FREE DAY - En Kerem!!

That's me, if you weren't sure, trying to steal our shuttle bus while the driver was absent! Today was a completely free day for us to do whatever we wanted!! It was amazing!! A huge group of us decided to go to En Kerem which is the birthplace of John the Baptist. It was such a quiet and amazingly peaceful town to explore so we went wild! We visited a Russian Orthodox Mission for women only although we somehow sneaked some guys in with us. It was hilarious! While we were walking around the church, we noticed this lady following us with a jar of water and a little whip thing so we didn't really know what she was up to. We tried to talk to her but couldn't understand a word she was saying so we pointed to the water curious to know what it was for. Before we knew it she was splashing our faces with this holy water and giving us a blessing of some sort. I'm not sure what religion I am a part of now since I may have been baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church. It was a funny experience! After that we realized we were trapped inside this Convent and tried forever to figure out how to escape. Maybe that was our punishment for renouncing our faith but no worries, we all made it out alive and well. We did some more exploring after that walking through people's backyards and up and down hills and cliffs. It made for a very tiresome day but it was fun for once to not know where in the world we were and to get away from the crazy busy and noisy streets of Jerusalem. I felt like I was lost in Italy or some European town that was absolutely dead silent with about 20 people I saw all day long besides ourselves. It was great to be outside and have a day to create my own adventure in whatever way I wanted. En Kerem is definitely going on my top 3 favorite places yet!