Day 35

This morning we had Old Testament and 2 hours of Ancient Near East. We had sack lunches, so me and Jessie and Katie ate ours out on our deck. It was sunny but not too hot and a really nice day. This afternoon we had Modern Near East with our Israeli professor, and then we had our Hebrew midterm, which ended up being super easy because for each section there were 25ish questions but we could choose which 10 we wanted to answer so if there were ones we didn't know we could skip them.

Right after Hebrew, we started setting up for our Arab Culture Night. I was in charge of the napkin folding, so I taught about 6 people how to make napkin fans, and we set them up on the tables at the Oasis. We had to dress up, so most people wore Sunday dress but a bunch of the guys either had the shepherd head dress things or Arab man-dresses or both, and some of us wore the scarves we got in Egypt.

First we went into the forum and a father and son came who do the call to prayer at the Al-Asqa Mosque. It's a super big honor to do that, because this mosque is the third most holy place in Islam. Their family has been doing the call for 528 years. They said that having the voice for the call is a gift from God, and they start memorizing the chant for the call when they are between 7 and 9 years old. They first read a section from the Qur'an about Mary and Jesus, then they did the call to prayer. Then they got out prayer rugs, turned them toward Mecca and said the prayer. It was really beautiful, very flowing and almost haunting. It kind of reminded me of the Maori chanting.

Next, we had dinner. There was a bunch of traditional Palestinian food, and I don't really know what any of it was called. I actually didn't know what any of it was when I was eating it. But there was some good stuff. At the end of every meal everyone always goes back and gets either hot chocolate, sahlab, or in my case, hot milk from the machine in the Oasis. I like to mix the milk with honey and cinnamon and it's super delicious. They had some baclava too, and this swirly-shredded-wheat-ish type thing that we had a lot in Egypt too.

After dinner we went to the gym and this dance crew came and taught us some cool traditional dance moves. It was actually a lot like the moves we learned the other day from the kids that live on our street, just a little bit easier to follow. They were really good, one of the guys kept doing these cool jumps and twirls. Then it turned into a giant dance party and mosh pit. It was a blast!

We have a take-home quiz from our Judaism class to do tonight, and a midterm tomorrow afternoon, plus Old Testament readings. Some weeks it feels like there's not much homework and others it seems like we don't have time for anything else. We are still not allowed to go out into East Jerusalem, but I am hoping as soon as the strike is over, supposedly on Friday, that we'll get the ok to head into the Old City. There are usually fun things to do at the Center, but we are definitely getting a little bit of cabin fever from being stuck in here for a few days straight. Next Sunday we are taking some busses down to Eliat to go snorkeling in the Red Sea, and I am sooooo looking forward to getting out and swimming in the ocean!