David: 1; Goliath: 0

So, it's been awhile since I updated my blog and for all of my readers I sincerely apologize. Last week was quite intense with midterms, regular readings and synagogue visits. Not too much "bloggable" has happened except for last week's field trip. The field trip was the place of Shephelah and the Philistines.

We began at Beth Shemesh, which is a Tel of the city that was heavily fortified against the Philistines and overlooked the Sorek Valley. Here, we were able to see many ruins and walk down into a sweet cistern.

After that, we headed out to Tel Azeka, which overlooks an intense valley where David defeated Goliath. We were then able to go into the valley and practice our slinging skills. We each had a sling and were encouraged to lob rocks out into the fields, but our accuracy was questionable. At first, I was pretty good at getting the stones straight forward, but some went awry later in the activity. No deaths or injuries, but a few close calls. Whoops!

Our next stop was at the most beautiful Bell Caves. These were carved out of limestone from a small hole into gigantic caves. We sang some beautiful hymns here and took some awesome ninja pictures (unfortunately, none of which are on my camera and therefore will not appear in this blog). These caves

were absolutely miraculous and we enjoyed every second we had in them.

Next, we visited the Tels of Maresha and Lachish, which are cities both mentioned in the bible. We explored old tabernacles, huge basements and viewed large olive presses. The archaeology was explained by our wise teachers and these sites were simply awesome!

Lastly, we went to these ridiculously cool caves. We had to crawl into them on hands and knees and down a ladder. The cave was pretty large and there was this tiny hole that people started crawling into. At first, I was unwilling to go for fear of the tight space that I must climb through, but a wise young gentleman convinced me to face my fear and explore with him. We crawled through some tiny tunnels and small holes to find another exit out. It was quite the adventure!