israel day 15...

so i was looking through my old photos on another bored sunday night, and i came across the photos from my israel trip.

this is a picture of me on a chairlift going down from mount hermon, the highest point in israel (2236metres). being a new christian then, and not knowing much about israel, i left most of the planning to carol (thank you carol!). i was totally unprepared for this trip up the mountain. the lift took about 15mins, and 5 mins into it, i was like freezing.. cause i wasnt properly attired (cause i didnt ask where we were going! hahaha..) and the wind just kept hitting you from higher up.

it is somewhat a norm for smu students to go for some sort of overseas thing, be it an overseas exchange, or a business study mission to a country. not having the luxury of a well-off family, an exchange was never in my mind, despite hearing how wonderful my friends' exchanges were. not knowing israel was about, i took up the bsm to israel module because carol was like super excited about it. to be honest, it must be God's plan for me to go there as bsm is a very hard module to get and usually, only the high-flyers or those really good in interviews get to go on them. for some reason, carol nagged at me to submit our application way before the deadline, and for some reason, the profs just accepted whoever that did so then. they must be afraid they wont get anybody, but turned out for the later ones, they had to go through an interview. i was never good at interview, so must really thank God for bypassing it for me =)

this, along with vietnam is by far my favourite holidays, though i think israel is indisputably number 1. a country in the middle east, where you hear stories of violence all the time. a country where english is not widely spoken. a country with a culture that is so different. it cannot get any scarier, especially since we decided to rent a car for two days and drive around the country, who roads are on the other side! not to mention the really low temperatures (im dont do too well in cold) and the number of days the trip was (17 days in all).

people say that there are just some close friends you cannot travel with. a trip where you see each other for so many days consecutively, the ugly side of people is bound to surface. i have a few friends who turned out to be such but thankfully, carol was not one of those people. not often do i depend on others for directions thanks to God-given sense of direction, but this is one place where i felt unsure, and good thing carol was there to take the responsibility.

haha.. enough of the carol praising right? hehe.. im really thankful for this trip. im one of few lucky christians who got to visit the holy land, and get to have an image of what the placese the bible mentioned looked like. and i was only 6 months young then! im thankful i got to know a friend (and her mum) much better. though i dont think we'll ever go on a trip anymore.. not too appropriate to get other's wife to go on a trip.. oh oh. unless i get myself an another half and we can bring them along! though i doubt that will happen anytime soon..