More of my touristy behavior

You may have figured this out from that last picture, but I finally went to the Dead Sea! This is exciting. I made a bucket list at some point in my elementary school days, and it included floating in the Dead Sea. (If I remember right it also included owning a pair of earmuffs for every day of the week. It wasn't that great of a list.)

I went with a big group of students from HUJI, so we had big air-conditioned buses, a tour guide, and a bodyguard who brought this amazing rifle that he probably used in the 1948 war. We started at Ein Gedi, where we hiked up to the springs and splashed around for awhile. Then they took us to a beach on the Dead Sea where we floated around. It was AWESOME! It's like sitting on a chair in the water. Madeleine, my French friend who is so good for my self-esteem, kept saying, "How are you doing that, Caroline?! You are not sinking! You are so talented!" The water felt really greasy and did not have the delicious taste that water generally has. Also it BURNS if you get it in your eye, which I may have done. We paddled down the beach to a mud pit and slopped black mud all over ourselves. It's supposed to be good for your skin because of all the oils and minerals, but I haven't noticed any dramatic changes yet. I should probably go back and try it again.

In case you have not spent much time researching this salty phenomenon, I will tell you about it. The Dead Sea has 33.7% salinity, which is more than 8 times saltier than the ocean, and it is getting saltier because it's evaporating. (I made a comment about how awesome it's going to be when it gets so salty that the rocks start floating up off the bottom, but it made everyone think I was dumb.) The water level is dropping at a rate of a meter per year, which will probably slow down as the water gets saltier. Basically it was a splendid splendid experience and I heartily recommend it to you. If it's not already on your bucket list, you should consider adding it.

This morning I went with my friend Mahri to Yad vaShem, which is the Holocaust memorial museum. It was also an amazing experience, but in a very different way. It was very emotional and overwhelming. It provided me with a lot of food for thought, which I wasn't planning on writing about here, but I'll give you the cliff notes version. It made me wonder (again) how I would act in an environment like Nazi Germany--I hope that I would do the right thing and not tolerate that kind of evil, but I'm really afraid that I would be too selfish, and would passively stand by and try to ignore it. That seems to be how the Church reacted. There are lots of stories of Christian individuals who risked everything to help people who were being persecuted, but the Church as a whole was conspicuously quiet at a time when we should have been living out the gospel in a very obvious way. The whole time I've been here I keep seeing more and more how Christians are perceived around the world, and it's very jarring. Just for starters, they associate us with the Crusades, antisemitism, and nonstop bickering among denominations. I've heard that Israeli children learning addition learn to use a modified plus sign that doesn't resemble a cross, because of the negative connotations the cross carries. This is horrible! We are not doing too well at being the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

I could keep talking for hours on this subject, but I must be going. I hope you aren't too down about being smacked in the face with such a hefty topic, just as your weekend is beginning. Here's a link to some more pictures for you. Have a lovely weekend and I miss yooooouuuu!