Day 14

Happy Jerusalem Day!
This morning we had 2 hours of Old Testament and 2 hours of Ancient Near Eastern, all getting us ready for what we will be seeing in Egypt. After lunch we had some free time so I headed into the old city with my roommates Katie and Jessie to pick up last minute things for the trip. I got these sweet sandals from Shabans, and some gummies, and these cool baclava things. I've never had baclava, but the guy kept giving us samples and they were all so delicious so we got a bunch. We will be in Egypt for 8 days, so we needed to stock up on as many snacks as we could get.

After dinner we had a forum, where 3 Palestinian Moslems who attended BYU came and talked to us about what their experiences there were like. It was really interesting, they had almost all positive things to say, and they kept saying how many similarities there were in the values and the culture that made it relatively easy for them to adapt. It was funny, the one thing they said was the hardest for them to adjust to was not drinking coffee or tea. They said the first few months were miserable for them, since around here they drink that stuff like water. They had some cool insights too on what they liked about the people they met at BYU and how we can be better both in Provo and here in the Holy Land about being tolerant and more culturally sensitive to people from different religious and ethnic backgrounds.

So Jerusalem Day is actually kind of a touchy holiday because it celebrates the Israelis taking control of the Holy Land. So half of the people are happy about it, and the other half of the people... not so much. But if there's one thing the Jews know, it's how to throw a rocking party. We took a taxi (Mormon-van sized, with 16 seats) over to Ben Yuheda Street in West Jerusalem to join in the festivities. There were musicians and artists all up and down the street, and there were a ton of people out. At the end of the street there was a huge group of Jewish people dancing around a van with Israeli techno music blaring, and we all joined in. The Jews love it when our guys join in, but they're a little hesitant to welcome the girls so we had to form our own circle to dance with. After a few minutes they warmed up and let us join their group. I think they're so used to segregating when they get together for religious celebrations that it carries over even into secular holiday traditions. We hung out there for a while, til some lady warned us that some Arab kids had shown up. We decided we better try to avoid any trouble, so we wandered back up the street until we had to come back to the center.

I am sooooo excited for Egypt, even though we have been told not to drink the water, eat the food, breathe the air, or touch anything. Haha we are starting bets on who is going to get sick first, and we're all praying that we won't be the ones... hence all of the food from Jerusalem. We won't have access to free internet either, so I will be taking a hiatus from the blog until next Friday... but I will take good notes and lots of pictures so I can make a fully detailed report when I get back!