Danielle's Adventures in Jerusalem

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2010-08-13T01:49:00.000-07:00

5 airports, 4 flights, 3 suitcases, 2 cranky Austrians and 1 very long day later I am finally back in the USA. It took 36 hours but it feels so good to be back! I loved seeing my family, including the newest edition, Ava. I'm so excited to spend the next couple weeks of summer playing with family and friends and catching up on all of my favorite summertime activities. It was hard to say goodbye to everyone from the JC, but it's nice to know that I will see most of them again in a few weeks!

Days 104 & 105

2010-08-11T13:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the second half of the Last Week of Jesus' Life field trips. We started out by walking in silence down to the Garden of Gethsemane. We talked about the Atonement there, sang some hymns and had free quiet time to sit and read our scriptures and ponder. It was my last time going to Gethsemane, and I really really loved it. It has been one of my very favorite places to spend time because of how peaceful and quiet it is there.

After Gethsemane we went into the Church of All Nations, which commemorates the Savior's time in Gethsemane. It is designed to look like an olive garden at night, with dim windows and stars on the ceiling. It was really beautiful, and there were beautiful paintings and mosaics of Christ inside and outside the church.

Next we walked to St. Peter's in Gallicantu, which commemorates Peter. This is supposedly the place where Peter denied Christ 3 times during Christ's trials, but the church also commemorates all of the events between Jesus' arrest and His crucifixion. Then we went to St. Anne's, at Bethesda, where there was a pool where Christ healed a paralyzed man. The church there had really amazing acoustics, so we sang some hymns, there was a quartet, and the ward choir (including yours truly) sang "This Is The Christ". Over the summer I have definitely come to appreciate the power of singing to bring the Spirit to the places we visit.

After St. Anne's we walked to St. Mark's Church of the Flagellation, where we talked about the scourging of Jesus during His trial and on His way to the cross. Then we went straight to the Garden Tomb. We talked there about the crucifixion itself and the Resurrection 3 days later. We had free time there too. I love spending time in the Garden Tomb, and it was especially nice after the discussion and the testimonies we had just had about the events that happened there. It was without a doubt the most powerful field trip that we have had here in Jerusalem. Even though I had been to most of the places before, I feel like you can never go enough. I get so much out of every visit and I'm always anxious to go back to feel the Spirit at these places.

Last night we had a closing meeting, where a few people got up and shared what they have learned since being in Jerusalem that they are going to take home with them. I really liked everything that everyone shared, and it was good for me to reflect personally on what I have learned and what I am going to take home with me. I've been thinking about it a lot lately, and I think there are a lot of positive changes that I've made and that I want to continue to make since coming to the Holy Land.

After the meeting me and my roommates had one last roomie sleepover, with all of our mattresses out on the floor. We were so tired, but it was so fun to spend one more night together. I am going to miss them a lot this fall when I'm back to my own room.

This morning I ran over to Omar's olive wood shop to pay for one of my purchases, then out again to do the very very last minute shopping. We got t-shirts and small gifts and some treats for the flight home, including a big bag of gummies. Gummies are a treat that I will miss a lot back home. We stopped by the Western Wall for a few minutes, and we saw a couple of Bar Mitzvahs going on. We got shawermas and frozen fruit drinks and some caramelized nut samples, and just had fun wandering the Old City one last time.

Our last stop was at the Garden Tomb. Like I said, I get something out of it every time I go there, and even though we had just been there yesterday it was really good to go back and read my scriptures, pray a little and just sit and think, reflect on the last 4 months and on everything I've learned and felt here. We sang a couple of hymns and then we walked back to the Center. I guess technically our very last stop was at the one-shek popsicle store on the way back up the hill to the JC.

When we got back we had a ton of packing to finish up. Most of our stuff in our room was packed, but there were a lot of little things here and there that sometimes are the hardest to find a place for. By dinner, though, all of our bags were packed, weighed, and waiting at the top of the stairs. Dinner was a barbecue outside, with really great food and really great desserts. It was actually probably one of the best meals we've had here so far.

After dinner we had an awards ceremony and a slide show of all of the best pictures from over the summer, then a bunch of us played Murder in the Dark for a while. We are all still awake right now, at least all those of us that will be leaving for the airport at 3 am. Our cell phones and linens are all turned in, our bills are payed and now we are just waiting to get on a plane and get back to our homes.

It has been an absolutely amazing summer. I can't imagine anything I would have rather done, and I wouldn't trade this experience for anything. There have been highs and lows, but I have loved every day of it. I have been surrounded by the most amazing people and I have learned so much from them, in addition to what I've learned from the teachers, the field trips and above all the Spirit. I am so grateful for the opportunity that I have had to be here and I hope that I can come back to the Holy Land again one day.

Day 103

2010-08-09T12:49:00.000-07:00

Today was our first day of the Last Week of Christ's life field trip. We started out the day in Bethany, where the tomb of Lazarus is. Jesus' miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead was when the Jewish leaders really set their sights on having Him arrested and killed. We stopped outside the church there but didn't go outside, then we went outside the tomb. At the end of Manscill's lecture one of the guys came groaning like a zombie out of the tomb, wrapped in toilet paper. A little irreverent, but still really funny.

