Shakespeare and Zions National Park

Well this weekend was alot of fun! My mom, sister, Caitlin, and I went down to Cedar City on Friday to see a Shakespeare play, the Merchant of Venice. It was a pretty good play, but very anti-Semitic. For those of you who have not seen it, one of the main characters is Jewish, and he really does not like Antonio, but Antonio needs to borrow some money for his friend, so he lends Antonio the money with the deal that if he does not return it in a month he gets to take a pound of Antonio's flesh in return. There are many derogatory references to the Jewish people throughout, and then at the end the money is not returned and a pound of flesh is required, and the moneylender does not like Antonio, so he requires the flesh hoping to kill him, but they discover a loophole and suddenly the moneylender is on the wrong side of the deal and looses all he has. Which is fine, except for as part of the ending of the play he is forced to become Christian, which with that plus all the other comments and jokes in the play about him and his people, it makes you feel kind of sorry for him. I mean you shouldn't force someone to become a Christian. Anyways, if anything it just is an interesting history lesson about attitudes towards Jewish people at the time that the play was written. Or at least Shakespeare's apparent opinion. But, maybe he is not anti-Semitic....I don't really know Shakespeare that well.



The next day, Saturday, we went and hiked part of the Narrows in Zion National Park! It was pretty cool. We got into our campsite at like 12 am, set up our tents, and tried to sleep a little, but it was so hot! Anyways, hiking the Narrows was so much fun, it is a hike that goes up the Virgin river. There are small sections of trail at points on the side of the river, but for the most part you are hiking in the water, sometimes up to your waist. Caitlin and I decided we needed to go swimming on the way back down, and even though we were not wearing swimsuits, just our hiking clothes, we jumped in the river in a few deep parts and let the current take us down the river. It was pretty fun! It was a very wet day after that, at least until we got back to the campground and changed our clothes. It was fun though! Next time we will be more prepared with hiking shoes (instead of flip flops which Caity almost lost down the river) and hiking poles for better balance. It was alot of fun, even mom hiked up the river quite a ways with us and almost went swimming but did not have a change of clothes! It was a pretty fun trip!