Day 36

8 hours of class. Longest day of my life. Old Testament, MNE Israeli with a quiz, lunch, Hebrew, 2 hour break, MNE Palestinian, dinner, MNE Israeli with a midterm. I did good on the quiz and ok on the midterm, but it was kind of a stressful day. We got our take-home midterm for Palestinian class, which is basically another 12 page single spaced paper about random stuff in our manual. That is how I will be spending most of my weekend I guess.

The one thing that made today awesome was that we were cleared to go out to East Jerusalem! The head of security, Taafik, came and told us that the Old City wasn't off limits for the day because their "sources" told them everything was chill. With such a busy day there wasn't a whole lot we could do, but I went with my roommates Jessie, Katie, and another girl up to Aladdin's to exchange money for our trip to Eilat on Sunday. It was so good to be back out on the streets, breathing in all the fresh air and seeing people other than the same 80 people we see every day. It was a quick trip, we stopped at a small market on the way back to pick up some pretzels and snacks, and then it was back to work. While we were out though, we passed by this school across the street from one of the gates to the Old City and this little girl reached out and pulled my hair! Haha it was more of a tug but it was really random, her teacher kind of scolded her and then she gave me this mischievous smile. That was definitely the oddest moment of my day.

Tonight was mostly homework. It seems like no matter how much I do I can't get ahead, but I feel like as long as I don't get behind I'll be ok. We are reading Samuel for tomorrow, and it's definitely a lot of the same kind of wars over and over again but it's still fun to read. I am learning so much about the OT that I never really understood before, and it makes it a lot easier to get through it when you understand what's happening and why. There are some pretty funny parts too- like yesterday we were reading in Judges about a king named Eglon that was so fat that when Ehud stabbed him with a knife the whole handle got swallowed up in his belly. I'm really glad that story was in there because it made me think of Biggest Loser, and it was one of those moments when I felt like I could really apply the Old Testament to our own day and time.