The next place we went was Bethpage, which is where Jesus started His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, publicly declaring Himself to be the Messiah. We sang hymns in the church there, and saw remnants of the old road that He would have taken as He rode a colt into the city. After Bethpage we went to Pater Noster, which is one of the contested sites of the Ascension. One of the cool things about this church is that they had the Lord's Prayer in over 50 languages all around the inside and outside of the church.

Next we went to Dominus Flevit, the site where Jesus looked out over Jerusalem and the temple mount and wept. We read the New Testament account and some of the prophesies of the destruction of Jerusalem throughout the Bible. The church is built to look like tear drops, which is really cool. It is such a beautiful view of the city, but it's also sad to see it and think about all that has happened to this land since that time.

For lunch we stopped at the Orson Hyde Park. We haven't been allowed in there since the 1st or 2nd week of the semester because some of our students were mugged while they were walking back to the Center, but it's a really beautiful place so I'm really glad we got to go back there one more time before we left. We talked about Orson Hyde dedicating the Holy Land and about some of the events that have happened since then to fulfill the prophecies of the physical gathering of Israel back to this land.

Our last stop was at the Upper Room, a different one from the one we visited during our Christian Quarter field trip. This one I like a lot better, and I loved reading the scriptures about the Last Supper, especially after having our Triclinium program the other night where we learned a lot about it and saw what the dinner itself would have looked like. We sang some Sacrament hymns there too, and ate some bread from the Old City.

Tonight we had an information meeting about everything that we have to know to get ready to go home on Thursday. It is becoming more and more bittersweet every day as it gets closer to the end. After the meeting we had a party in the Oasis, with pizza, karaoke and dancing. It was a really fun end to a great day!

Day 102

2010-08-08T13:07:00.000-07:00

This morning I woke up early, before my alarm went off. I got up to breakfast early so I could get the good cereal before it ran out, and it was sooo worth it. After that I went back to bed for a couple of hours until my group all got together and ready to go out into the Old City.

We mostly just wandered through, going to a lot of the same places and picking up last minute souvenirs and gifts here and there. We stopped at a lot of different shops along the way though that I had never been to, which was really fun. It's amazing to me that after all this time there is still so much of the city that I haven't experienced- I think it would take a lifetime to do it all.

One thing we did in the Old City that was really fun was that we stopped at a lot of little food places along our way and tried foods that we've never had before. I got a shawarma for the first time, and it was delicious. It's kind of like a falafel, except for instead of chickpeas at the bottom of the pita it's lamb. It's probably a good thing I didn't have one til today or I would have been eating them all summer. We also tried some sweets from a pastry shop, some lemonade with mint, and then later tonight I had this really good croissant with powdered sugar and almonds, and some roasted pecans. There's a lot of food here that's good, but nothing that I think I'll really miss a whole lot.

After shopping and snacking we went to the Dome of the Rock for the last time and took a couple more pictures. There were a few people from the JC who got to go inside with a tour guide from the UN, and it was sweet to see their pics since nobody really ever gets to go inside who's not a Muslim. We got some good pictures outside ourselves, and then we headed back to the Center.

After dinner a bunch of us went over into West Jeru to hang out one more time. Our taxi van had blue lights and a screen with music videos on it, so we had a dance party on the way there. On Ben Yehuda we got waffles and ice cream, and then we just wandered the neighborhood. We found this small park with a giant horse statue and a little ampitheater. So, of course, we took pictures on the horse and had a concert in the ampitheater. During my act a huge group of Jews came around the corner, and I got a lot of laughs and a lot of smiles, so I think they really enjoyed my performance. On the way back we saw this cute little boutique that was still open, and I bought a couple of really pretty scarves. We played on the street a little longer until our taxi got there, and then it was back to the JC for the night.

*The most exciting part of my day was finding out that I'm an auntie! I can't wait to meet my new little niece!

Day 101

2010-08-07T12:13:00.000-07:00

It was our last Sabbath here in the Holy Land, and it was a really good one. Probably the best one ever. I woke up early and walked down to the Garden of Gethsemane with a few other girls. They let us into the locked private garden and we just sat and read and pondered for a couple of hours. It was the perfect beginning to the day.

At Church we had an amazing fast and testimony meeting. I went to Spanish Sunday School and said goodbye to Hermana Dulca, our teacher. In Relief Society my roommate Jessie gave an amazing lesson on how we can take everything that we've gained here and use it to serve others when we go back home.

We took a group picture of all the students outside the Center right after Church- with 79 of us, it was quite an adventure getting it all set up. Then a few of us went over to the Garden Tomb for the Living Prophet's Society. We all read the talk "He Is Risen" that President Monson gave at this last GC. We talked about the Resurrection, and what it means to us in our lives. It was so powerful to talk about it at the Garden, where the Savior Himself was resurrected and where the angel told Mary, He is not here, for He is risen. I think that visiting Gethsemane and the Garden Tomb will be one of the things that I'll miss the very most. I love the special feeling that you get there, a Spirit of peace and truth.

