What Nazareth Looks Like

I've commented that it is a little weird to live in Nazareth, especially because most tourists see the basilica and Mary's Well and maybe the market, then leave after two hours.  I've been here for three and a half weeks, and I've only just gotten here.  I recently posted some 'tourist' pictures on my facebook, with the amendment that I rarely see these things, except as landmarks to use if I get lost.  This blog post is mostly pictures that show a little bit more of the place of where I live.

A Map

A map of Nazareth

This is map shows Nazareth Hospital (aka the English Hospital), which is where I live and work.  The Nazareth Village, right below our hospital, is a living history museum (like Colonial Williamsburg) that shows what first-century Nazareth would have looked like.  My apartment is on the hospital grounds, where I live with three other volunteers.  The hospital grounds are fairly big, and I live at the top.  On the map, it's between the Freres de Betharram Monastery (which I'm pretty sure is actually a convent, but maybe both are there and they just didn't label the convent) and the Carmelite Convent.

Nazareth
 If you look at the picture of Nazareth below, there's a big basilica in the middle (the Basilica of the Annunciation).  One the horizon, there's a shiny dome (a mosque), and to the left is a big church-looking building next to a long building.  That's the Salesian school, and how I can best find the hospital from far away.  The hospital is a little down and to the left, but it's not visible in this picture (sorry, google-ers can't be choosers).

Nazareth

Nazareth is basically in a bowl.  The Basilica and the main road are in the lowest and flattest part, and that's where first-century Nazareth was and where Jesus would have grown up.  It's a steep climb up from there to the hospital.  Once you get to the hospital, there are 189 steps from the hospital entrance to our apartment.

See what I met by steep?
(no, I didn't tilt the camera funny)

Above the bowl and on the other side of the mountain is Nazareth Illit, a predominately Jewish town.  It's listed as "Upper Nazareth" in the map.

The Hospital

A picture of the hospital, taken from Nazareth Village

This is the hospital, generally called the English Hospital (al-mustashfa al-inglesi in Arabic), officially Nazareth General Hospital EMMS (Edinburgh Medical Mission Society, who founded it).  There are wards, an emergency room, several outpatient offices, and a nursing school, as well as several Christian organizations that have offices here (including the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES), which is the umbrella group of Intervarsity, the campus fellowship group I was a part of in college).

The hospital sign at the bottom of the hill

The view from the hospital is great, though the climb that makes it so spectacular doesn't feel so great while you're climbing up.

The view of Nazareth.
The cliff right above the lightpost is where they say that the people of Nazareth
were going to push Jesus' off when they didn't like him.
Mount Tabor is in that general direction, and if you go a short ways up the hill you can see it.

A view of Nazareth in the other direction

This is the view directly outside of my front door.  You can see the convent next door, and we hear their bells along with the bells of many other churches in the city.  And we even have trees!

Trees! and a convent

This last picture is of our balcony.  It's a nice place to sit, and also where we hang out laundry.  There are cats and a chicken that roam around the hospital, and this one is my favorite, even though he's always trying to get inside (and sometimes succeeding).

So this Nazareth.  Modern day, real, living, chaotic, steep, Nazareth.  Yep, Jesus did live here two thousand years ago.  And his presence is still present in the city.  And yet for me it is really easy to forget that Jesus did grow up here, because I see Nazareth as a place where people I know live.  And for the next six months, I live here too!