timbslim

I am sitting in an Individual and Family Therapy class. I am listening to a girl take part in an mock counseling session. I wish I wasn't bound by confidentiality so that I could tell you about this session. Basically, a church person is suffering from wanting to control someone else. That sounds familiar doesn't it? I am bored out of my mind. I started going though my pictures. I found this picture of me floating around on the Sea of Galilee. Sure beats being in this class. I have to say that being on the Sea of Galilee beat being here, beats being a lot of places. You probably know what I mean when I say that being somewhere else in our minds is a great way to steal away from the muck of the daily grind. Like me, you may have certain places that almost nothing else gets to you. Those places for me are running in the morning, riding my bike through the woods of Monte Sano, skiing down any Western or European ski slopes, and floating on the Sea of Galilee. There are...

April 3, 2008/Thursday 9:54am (Jerusalem) I am on my fifth trip to Israel. I have seen almost every nook and cranny of this country. I am now becoming so familiar with the layout that I have a sense of direction and an awareness of the layout. It is pretty cool. I find myself knowing which road to take and how to get to certain places. But today, I gained new knowledge. Today we headed West and South of Jerusalem. We started out at Bet Shemesh. We climbed up to the Tel of Bet Shemesh. A Tel is a mound of layers of a city that has been built and rebuilt. Basically, old cities have been conquered and rebuilt. After each battle, the city is leveled and another is built on top of the rubble. This produces a layering effect. This is a simple explanation of a Tel. Standing on top of Tel Bet Shemesh, you can see Samson’s community, Zorah, on one side and Delilah’s community, Timnah, on the other. Just down the road, literally, is where the Valley of Elah where David killed Golia...

April 2, 2008/Wednesday 9:32pm (Jerusalem) The day started with a wonderful laugh. My mother told me a great story about my daddy. First, it is important to understand how our hotel rooms are laid out. The shower and sink are in a separate room from the toilet. It has a room to itself. About 5:30am daddy got up to go to the bathroom. He decided to be real quiet so as not to wake up my mother. He stumbled across the dark hotel room. Instead of turning on the light he backed into the bathroom. So, he used his foot to gauge the distance from the door to the toilet. There was a slight problem. He wasn’t in the room with the toilet. He backed in and proceeded to sit down. This is when he fell in the floor. Mother woke up listening to him laughing while sitting in the bathroom floor. That is a great way to start the day. Since I posted last, we have seen a ton of stuff. We have covered a lot of territory. We arrived in Jerusalem on March 29. There is no way to describe a t...

March 28,2008/Friday I had Turkish coffee twice today. I may very well be up for the next 6 weeks straight. It is like drinking heavy mud with a coffee flavor. You only get about an ounce of it. Let me help you understand why one ounce of Turkish coffee is enough. If you were to take that ounce of coffee and add about 6 ounces of water you would have the equivalent of molten lava with a coffee flavor. Maybe if you added a gallon of water you might actually say that is taste almost like regular coffee. After drinking it your teeth are clothed for winter; it’s like each tooth has its own fur coat. If a British person drank Turkish coffee he or she would immediately need dental work. This does not apply to the wonderful and charming British people who I know personally. They are great and have beautiful teeth. Really, their teeth are like fine porcelain handcrafted by God. Anyway, Turkish coffee is stout if you have missed my point. Tonight I sat in the home of some Jewish fo...

Greetings from Israel! I am in Tiberias. I am having trouble posting to my normal blogspot at timbslim.blogspot.com. So, I have pasted it into this e-mail. I'll try to get the blog up soon. Otherwise I will e-mail it to you. I must first tell you about our stop in Paris. We planned to ride into downtown Paris due to the fact that we had about 7 hours between flights. I want to go ahead and go on record to say that driving from the airport (which takes 45 minutes) into Paris to tour the city is not, I repeat, not a good idea. I will attempt to convey all of the reasons for this. Remember we were on a bus. I think our most obvious obstacle was the fact that when we got off the plane, we were immediately forced to interact with French people. This in and off itself is a recipe for disaster. Might I add that French people don’t make a whole lot of effort to speak good English. It could be because their heads are so far up their own butts that even their ears are covered. ...