Tonight we had a Triclinium program- they had set up the stage to look like the Upper Rom would have looked at the Last Supper, with the tables and seats on the floor where the apostles would have leaned and eaten the unleavened bread of the Passover. There were a few musical numbers and narrators of the chapters in John that talk about the Last Supper and the events that happened right after. It was really cool to see what it would have looked like and to be able to picture it while they read the account.

After the Triclinium we watched one more Messiah movie- it was about the apostasy and then the Restoration. I have loved watching these movies as we've studied the events that they talk about. We have been to most of the places they filmed at and we have discussed most of the scriptures in class or on field trips. I feel like I have learned so much about my Savior since being here, and I have loved getting to know Him better.

Roommate pictures outside the JC

Dome of the Rock

Riding the bus to the Garden Tomb

Day 100

2010-08-06T11:47:00.000-07:00

Wow. Today was kind of the beginning of the end for us here. We had our New Testament and Field Trip finals this morning. The FT test was a piece of cake, they left us clues throughout the week all around the JC of what the questions would be, so we had a googledoc with all the questions and answers. New Testament was a little bit harder, but I still felt really prepared and I think it went really well. It was nice to be done, but kinda sad to be in the classroom for the last time. This afternoon was mostly resting. We all definitely needed to recover from the stress we had this week.

Tonight we had a Community Outreach Concert, basically a goodbye concert for all the students and people we have met in Jerusalem that we invited. I sang in the choir for a couple of songs, and there were a lot of other really amazing songs. I was a mess for most of it- my friends Chelsea and Jane sang For Good from Wicked, then my roommate Jessie played the song she wrote about Jerusalem on the guitar, then some guys did Prayer of the Children, and at the very end we all sang God Be With You Til We Meet Again. Suffice it to say that I definitely should have gone with the waterproof mascara. I've been so excited to come home, but tonight I started to realize just how much I'm going to miss it here. I am so attached to the Old City, the JC, all of the people here and the Spirit that is here in Jerusalem. I love it here and it will probably be harder than I think it will to leave here and come home.

Days 98 & 99

2010-08-05T12:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I stayed in the Center all day, because we have our 2 big finals this week. This morning was our Ancient Near East test, which I was really worried about but luckily it ended up being even easier than the midterm was, and I felt really good about it when I was finished. Now I'm working on getting ready for the New Testament final that we have tomorrow morning.

Today after lunch I went out with some friends to take pictures in the Old City. We went to Dome of the Rock first and took some cool pictures on the Temple Mount, then we did some shopping and took pics along the way. Some of the funnest ones were handstand pictures in the middle of the road between shops with people walking past. With 4 of us at once, we only ended up with a handful of pictures where all of us are up at the same time, but the ones that worked out look really cool. When we got back me and my roommates all dressed up a little crazy and we went out to take more pictures by the signs for the JC outside the gate (to be posted soon).

The Arabic students from the Egypt study abroad got here on Tuesday night, and they'll be here for the next few days. It's kind of weird having new people around the Center, but fun to see new faces too. Tonight I played volleyball with some of them, which was a perfect break from studying. Now it's back to the googledoc for the rest of the night!

Day 97

2010-08-03T22:31:00.000-07:00

This morning we had NT and our last ANE class before the final. The NT class especially is getting soooo good as we learn about the end of the Savior's life and His resurrection. I wasn't ready for class to be over, even after 2 hours, because this, to me, is the very best part of the Bible and I love it.

After lunch I went out into the Old City to do some shopping and finish up a couple of site reports that are due tomorrow. We exchanged money, picked up some tshirts, got some gummies, and looked around at a couple of other things that people wanted to buy. We were all over the place, down a lot of different streets that I had never been to before. It was really fun to see some new sights in the Old City, even though I've been there so many times.

We stopped at Via Dolorosa and on the way back up the hill to the JC to do site reports. We read scriptures that go along with those places and then we have to turn in a list of 20 of those throughout the semester. It's actually a really great assignment, because it makes us really stop and think at the places we go to about the true significance of those places in the life of the Savior.

Last night we watched the last section of the Messiah series that we have been watching for the past few weeks. It was about the Atonement and the Resurrection, and it was the best one we've seen so far. I love that in these last days of our trip we are surrounded with all of these things about the Savior, because really that's why we're all here in Jerusalem, to learn about Him.

Day 96

2010-08-02T10:48:00.000-07:00

Today we had an awesome field trip. We started out by going to Masada, this site of a Jewish fortress during the Roman war. It is at the top of this really high plateau, and thankfully instead of hiking it we got to take a tram up there. When we got there we talked a little bit about the history of the fortress. They had a palace and a synagogue and a bathhouse and a series of cisterns, and they had a bunch of food stored to get them through the siege. When the Romans finally built a ramp and conquered the city, the people that lived there all committed suicide rather than become slaves to the Romans. Kind of a tragic story but it was really fun to walk around through all the different buildings and then back down the mountain on the tram.

