Acre and the Mediterranean

Again for breakfast we ate the same nasty cheese yogurt and pita bread combo, although today some girls went up to the store and bought Nutella, so breakfast is Pita Bread with Nutella and suplimented with a Clif Bar. Tomorrow will be the last breakfast at St. Margarets Hostle, so I will only have to bear it one more day.

Following breakfast we departed for Raineh, a small town about 10 minutes south of Nazareth (where we are currently staying). We went to church this morning, although the whole service was in Arabic. The sermon by J.R. Landers (one of our chaperoes) was in english and was translated by Sammual (Holy Family's Priest). Very few people attended this service because most people work on Sunday. Saturday (which is the sabeth is the day in which people typically get off. More on this later. Their hospitality at the church was amazing. They served us cinimon rolls just for us and those that tried the coffee were surprised at the strength.

I learned today by some Israeli youth that the country is mostly populated with Jews who make rules which are discriminatory against Christians and Musilems. Larah, Sally and Sima, were the youth which we spent the day with. Sima explained that she has to take special tests, similar to the SAT, where if she doesn't score high enough marks, she cannot go to the university. Although Jews don't even need to take the test, they simply can attend whichever university they choose. I felt bad for them. As a solution, Larah will be attending a university in Jordan where she can study in english how to become a Doctor. All Israeli University's are taught in Hebrew (not the more common Arabic).



The weather today was very overcast, although that did not stop the heat. It was well over 85 degrees todayt and more humid than ever. The humidity got even worse when we went to Rosh Hanikra (The Grotto) up along the Mediterranean coast. We had to ride a cable car to the bottom where there were caves and tunnels that have been formed by the smashing of the water against the rock for thousands of years. The cable car is said to be the steepest in the world...this didn't go over too well. The scenes at the bottom were unbelievable.

When we got off the cable car before entering the Grottos, young men and women dressed in millitary uniforms carying large guns. They were new recruits, not older than 20 years old and were training along the boarder of Lebonon. These Grotto's used to be a connection point between Israel and Lebonon but after years of conflict, the UN has placed a space of land between each country to reduce tention. This was the reason for the guards.



Part of the experience at the grottos were to travel to Acre (Akko) and explore some of the Crusader Ruines and Ottoman Quarters. We saw the quarters in which former Roman Pilgrims would sleep, play, explore, eat, etc. Some of the tunnels were extremely small possibly only four feet high. The final point of our tour through the ruines was through a gift shop and onto a back street in Acre. We had no idea where we were and why the end of the tour lead us out into such strange and odd area. Not dressing for the occation, many of the girls were not wearing the corect clothing and didn't have their shoulders covered. Walking through this are of town, many people looked at us wuth angry eyes and some threw rocks at us. The most surprising thing to see were all of the wild cats. All looked siamese and there were more kittens than cats. Some were in garbage cans, some were eating food off the street.

Some of the members of our group felt sick and needed medication. Pharmacies work very differently in Israel than in the US. To order a perscription, you walk up to the counter, explain your ailments and what you would like and the pharmasist perscribes it to you there and hands you the medication.

Tomorrow we will see some more sites and leave Nazareth for Jerusalem and St. Georges College where we will spend most of out pilgrimage. I found today that we will not be the only group. There is one group coming from the Buffelo area, another from Michigan or Minnisota (I can't remember which) and another group from the Nutherlands.