View of the Wadi Qelt

Yesterday, I went with Fr. Julian, Fr. Christopher, and Javier to the Wadi Qelt, between Jerusalem and Jericho. We first missed the road to the Wadi and ended up offroading on a dirt path through a Bedouin village and through the Judean hills. The first pic is a view from the hilltop that we made it to right before we decided to turn around. We found the path and made it to this long and winding path through the hills to the Greek Orthodox monastery of St. George, which has been there for over 1500 years. We were followed by Bedouins who wanted us to ride their donkeys to the monastery (for a hefty fee of course). We made it to the monastery. Absolutely beautiful. One bit kind of creeped me out. To the side of the chapel that commemorated the hundreds of monks that were martyred in the 6th century by the Persians, there was a glass box that contained the corpse of one of those martyrs. It was a little shrivelled, rusted skeleton in humble monk garb laying in a box in that chapel, where it has laid for over one thousand years. In the main chapel, there was a glass box that contained many small trunks glass plated on the top. In the center of each was the skull of a deceased monk, surrounded by the rest of his bones. We headed back down the hill, gave in to the Bedouins and rode donkeys for a fifteen minute journey back to the beginning. Here, we paid the Bedouins and told them to distribute the money between themselves. They looked at us as if they could not possibly comprehend the concept of sharing. After Javier argued sufficiently in Arabic, we got into the car, shoving a wad of bills into their hands, and drove off.