After Masada we went to the Dead Sea to swim. It was really cool, you could literally sit there with your hands and feet in the air and just float on the top of the water. We swam around a lot and went to this mud pit to put Dead Sea mud all over us. It is the kind of stuff they try to sell you at the mall, and it actually works pretty well, my skin is really soft now. Swimming in it is the weirdest feeling, you kind of get stuck a little bit. Since you're so floaty, it's like when you are on a wakeboard and you try to flip over but you can't really so you have to twist your entire body and throw yourself around. It is such a funny sensation. The worst part was that swimming back to where our stuff was I got salt water in my eye, and it killed. My friend Daniel was helping me swim back since I literally couldn't open my eyes, but then he got water in his eyes. It was the funniest scene of the blind leading the blind as we tried to edge ourselves along the rocky beach until we could get back to our group and get a towel to wipe our eyes.

It was about 44 c degrees here today, or 112 f. That is hot. It was not pleasant. We went to En Gedi after the Dead Sea, which is where David spent time while he was running from Saul. Then we went to Qumran, where the caves are that the Dead Sea Scrolls were found at. It was really cool to learn about the Dead Sea Scrolls and how they are the oldest Biblical text manuscripts we have, and the way that they compare to stuff in the Bible, stuff in the Book of Mormon and stuff in the Pearl of Great Price. There are even some scrolls of things that aren't found in our scriptures, like the Book of Enoch.

Tonight when we got back me and my roommates all did a race to see who could get the fastest shower time with the requirements of shampooing, conditioning, soaping, and shaving. I won. The best part was that in about 15 minutes all 4 of us got through the shower, which I think is pretty impressive for a room of girls and it was nice not to have to wait forever to get clean after such a hot and sweaty and salty day. We had FHE tonight and now I have to finish my reading for my NT class tomorrow. We only have tomorrow and Wednesdays classes before the final, it is crazy how quickly this term has gone by and how much knowledge we have crammed into our brains in the past couple of weeks. I love everything that we learn about in the NT, and I think I'm actually going to really miss this class a lot when it's over.

Day 95

2010-08-01T11:39:00.000-07:00

This morning I went with some students over to this school down the street from Crash Corner. It is a school and kind of home for children with autism, and for our service project we are painting a mural on the walls of the kindergarten room for them. It was really fun, the design was already sketched out and we were just painting in the colors on a bunch of animals, like parrots, giraffes, elephants, panthers, crocodiles, and monkeys. They were really bright and I think it will look really cool when it is finished. There are a couple of other groups that are going to go over later this week to finish the other side of the wall and the details.

After lunch I hung out in my room, cleaning, organizing, reading, scripture studying, finishing up some site reports and other schoolwork. I went over to Hebrew U to interview someone for another assignment, and we talked to this student who is Jewish by ethnicity but doesn't believe in God. It was interesting to talk to him, and I thought how weird it was to think that someone could live here among all of these different religions and at all of these special places and not have any belief in them. It's not often that you meet people like that, most of the people here are very religious, those are the people that I really love meeting.

Tonight I am finishing up my laundry. I got down to my last pair of pants today, so I was definitely in need of some clean clothes.

Pics From Jordan

2010-08-01T07:29:00.001-07:00

Day 94

2010-07-31T12:02:00.000-07:00

Today was a beautiful Shabbat. I woke up and went to choir this morning, sang before Sacrament, went to English Gospel Doctrine and then we had all combined for third hour since it's the fifth Sabbath of the month. I loved everything we learned and we were really encouraged to go to the temple, which I can't wait to do as soon as I get home.

After Church I went with a group over to the Garden of Gethsemane. It was really cool, we had all read different talks by General Authorities about the Atonement and talked about them and shared our testimonies. They call it the Living Prophets Society. It was the first time I've gone, but I want to go to more meetings because it was a really neat experience to talk about that while we were there in the Garden.

Later we had a fireside by Sister Qumsiyeh, our relief society president. She is from a town near Bethlehem and talked about how she was able to learn charity during her life growing up with the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, and how she was able to come to love the soldiers that were such a source of pain to her. It really inspired me to be a better person and be more full of charity, especially since I have so much less of a reason not to feel charity for all of the people around me.

Tonight we are doing another roommate sleepover with mattresses on the floor, a movie and some popcorn. I am so excited!

Day 93

2010-07-30T23:47:00.000-07:00

We had 3 hours of New Testament in the morning... soooo long but also really really good. At 3 when we were allowed to go out into East Jeru I went with Katie and Natalie and a couple of others to the Garden Tomb, and we just spent about an hour there. It's always such a peaceful place. I started reading Jesus the Christ, by Talmage, and I enjoyed it a lot. It is always a really neat experience to read about or talk about events in the Savior's life so close to where they actually took place. As usual, there were a lot of other Christian groups there, singing and preaching. I love all of the different kinds of groups that come in. They are from all over the world and they all have their own way of celebrating the resurrection of Christ and it makes it so fun.

