The Last two weeks...

Jon Here…

Hello everybody, very sorry for the late post. It’s been a pretty busy two weeks for Kasey and I.

Where do I start…Last week I had two field studies on Saturday and Sunday. We went to Herodian (Herod the Greats Fortress/tomb), Bethlehem, Tel-Aviv, Shiloh (Where the tabernacle was), Geba (Saul’s army against the Philistines) and Michmash (where the Philistine camp was and where Jonathan and his armor bearer slaughtered them). They were very very exciting, but by the time you get home after one of these your mind and body are exhausted. Body because in order to see a good view of the land we usually end up walking up a mountain/large hill and all over the place, and it’s about 80-110 degrees when we do it…so you are extremely sweaty. Mind because after the hikes or even during the teacher is talking non stop where you have to process everything and take down notes. So it drains you very fast, but it’s SO FUN! During the day you don’t really feel it cause you are in the zone, but as soon as you get home you pretty much crash (Kasey can vouch for me :P). OH! And usually after our Physical Settings field studies you have a paper or two that you have to write about the day and your thoughts, AND a test on the next day. So yes, very fun, and they are trying to “weed” us out to see who can and who can’t…let’s hope I can :P But trust me, it’s SO fun and I love every second of it…except Hebrew.

Friday Kasey came with me to JUC and chilled on campus doing whatever for 3 hours while I was in class (I don’t know which one was more boring :P). But after my class was done we went to a coffee place in the new city called “Aroma”. I got a typical frap, and Kasey got a HOT drink that she loved very much. We walked through a new outdoor mall, and into a cool part of the city were there is a big open area for people to sit/walk/eat/etc…very fun place. We were looking for a pet store because we wanted to get a cat. MOST pet stores (all the ones we went to) only have fish and birds for household pets. If you want a dog or cat you have to get them off the street or at a shelter. So we found some flyers and found a really good shelter where we could have our pick of kittens (2-3 months old) and only have to pay for neutering and shots (which have been done already). OH MAN! I just realized that we were going to get McDonalds while we were there, but we didn’t cause we had to book it to the shelter…dangit. Another day, another day…and next time we will take pictures so that you can see where the cool area is.

The whole process of getting a kitten took from about 1pm-7pm (getting home, waiting for the truck, and then find the place, picking out a cat, signing the papers and going home). When we got home with “Polly” Kasey realized that it was infested with flees…it was gross, and it’s making me itch right now. Anyway, we isolated Polly in the Spider bathroom…

Side note:

Kasey has gone into that bathroom a view times and has never seen the brown spider. I have been the only one to see it. So when we put the kitty in there we figured it was dead or it disappeared to somewhere else.

…and went straight to a pet store down the road to get some “Frontline” flea stuff. Kasey was very brave, yes MUCH braver than me, and took care of the cat and put the medicine on the cat and looked for fleas and grossness.

While Kasey was doing that I shut the door to the bathroom so that the cat couldn’t jump out. As soon as I shut the door the BROWN SPIDER darts out and starts running toward me at a tremendous spider speed! I as usual start freaking out and hit the lights to the hallway (they were off) but accidently turned the lights off in the bathroom where Kasey was holding the cat with fleas everywhere. She goes “JON! LIGHTS! I CAN’T SEE!!” I go, while jumping and backing up trying to find the stupid light switch to the bathroom and the hallway say “SPIDER!! THE BROWN SPIDER IS COMING TOWARD ME! I TOLD YOU IT WAS STILL HERE!” So I turn on all the lights, run back into the living room, grab my flip-flop and throw it on top of the demon spider. I don’t trust anything right now so I grab my other flip-flop and hit the other one repeatedly, scared that it got away with it’s lightning speed right before I tried to crush it. I had to start acting like a man so I stopped what I was doing and lifted up the shoe to find that nothing was there! IT got away and was above me ready to bite me!....I’m just kidding, I killed it. It is dead and there is not a soul who saw any of this…not cool.

We had to keep the cat in there from Friday night to about Saturday night (24 hours). On Saturday after church, Kasey went into the spider bathroom and checked for the remaining flees…she only found two! So we were happy and decided to take them off of Polly in the tub. We filled the bath up to a couple of inches thinking that this was going to be a bad experience with the Kitten, BUT to our amazement Polly just jumped in on her own and started walking around and licking the water! We were so happy that we had a cat that enjoys the water. We cleaned her off with shampoo and found out that there were way more fleas than just two left on her…maybe 10 or more. The worst part was when one jumped on Kasey’s thumb and she goes “AAHHH!!” and starts tossing her hand around trying to get it off…right in front of my body/face. So now that the flea is not on her hand and she is ok I am freaking out that it is on my body. I checked and I didn’t find anything. This bathing took about 1 hour to do. After we cleaned everything in the bathroom, and dry off Polly, she runs from the living room and back into the tub where she demands more water to play with. We gave it to her.

We made some Mac’n cheese because we didn’t really eat anything this whole time. Here we find out that Mac’n cheese is like cat nip for Polly…she goes right up to your bowl and will crawl all over your body just to get a hit of the cheese. We were also happy about this, now all that’s left is pizza (she didn’t eat chocolate ice cream or chocolate icing, which was kind of disappointing, but whatever).

Sunday I went all around Benjamin, from Jericho to Gezer (all the way east and west) learning about the land and the importance of it. I just got done writing the test about yesterdays field study. This week for me is really busy. I have a midterm paper to write and a field study on Friday. BUT Kasey and I are hoping to go to the beach in Tel-Aviv on Sunday and swim in the Mediterranean, which will be a fun day if we can manage it.

Prayer Requests:

-Jon has a very busy week this week with school

-Continue praying for Kasey as she teaches and for her students that they will be a blessing to her

-Continue to pray that God provides for us

-Pray for Polly, our new Kitty

Praise Items:

-We are moving into our new apartment on Thursday and will finally get to unpack everything and make it our own!

-We have a pretty awesome kitty