Ei-LAT of Fun!

Ei-lat of fun in Eilat!! That's right- that's me snorkeling in the Red Sea! I was super nervous because my face is pretty small and I was worried the mask would leak a bunch of water...but....it didn't :) Actually it did a little bit, but I believe that is normal. Anyways, it took about 3 1/2-4 hours one way to get to the most southern tip of Israel and it was so worth it! All morning looking at beautiful fishies (at apparently the 3rd best place to snorkel in the world?) and all afternoon sitting on the beach and walking around the city. Good day.

Talia, Hannah, me, and Bekah with our protective water shoes! Red Sea coral here we come...

Olive processing time! Here is me, Hannah, Kelsey, and Jamie workin' the JC olive masher. I actually don't know if that's the official name of it, but there you go. We were mashing the olives so well that the wood even  started to smoke! 

After the mashing, you fill these woven basket-like things with the mush and place them on the press. This particular machine is a screw press (which showed up roughly during the New Testament period). The more commonly used press during Old Testament times was the beam press; the Center also has one of those. As you mash the mush (ha that's fun to say), the oil and juice seeps through the flat woven baskets and collects into pools to be separated later. I think we each may get a little vile of the olive oil we picked and processed to take home with us! 

JC Un-Talent Show: Meet the Suspenders Sisters.......just kidding that wasn't really our name, but I still like it. Here is the story in a nutshell-- randomly one night, I started teaching these girls some choreography from Club Style and we had all these stupid little ideas to make it really goofy and fun....so we decided to do it for the un-talent show. What really made it worth watching, was our costumes; we had the hardest time trying to find suspenders anywhere in Jerusalem! However, there was this one random store in East city that sold child-sized suspenders. You'd think that wouldn't be a problem for me, but I think the ones I got were for toddlers haha. We ended up being able to attach the straps on the front only so we had the back clip hanging around the back our necks. It still worked and we looked super nerdy. :)

With the permission of my very dear friend and Club Style president, McKell, she allowed me to steal a little bit of her choreography from Usher's hit, "DJ Got Us Falling in Love Again" and we combined it with some 'goofy' dance moves to Goofy Movie's "Stand Out." Thanks McKell! Fun night.