Last night we went to the Western Wall again as a group, but this time me and Katie dressed up like Jews. We wore dark skirts and simple shirts and wrapped our hair in scarves. We stayed away from our own group, and tried to copy what the Jewish women were doing. We walked the way they walked, read the prayer books, and prayed like they do. It was really really cool because it made it such a different experience from the last time we went to the Wall. A lot of people would say things to us in Hebrew, and we were treated like we were one of them instead of tourists. They were a lot more courteous than they can sometimes be when they know you're just another American there to just check it out. It was such a blast.

Day 88 (and Jordan)

2010-07-29T12:55:00.000-07:00

Sunday was a half field trip, half free day. The field trip was to Herodian Jerusalem, a lot of parts of the Old City from the time of Herod. We went under the city to some of the old roads and bridges that were around during that time, we saw the remains of a house that was burned down when the second temple was. Then we went down to the Temple Mount. First we walked around and saw where parts of the original walls were still there from when they were torn down by the Romans. Then we went through the Citadel to some stairs that would have been there during Christ's life, and were probably the ones He used when He went to the temple. Throughout the whole day we read a lot of scriptures about the temple and the Old and New Testament, and it was really cool to see the scriptures kind of come to life.

That afternoon me and my roommates Katie and Natalie did some shopping for Jordan. Our roommate Jessie couldn't come, so we bought stuff out in the Old City and got stuff for us too. That night we had a toga dance party, the Bar Kokhba Revolt (geeky history reference; at least we know we learned something during Judaism class). We stayed up pretty late packing and playing.

Early Monday morning we got on the bus for Jordan! Our first stop was at Mt. Nebo, where Moses saw the promised land for the first time and then where he was translated later on. Then we went to this really old castle and walked around the walls. It was super windy, and it made it seem even more adventury. Next was a spring that was the headwaters for one of the rivers that leads into the Jordan. At our hotel that night we walked around the little town. We went to a bakery, and then we went to the hotel pool to swim for a while.

Tuesday morning we woke up early and headed to Petra. It was absolutely amazing. The Treasury and the Monastery were incredible, and there were so many other unbelievable tombs and buildings built into the cliffs. It was all red rock, so it looked like southern Utah, it was really pretty. Probably my favorite part was walking around and talking to all of the Bedouins. They were all trying to sell stuff, but if you just sat down and got into a real conversation with them they were really fun to get to know. One girl came up and talked to me and Katie for a good half hour, and I loved finding out a little bit about her life. She lives in a small village, and she wants to be a guide when she grows up. She is 14, which is the normal age for girls to get married in her culture, but she says that she never wants to get married because single is better. That night we went to a new hotel in Amman, and we got to walk around the city. There was a small "mall" down the street, mostly just a food court with a couple small stores. There's a movie store, with 100% legal, totally legitimate DVDs for $1.50, and we all picked up a couple new movies. We watched Eclipse that night, and there was this black shadow that kept standing up in front of the camera of whoever was filming it in the theater.

Wednesday we saw Jerash, the Roman city with the best remains outside of Italy. We got to walk around, see the cardo and the arches and the ampitheater. A few people in the group got up to sing to hear the acoustics. Me and Bridget got up and gave an amazing rendition of I Wanna by the Spice Girls. Then we got to go see a reenactment of Roman legions marching and chariot racing and even a gladiator show. It was really really fun. We had the best lunch of the trip that day, these pitas that were kind of like fajitas. It was delish. Then we went to an overlook of the Jordan River. It's been getting smaller, but that part of the river was really wide still and it was really beautiful. That night we walked around the city some more. I went with some people who wanted to go to the mall, and someone told us we could walk there but then we found out it was 15 k away, so we started heading back and we almost went to this super ghetto circus but then we decided against it and instead we went back to the hotel, dyed my hair and watched the Last Song.

This morning we went to a mosque in Amman, one of the biggest in Jordan. All of the girls had to wear these black robes that looked like graduation gowns with hoods. We couldn't help making a few 'wingardium leviosa' references. The mosque was beautiful and the guide told us about the prayers and what the Muslims do when they go to the mosques on Fridays. Then we went to this Citadel and museum, and saw some of the ruins and artifacts that have been found in Jordan. Last, we went to Bethabara, the baptismal site of Jesus Christ. We dipped our feet in the river, read scriptures about His baptism and saw the Byzantine church that was built there.

We were back at the JC in time for dinner, and it felt so good to be back. It was fun to see the 10 people who stayed at the Center- we missed them a lot. It's nice to be in my own bed with all my roommates. We have exactly 2 weeks left, and even though we've done so much there's still so much left to do. I'm really excited for the next few field trips we have coming up, and to find some other awesome things to do out in the city during our last few free days.

Days 86 & 87

2010-07-24T13:02:00.000-07:00

We had class yesterday morning, for 4 hours. We only have a couple of days of class left when we get back from Jordan, and then we'll have finals. The classes seemed to be endless at the beginning of the semester, it's so weird now that they're almost over.

