The Challenge of the Century

The stage was set. We had now been here in Israel for four days. We had finally gotten some what acclimatized to the new culture, at least as much as one would expect from a group of rambunctious, no awesome, young adults from Canada and more importantly one from Baden. Just as we had achieved a level of equillibriumal balance, and yes i know equillibriumal is not a word, but this is my story and I am going to use it, so all you English majors are going to have to suffer. Where were we, o yes, just as we had, as whole unified group of friends, no brothers and sisters in destiny, achieved a state of comfort, we were dragged off on an adventure that few would survive, and fewer yet would forget (ps. don't worry no one actually dies, but death sells better). We were called to save a poor helpless...

Ok sorry i am for getting carried away.

So yes on this day May 8, 2008 our Yella (which means "lets go" in Hebrew) group went on a journey. An 11 kilometer hike(which is really really far), through tough terrain and up steep escarpments from Nazareth to Sephoris/Zippori (we actually had a big debate on the name and there was lots of confusion, at least for me). After having breakfast at 8am we grabbed lunches from the stores near by, most people buying pizza from a store for only 6 shekels, translating to less then 2 dollars for a pizza (crazy eh).

A little aside of interest: today is actually a very special day in Israel. Called the "Independence day" by the Jewish Israelis or "the Disaster" by the Arab Palestinians, it marks the day of the creation of the state of Israel. Today in fact is the 60th anniversary of this birth.


At 9 we headed out for our hike which took place on a section of the Jesus trail. This is a project initiated about 6 months ago that retraces the steps of Jesus from town to town across the plains, and hills (big hills, that are very steep with lots of thistles, and other pointy objects). Our fearless guide David, former student of EMU led us up steep sets of stairs that were way to steep, tell we got to the top of the ridge the surrounds Nazareth, giving us a breathtaking view of what lay before us. From here we spent the next 2 hours trekking through the Israeli bad lands, through farmers fields and forests, until we reached our destination of Zippori, awesome place by the way.

Here there was a national park that contained many remnants of Old Zippori from first century Israel. They included an ancient Roman road, like the ones that covered the Roman empire; many amazing stone mosaics found within the remains of many ancient Jewish buildings. Unlike the homes we saw at Nazareth's Village, these were far more complex, colourful and big, clearly belonging to the wealthy elite. Also in this village was the remains of an old Jewish synagogue, oddly included in the stone mosaic in this building were inscriptions of a Greek god. After enjoying our stay here, which included the discovery and of course exploration of a cave like hole, which Stephen claims must have been inhabited at one point ( I am a little more skeptical) we headed on our way to the nearby (it actually wasn't nearby, like David claimed, rather another hour and a half hike, to the town of Cana. Here we visited a church which claims it has the water vessels in which Jesus turned water into wine, Lynn, our other not quite as fearless leader, said that it was highly unlikely that these were the exact water vessels which Jesus used, but that they would have looked the same. Finally after getting a taxi ride back to Nazareth...

...our heroes returned to their highly secret fortress, to relax after another hard day of work fighting crime. I lie now in my comfortable bed with built in foot massager, knowing that the world is a safer place because of what we had achieved today. Others are skeptical that our adventure today will solve all the worlds problems, but i figure its the best that one man can do when he is part of this Yella adventure. And maybe, just maybe, the leafs will win the Stanley Cup next year.

But that is a story for another day.....Blog written by Derek Alton
Pictures by Kristina Harder