catching up

We've covered some ground since our last Jerusalem blog, and are now happily hanging out with our friend, Katie Thorleifson, in Bangkok, Thailand.  Katie is a former Hawthorne Elem. teacher, now teaching at an international school here in Bangkok.  She is very graciously putting us up (or putting up with us...) in her wonderful apartment for the weekend, and serving as tour guide extraordinaire.  The boys are thoroughly enjoying her cats, but I'm not sure the feeling is mutual.

Here's a bit of an update on the past week:

Nazareth - wonderful and beautiful.  We spent 3 nights at a great guest house, Fauzi Azar, run by an Israeli couple who are both committed backpackers/trekkers/outdoors people, as well as committed to reconciliation work and making their spot a place where Israeli Arabs and Jews and folks from all over can connect.  It's a beautiful old home set on the hillside of Nazareth.  We met a great guy there, a Mennonite from Pennsylvania named Dave, who is working at the guest house as well as for Mennonite Central Committee - but his other project is something called Jesus Trail.  The Jesus Trail is a hiking/trekking route through the Galilee region of northern Israel, a very beautiful and rugged area worthy of lots of time spent outdoors.  Check it out at jesustrail.com (quote from the website - "The Jesus Trail offers an alternative for travelers and pilgrims to experience the steps of Jesus in a way that is authentic, adventurous and educational.").  

   Our grand adventure on New Year's Eve day was taking the bus out to Tiberias (about an hour away on the Sea of Galilee) where we rented bikes, and biked 40km up to the Mount of Beatitudes and Capernaum (including the ruins of Peter's house and the spot on the lake where Jesus conferred upon Peter leadership of the church).  It was quite cool, but also hilly (the climb up to the Mt. of B was a serious workout), on a busy road, and Matt's bike was a bit of a bust.  We rewarded ourselves with a big dinner at an Italian restaurant in Tiberias (I had the St. Peter's Fish, appropriately) and then bought lots of snacks for our looming New Year's celebration.  We welcomed the new year in Nazareth on the deck at Fauzi Azar, with snacks galore and lots of fireworks.

   New Year's Day we taxi-bussed our way the 2 hours from Nazareth to Tel Aviv, which was quite a feat since I was sure our emphysema-ridden driver, who was smoking his way along, was going to keel over at the wheel before we made it.  I had my plan for simultaneously administering CPR while navigating the bus to a safe halt.  Fortunately, Mr. Driver managed to wheeze, cough and smoke his way to Tel Aviv without event.  We wandered Tel Aviv that evening, watching the sun set over the Mediterranean and visiting the local laundry, so as not to offend our fellow passengers on our flight to Bangkok the next day.  We didn't leave until the next night (Wednesday), so we had a nice, mellow day of wandering Tel Aviv, and even taking in our first movie theater of the trip with a viewing of "3:10 to Yuma", not exactly family friendly (our options were limited), but a rollicking jaunt through the gun-battles, with Hebrew subtitles.

   We arrived in Bangkok on Thursday (Jan. 3) afternoon, to our friend Katie's hearty and hospitable welcome.  We had a wonderful day wandering Bangkok yesterday, with more in store today and tomorrow, before we head to Cambodia on Monday.  We taxied, trained and boated our way about town, visiting some temples and eating good food (and drinking good things like Thai iced coffee and liquid red licorice, though my street treat was chicken satay... see photo above).

  

   We have had some unintended adventures with United over our 'round the world tickets on our last and coming flights, but I think it's worked out - if not... that will be a future blog.

   We'll try to give you a more thorough Bangkok run-down before we leave here Monday.

Peace and Joy!