, we all know that long plane rides can be detrimental to your physical health. Therefore El Al Airlines has been wonderful enough to provide us passengers with informational exercise videos on how to stretch on the plane. Notice the lovely cloud background and clear green screen usage.

The flight was long (direction from LAX to Ben Gurion) and i think i watched "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" about 1000 times because there weren't that many good movies. Still, the flight was fine and the food was decent.

Here we have the standard Jerusalem shot with the Dome of the Rock to the right.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre which houses the supposed crucifixon and burial places of Jesus.

Pool of Bethesda from John 5.
The building where the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) meets.
This lovely sign greeted us coming into the Israel Museum. Yeah, i was pretty bummed i couldn't take my weapons in, but what can you do?
A picture of some of the people in the group, stalker/paparazzi style
Okay the next few shots are of random "art" around the Israel Museum. it's clearly modern/crazy art. just look at these two happy kids. my apologies to anyone who wanted to see dramatic pictures of Israel. i'll upload some of those sometime.
Laura, Erica, and Mallory playing some sweet tunes on bottles.

me, Mallory, and Laura sitting in hand chairs reminiscent of that "Arrested Development" episode where Buster is haunted by memories of losing his hand to the seal with the yellow bow tie.
it's an upside-down bird chocolate popsicle that's melting...statue. wowzers!

so yeah, all in all things have been great so far. it's neat being back again and having some background so i'm not completely lost. Nate our leader/teacher has thrown a lot of information at us so far, but it's really interesting. i didn't realize the "study" component was going to be as intense as it is, but it's good because i feel like i'm learning more and it'll push me to not be mentally lazy. anyway more pictures to come...

p.s. thanks to all of you that sent birthday wishes and such! i am so blessed by all of you. :)