I actually haven't been feeling very well the past few days, so I didn't go out yesterday. I rested and slept through most of the afternoon, and then last night we had a talent show. I did a Tahitian dance, and it was so fun to get to perform. I really miss it a lot. There were a lot of really fun, really clever talents. Some people did skits, some did songs, all of them were super creative but still showed a lot of legitimate talent. It was definitely a highlight of the week. After the show, me and my roommates pushed all of our mattresses together on our floor and watched Legally Blond. The mattresses literally took up the entire room- we had to put the chairs on the empty bases of our beds. We left them there for most of the day today too, and it was kind of really exciting.

This morning I still felt sick, so I spent the day in the Center again, taking some medicine and trying to get better. I had toast and soup for dinner, and hopefully one more good night's rest will let me fully recover for our field trip tomorrow morning. We had a fireside tonight by the Becksteads, a couple from Haifa. They are a really sweet old couple, he is a very accomplished rocket scientist and it was cool to hear about their life as he pursued that career. After that, we watched Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade to get us all excited about going to see Petra in a couple of days. I honestly can't wait, I think it will be a really really cool week!

Day 85

2010-07-22T23:00:00.000-07:00

We had class in the morning, a couple of hours of New Testament. The whole time we could hear these explosive noises coming from outside. We weren't really sure what was going on, but later we found out that it was all of the Jewish students celebrating their graduation exams. They kept doing fireworks pretty much all day. After class we had an orientation meeting for Jordan, since we leave on Monday. It was kind of like the one for Egypt, but not quite as intense. We're not supposed to eat fresh vegetables or drink the water, but most of the food is ok, even fruits if we peel them ourselves.

We had our field trip after lunch, to Herodian and Shepherd's Field. Herodian is one of the many palaces that Herod the Great built around his kingdom. It is a fortress, but with bath houses and pools and lots of other luxuries. During the Bar Kokhba revolt, the Jews turned part of it into a synagogue. We sat there and read some scriptures about Herod. Even though he did a lot of evil things, like killing a lot of his family and having all of the innocents slain, we talked about some of the good things he did like building a lot of really amazing buildings all over the Holy Land.

The next place we went to was Shepherd's Field, which overlooks Bethlehem. It is one of the very likely sites of the angel's visit to the shepherd's to announce the birth of Christ. We had some quiet time there to read and explore, and then we had a Nativity program. People acted out Mary, Joseph, the Shepherds, Wise Men, and Angels, and we sang a bunch of Christmas hymns. The Nativity is something I've done a lot of times, usually at least once or twice every Christmas season, but it was really an amazing to do it there with Bethlehem in the background. After the program, Brother Brown told the story of Christmas from the other side of the world. He talked about the signs that the people of the Americas were looking for that would tell them that Jesus was born. It was so cool to see both sides of the story told side by side, and to remember how important that event was to all of us all over the world.

Day 84

2010-07-21T13:44:00.001-07:00

Today was a field trip to the Christian Quarter of the Old City. Instead of renting the nice tourist buses for the day, we got a city bus to take us over to New Gate.

Some of the places I had already visited, but it was cool to go back and hear all of the history and stories that go along with some of the churches that we walk past every day. The first place we went was to the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer. There was a pretty garden in the middle and we sang some hymns in the chapel out of their hymnbook, which had some of our songs, like Angels We Have Heard On High, and some that we don't have, like Amazing Grace, Come Thou Fount, and Go Tell It On A Mountain.

The next place we went was the Church of Alexander Nevsky, a Russian church with some really pretty paintings telling the story of Christ's arrest through His resurrection. There was also a small hole through one of the walls that is supposed to be the traditional "eye of the needle".

Next we went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I've been there at least 5 or 6 times at this point, but there were so many little chapels that we went into today that I didn't eve know existed. It is co-owned by the Armenians, the Roman Catholics and the Greek Orthodox, and the keys are held by a couple of Muslim families so that the relative cooperation between all of these sects can be maintained. It was really fun to explore all of the little side rooms all over the church- you could really get lost in there with all of the nooks and stairways there are inside.

Our last stop was at St. Mark's, which is another competing site for the Upper Room where the Last Supper took place (honestly I think the place we went yesterday is more likely the real one). A lady named Justinia from Iraq gave us an introduction to the church, and mentioned some of the miracles that have taken place there. There is a painting of Mary the Mother and Jesus as a baby that was supposedly painted by Luke while Mary was still alive, and people who have prayed there have experienced the gift of tongues and the healing of cancer. Downstairs was the upper room- it's downstairs because things are always built on top of each other in this city, so all of the old buildings are usually deep underground.

