July 14, 2007

Last day! I can't believe it. A) At the time I couldn't believe I was actually about to leave Jerusalem (though I was missing home quite a lot) and B) Now I can't believe I'm actually finally writing the last blog post.

Like I said in the last post, Travis wanted to be up for sunrise. So we got up far too early for our own good and headed up on the Mount of Olives to take pictures of the Old City as the sun rose. Rather, it turned out more that I slept in the car while Travis took pictures of the Old City as the sun rose. He came and woke me up long enough to get our self-portrait with the Old City as our backdrop.

The amazing thing of this photo shoot was that there were actually clouds in the sky! Travis had been bemoaning the lack of clouds because it takes the color out of the sky, and lo and behold, our last morning here, we got clouds. Merry Christmas, Trav.

We did some figuring and discovered that from this sunrise until we next saw the sun set (as we'd be flying with the sun) would be 24 hours. What an incredibly long day.

We drove to the airport, not even getting lost once (you should be proud of us) and got the carw returned. We tried to send some postcards from the airport, but alas, it was Saturday (read: Sabbath) so the airport post office was closed. A fruit smoothie later, we were in the airport, awaiting our flight back.

I shan't get into details of the flight. Just know there was some listening to Harry Potter (me), watching the Simpsons and playing poker on the seat in front (Travis), and much sleeping.

After we finally got back, Travis whipped out his phone and texted his roommate, Casey, wondering where he was, since he was "supposed" to pick us up. We were trying to put a bit of fear in him, making him think he was supposed to pick us up from the airport and forgot... but he lamely texted back just saying, "I thought that was tomorrow. I'm in a movie now." [rolls eyes] What kind of a lame response to a prank is that?

We finally met up with our real ride (Mom, Dad, Jessica, and my friend, Briton). Mom almost didn't recognize Travis with him actually having hair on his head and a beard. It was fantastic.

And this, my friends, finally ends the saga (over a year later) of my sojourns in the Middle East. Hope you enjoyed!