11/30/12 – Coolio? Here?

Our first stop of the morning was Wadi Qelt, otherwise known as the Valley of the Shadow of Death; the place where Jesus went to fast for 40 days and nights.  While in a weakened state, the Devil tried to tempt Jesus but ultimately failed.

Regardless of the history and the rugged landscape, Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” kept playing in my head…”As I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I take a look at myself and realize…” you know how it goes.  It wasn’t until the road got really twisty that the song in my head quieted down. I began recording Shulli’s driving through these roads and by chance also recoded Mary Ellen’s squawking from the back of the bus.  She reminds me of the principal from South Park in more ways than one, but the squawking voice is spot on.  To get closer to an exact match you’d also have to add Mary Ellen’s ever present facial expression which causes her to always look like she just smelled something really bad.  Maybe it was the smell of the 3 hard-boiled eggs that she put in her purse at breakfast this morning.  Hard-boiled eggs… not exactly the first thing that comes to mind when I think of snack foods.

It pains me to devote any space, time or effort into including Mary Ellen in my journal, but she’s been a constant source of entertainment for Dad and me, and not in the good way.  Simply put: it would be impossible to leave her out if only for the fact that by comparison everyone else in the group seemed so…normal.

The scenery that greeted our eyes as we got off the bus was impressive; a rocky and unforgiving landscape where it seemed impossible that anything could survive.  As we followed a path that took us further away from the road I heard the distinct sound of water flowing; there was a river nearby and out of sight at the bottom of the valley.  Off in the distance I spotted a monastery perched on the rocky hillside.

Dad was asked to read a passage from the bible about the Devil’s temptation of Jesus while in the desert and then Amnon sang a song in Hebrew.  Both of their voices, Dad’s and Amnon’s seemed to carry across the valley (click here to read about Dad’s impressive singing voice).  They finished just in time; the local Bedouins had spotted the tour bus and were closing in on us with items to sell.

We turned to leave, but not before Dad and I were able to get a photo together in the Valley of the Shadow of Death… cue Gangsta’s Paradise.