We had a sack lunch, but I came back with a group before lunchtime so we ate out on the grass on the 7th floor. Then I spent the afternoon napping, reading scriptures and trying to get ahead on some of the reading for this week. We get to "sleep in" tomorrow because breakfast isn't til 8, which is actually really exciting for all of us :)

Day 83

2010-07-20T21:33:00.000-07:00

We had our New Testament midterm this morning, so me and Jessie woke up absurdly early to get in a little bit more studying. Right after the test we had class again, and then 2 hours of ANE. By lunch we were all a little wiped out, but we went out into the Old City anyway and it ended up being a really fun afternoon.

I went out with some people who I don't really hang out with that often, and it was really fun to get to know all of them a little bit better. We went to Dormition Abbey first, which is a supposed resting place of Mary. Under the church there is a crypt with a tomb that has a likeness of Mary over it. There were the most beautiful mosaics all over the two levels of the church, but there was also an angry man who walked around and wouldn't let us take pictures of certain things. We love these people.

After Dormition Abbey we went to the Upper Room, which is where the Last Supper took place. It wasn't a very big place, but we sang some hymns there and it was really cool the way it reverberated in the stone room. The next place we went, King David's Tomb, a lady came up to us and asked if we were the ones who had been singing at the Upper Room. We said yes, and she thanked us and said that it really helped her to feel something there, which can be hard when places are flocked with tourists. It was really neat to talk to her, we felt like we were able to do a little bit of missionary work. Even if we couldn't tell her about the Church, at least we could share the Spirit with her.

Next we went to a small Holocaust memorial museum that was next door, and then we tried to go to Schindler's grave but it was locked. Apparently there are some weird hours that we didn't know about. So instead we headed back to the Center. On the way we saw a big commotion at the Western Wall, so we stopped there to check it out and discovered that it was Tisha B'av, a day set apart to mourn the destruction of the temple. The Jews can't shave for 3 weeks before, they can't sit on an upright chair that day and they all go to the Western Wall and fast on the day of. I put a prayer in the Wall while we were there, it was cool to be there during the day with all of the people.

Last night was dinner, reading, and a cool Book of Mormon movie. I was still tired from waking up so early so I went to bed early, and it felt so nice :)

Day 82

2010-07-19T19:06:00.000-07:00

It was a free day, and for the first time in a really long time I just kind of bummed around the JC all day. I didn't feel too bad about it though, because there were a lot of people doing the same thing. I woke up, went to breakfast, and got back in bed for a couple of hours. Then I read some scriptures, read some of my book, worked on some homework, did some studying for the NT midterm, watched a movie, had some roommate bonding, and went to bed kinda early actually. It was nice to have a relaxing day. Even though we just got back from Galilee, which seemed relaxing, I realized just how tiring that trip was with our back-to-back field trips at the end, especially. With about a week until Jordan, I want to stay rested because that will be another packed and non-stop trip.

Day 81

2010-07-18T12:31:00.000-07:00

We had a free day, which means breakfast from 7:30 to 9:00 am. We left right after that to go to mass at the Terra Sancta monastery. It was in Italian, and it was really cool. The different priests said the prayers and homilies and we just followed along with sitting and standing and kneeling with the rest of the small congregation. After the service Father Angelo did a question/answer session with us, and he told us a lot about his life previous to becoming a monk and what his daily life is like now that he is one. He was hilarious. He told us that being a monk means "no money, no honey, and nothing you can do about it." He also told us some of the jokes that he would play while people do confession. He is definitely a unique priest.

When we were ready to leave the monastery we went out to the door but it was locked. All of the other priests had left and we were locked in! Father Angelo got on his cell phone and tried to get ahold of the guy with the keys but we ended up having to go up onto the roof and down the fire escape down to the back parking lot to get out of the building. We ate our lunches in the Old City, and then ran a couple of "errands." We stopped at Shaban's for some people to exchange money, and then we stopped at the camera store so I could buy a new one. I ended up getting a pretty good camera at a pretty good price, so it was a successful shopping venture. We took the bus home because one of the girls who was with us sprained her ankle in Galilee and is still on crutches.

Back at the Center it was kind of a chill afternoon. I read a little bit, and did some of the study guide for our New Testament midterm on Tuesday. After dinner I let my roommate Katie cut bangs in my hair. She was really nervous about it but she did a really great job. There were at least 5 or 6 other people getting their hair cut tonight, it was definitely a party.

Day 80

2010-07-17T13:22:00.000-07:00

Today was Shabbat. I meant to wake up this morning to go to the Garden of Gethsemane, but unfortunately my alarm clock ran out of batteries sometime during the night. It was still a nice morning, I went to breakfast and then choir practice before Church. We sang Come Along, Come Along and it was really fun- it's the first time I've sang in Sacrament meeting with the choir.

After Church me and Natalie visit taught and took hallah bread to our girls. It was a big hit. Everyone loves them some hallah bread. Then we had a relief society enrichment activity about journaling. It got me really excited about keeping a better journal and doing a personal history. I have loved blogging over the summer, but I don't know if I'll keep it up when I get home. I definitely want to start keeping a more day-to-day journal of the normal every-day things that go on in my life, even if it's just a short paragraph or something.

