Day 29

Happy birthday Aunt Debbie! And thanks for all the birthday cards I've gotten! It is so fun to see letters in our little mailbox :)

Turned in the crazy big paper today. Mine ended up being 11 pages long. Call me an overachiever, it was just the personal reflections that kept getting bigger. I guess I have a lot of personal reflections about Islam and the situation at the Middle East. We had two hours of Old Testament this morning, getting caught up after Egypt. We were reading in Leviticus and Numbers, a lot about the Law of Moses. It's cool to learn about that and then relate it to the things we see the Orthodox Jews doing around Jerusalem. We talked about the law against lighting a fire on the Sabbath, and how the Jews today have interpreted it to mean turning on anything with electricity. A lot of buildings have Sabbath elevators that go up and down, stopping at every floor so that you can ride it without pushing any buttons, and not "lighting a fire". I remembered seeing a big sign at the Western Wall, where you have to go through security, that said that the metal detectors are specially designed and approved by Rabbis so that going through them on the Sabbath is kosher. I love learning about the things that are now part of my everyday life!

So I was looking at my hair in class today and decided I needed a haircut. Since I was feeling brave, I let my two very willing but very inexperienced roommates cut a couple of inches off. Fortunately, they did an ok job. My hair feels lighter and healthier, and hopefully it will be a little easier to do in the morning since my lack of a straightener is kind of cramping my style.

We finished up our volleyball tournament tonight- we lost the first games, played the next round in the losers bracket, made it back to the championship, and then lost our last game. First runners up isn't bad, considering how many people here played in high school. The skills I learned in my volleyball class last semester definitely helped, but unfortunately were not quite enough. It was really fun still, I had a great team and we just enjoyed every minute of it!