Independence Day in Israel and Where Dead Men Lie

One of the few times we'll have to 'take a night out on the town': celebrating Israel's Independence Day with the jubilant Israelis. The whole 80 of us, (hitherto referred to as 'we' or 'the company') ventured out into West Jerusalem, just as the sun hit the horizon. In comparing what the streets looked like at around 8:00pm to about 11:30pm (as seen below) we began to realize that those that attended felt as strongly about their independence as we do ours. With all of the noisemakers, silly-string attacks, and smiling faces we felt like we would join in the festivities as well. Granted, in the beginning, our company made pretty much the bulk of the celebration (not an exaggeration) and all of the tourists/locals took the opportunity to snap pictures of the crazy kids dancing to the music. But, finally 'normal' people started to join us and dance as well.

An estimated 7,000,080 people showed up for the celebration.

After a while we even ventured into the more packed concerts that were going on and participated with all of the Israelis in dance and song. The music was surprisingly catchy and there was even a dancer on the stage to demonstrate what real dancing looks like. After a few more minutes of joining hands and dancing in circles etc... we took our leave in order to watch the supposed fireworks display.

All of us waiting in the chilly air.

 Although a little bit late, the fireworks finally came—but the wait was our trial of faith and in the end, things worked out alright. Albeit they might want to work on their finalé... because two mis-timed fireworks leave a sort of longing in the soul for more. But it's just not going to come. There's probably a pessimistic lesson of life somewhere in there but I'm not going to spend the time to find it...

The more fancy shmancy mall, decked out in festive lights

 We returned back to the Center without any incident and after having quite an enjoyable evening.

Continuing onward... on one of our recent free afternoons, there was a few of us that decided to venture off into the unknown/more sketchy places on our list given to us from our field trip class. Two of them were the Tomb of the Kings (that's got a nice ominous ring to it) and Zedekiah's Cave. We strapped our headlights to our hips and headed on our adventure.

I'm going to explain this from a third/second person perspective in order for everyone to gain the most from this account. Ahem.

You walk along a side road outside of the Old City until you approach a random green door set in a rock wall. The door is too short for any normal person to comfortably enter into, but you ignore that fact and push the call button on the little intercom to the left. A voice says something unintelligible to which you reply, "Can we come in? 10 shekels?" Another muffled response. Then the door clicks open and you enter, give the 'owner' your ten sheks and continue down the stairs into an open courtyard. To the untrained eye you might just wander around and see some open caverns filled with tepid water. But to the adventurers akin to Indiana Jones, one cannot stop with such dissatisfactory results. After a quick glance, you hone in on an odd looking wooden palette covering a hole in the rock. Some further investigation reveals that one can actually physically get into the hole without too much trouble. Then you happen onto something like this: 

Now, let's be honest, crawling around and exploring a maze of old tomb which once house the 'noble and great ones' is perhaps one of the coolest things one can do in Jerusalem. I'm a fan. Ten shekels? A steal. I would have paid twenty. (hopefully the owner doesn't happen onto the previous comment) We took the opportunity to take some eerie yet fitting photo's of the musty rooms that we were finding. 

From left to right (Becca, Tyson, Me, Jennessa, Megan, and Alyse) 

And some other kodak moments ended our experience and we walked back outside of the walls, quite pleased with ourselves.  It wasn't until afterwards that I noticed that my headlight was missing. But, I made sure that that unpleasant development didn't mar the whole experience. It's just a flashlight.