Good Times in Springerville!

This weekend, Hannah and I went of to the grand land of Springerville, Arizona! Why would we be going to such a small and far away place? ACADEC of course! We had our Round Valley scrimmage and it was a really good indicator as to where we are at with our studies. Hannah, being the hardworking, overachieving genius that she is did fantastic! Here, let me just make you a little list of her achievements.

-1st Place Art
-1st Place Economics
-1st Place Superquiz

-2nd Place Speech

-3rdPlace Language and Literature
-3rd Place Math
~~First Place Overall Honors~~

I, being not quite the amazing person Hannah is, was still able to collect a few awards. I got second place in interview and essay, which was pretty exciting for me because I've never won any awards at these wonderful little competitions.

Our team got third place in Superquiz relay and first place overall. It was a very successful trip, and I think the whole group of 17 had a good time!

The whole team with our first place plaque :)

The nine of us with our 3rd place Superquiz plaque!Anyone who won any awardsThe usual outside on the steps picture afterwards
Overall winners

Biblical Landscape Reserve in Israel

Picnic area in the Reserve where we finally had lunch after many hours of walking and exploring. The people in the picture are our tour group,

The pictures in this post are from "The Biblical Landscape Reserve" We spent the whole day Sunday with a guide touring the over 600 acres. The objective of this project is restoration to Biblical times from Scriptural description of the areas. They are restoring to how they were during the different time periods.

Since it was the time of Sukkot that had a large display of a variety of Sukkas. Some met the Biblical definition of a proper Sukka and others did not. There were signs to explain the problem with the incorrect structures. According to Jewish tradition they need to be a certain size or larger at least three sided have to be freestanding, they must be a portable structure and many other requirements.

An actual cistern for water storage. The area was laid out so that all the rain fall would run into the water storage area. This is an actual cistern from the time of Abraham. There are many references to cisterns in the early Scriptures. There are many cisterns in the hills of Israel that are continually being discovered. Some will still hold water.

If you would like to know more about the Neot Kedumin (Biblical Landscape Reserve in Israel) check out their web site http://www.n-k.org.il/public/english/index.htm and click on virtual tour. Also go to their newsletter for more pictures and information. It was a very fascinating day with so much information about the land and the scriptures describing the areas we were looking at.

More of Sukkah

There are more pictures in earlier post in October. There are three post for today. And i will get a little more posted later today or tomorrow.

We had two Sukkah's, the larger on the main floor balcony was used for the evening meal. Here it is set up for another excellent meal.
The view was breath taking no matter where we looked.





It is almost dinner time and the tables are all setup in the Sukkah.



Carla and one of the other guest decorating the small sukkah on the lower level.
A birds-eye-view of the lower level sukkah. The ladies had a lot of fun cutting out decorations and attaching them to the walls of the enclosure.

Preparing for Sukkot

Since I am still trying to learn how to put these together you need to look at the pictures from the bottom up. We were In Israel for the Biblical holiday of Sukkot (Lev 23:33-44) This set of pictures show the building and decoration of the booth (sukah). We had our evening meal in the Sukkah every evening. The ladies had a lot of fun with the decorating.

The flight in and guest house

The bus is a major source of transportation in Israel. Here is the local bus stop, on Friday morning some of the people decided to go to the next town to look around. Since there was no return trip they had to tramp (hitchhike) back. They had a great adventure and found that tramping was very easy.



The guest house is a ten bedroom house with two kitchens one for meat, on the main floor; and the other for Dairy on the lower floor. The top floor is a two bedroom suite for the owner. Murry (the owner of the guest house and a Doctor from South Africa) was also a guest on the tour and was just another member of the gang as we traveled.




The open area in the guest house where we spent some of our free time discussing that days adventures and the plans for the next day.



A view from the balcony out over the landscape from Nevey Menachen, the community we were staying in.



The accommodations at the guest house made it feel almost like being home, very family oriented. This is a picture of our room.

View of inside of the plane. The flight in was only eleven hours from Atlanta , the return on the other hand was 14 1/2 hours. I am ready to return,but there has to be a faster way.

We are home

Just wanted to let everyone know we are home. A lot of jet lag. It was 48 hours between getting up in Israel and going to bed in Arizona. The water bed never has looked so good as it did last night. I am very glad that I did not work today, but it is back to the grind tomorrow.

Since I forgot to take the spare battery and charger for the camera I am patiently waiting for others in our group to email me their pictures. At that time I will post pictures of all the places we went.

I will send an email to alert everyone that pictures have been posted.

Long Days

We are very sorry that we are not keeping up with the post. We leave very early and are not back to the house for the evening meal till after seven most nights. By the time we eat and discuss the day it is just too late to try and put sentences together for an accurate post of the day. I promise that once we are back into the states we will post a lot of pictures and narrative to the ten days.