This afternoon I spent a lot of time reading my scriptures and writing in my journal. After dinner we watched another segment of the Messiah movie, a series that Brother Brown produced that goes over different aspects of the Savior's life. This section was on the Sermon on the Mount and some of the other things that took place in Galilee, and it was fun to see each place and go, oh, I've been there. I talked to my family and that was awesome too. I miss everyone so much and I can't wait to see you all next month!

Day 79 (and Galilee)

2010-07-16T13:22:00.000-07:00

We left on Monday for Galilee, and we stopped on the way at Caesarea Maritima, an old Roman city, with a lot of ruins. It was really beautiful, right on the water. We also spent some time at Nazareth, visiting a couple of Churches of the Annunciation and one for Joseph. It was a pretty small town, and it was fun to walk between all of the different churches and kind of get a feel for what it might have been like when Jesus was growing up there.

Tuesday we had class in the morning while the other class went on the field trip. We started out with the annunciation and the birth of Christ. After lunch we had free time, to play on the beach and in the water. We did an ultimate frisbee tournament, and my team one! It was way fun. We had a bonfire that night and then played games on the beach.

Wednesday our class headed out on a boat across the Galilee. It was incredible. We stopped in the middle to have a devotional, and we talked about the events and miracles that took place at the Sea during Christ's ministry. We stopped at a museum that has a boat from the 1st century that they found on the shore of the Sea one year when the water level was really low. It is a really good example of what the fishing boats would have been like that we read about all the time in the New Testament. The next stop was the Mount of Beatitudes, which was absolutely amazing. We read through the Beatitudes and then we had free time to look in the church and write in our journals. That was probably my very favorite of all of the places we went in Galilee. After that we walked down to a couple of churches down the hill- one dedicated to the loaves and fishes and one that commemorates Christ's first visit to His apostles after He was risen. Our final stop was Capernaum, which has the remains of Peter's home. Christ lived in this town for a year and a half of His ministry, and there is a synagogue there that He would have gone to and taught at. That night we had a couple of hours of ANE after dinner. It's cool now that we're getting into stuff that is more familiar, more Greek and Roman history.

Thursday was another class day with free time in the afternoon for playing. We had class out on the lawn overlooking the Sea, which was awesome. In the afternoon we went on a rafting trip down the Jordan River. Most of the time was spent attacking each others rafts and lots of it was spent in the water, it was such a blast. That night for dinner we went into Tiberias for fish and ice cream. There was a really cool boardwalk with lots of little stands. Me and Bridget got hennas and some bracelets.

Friday was a hike day. We went to Gamla, which is an ancient fortress on a ridge in the middle of this valley, so we had to hike down the valley, up the ridge, along the stones that are still there from when the fortress was conquered by the Romans, then back down and up the other side again. It was hot but fun. Next we went to Qazrin, a village that has been partially rebuilt so you can really see what houses would have been like in the time of Christ. They are all made out of stone, and they are really dark inside. It was easy to see why lamps were such an important aspect of their lives, because even at 11 am it was hard to see everything inside. We were back in time for lunch and then about half of us went on this waterfall hike. It was nice to finally get to wear shorts for hiking, because it was really hot but jumping into the pools along the way was so nice.

Saturday was the Sabbath, and we went to Church at the Galilee branch house in Tiberias. We had a fireside that night where branch members talked about what it meant to them to finally have a branch and a meetinghouse that were so close instead of having to drive several hours every week to go to the Tel Aviv or Jerusalem branches. They all had really cool stories of why they are here in Israel and what it is like to live away from many other members and in such a small branch.

Sunday was class and free time again. I did a little bit of homework but mostly just fun reading and then playing in the water. It was the perfect temperature all week, and sometimes it would get waves like in the ocean, where you have to jump up and go over them.

Monday we had a field trip to a couple of old cities to see the synagogues and ruins there. Next we got to go to Gan HaShelosha, these natural pools from spring water. There were three really big pools, and waterfalls between them. We got to swim there for a couple of hours and it was the perfect way to feel refreshed and ready for the rest of the sites we would see that day. After swimming we went to Nain, where Christ raised a widow's son from the dead. We talked about how He cares for the individual, and we sang some hymns in the small chapel there. Our final stop was at the Mount of Transfiguration. We had an amazing lesson from Brother Manscill about all of the things that happened when Christ took His apostles there. There was a beautiful church there also, and there were some Italian tourists there. We sang some hymns, and they all stopped to listen to us and some even started videoing us. It was really cool, because we felt like they could feel the same spirit there that we did. We don't get to do any kind of missionary work here, so it's nice when we do get chances to share the spirit without breaking the rules.

Tuesday we went to an old Roman town and walked through the ruins there. We did a kind of nature walk through some of the headwaters of the Jordan River that come out from springs right out of the rocks. It was cool because Brother Manscill put his ipod on through our headsets so we could listen to music while we hiked. We went to Caesarea Philippi, where Christ promised the keys to Peter, and then to Nimrod's Castle, a crusader fortress that was pretty intact and you could walk through the tunnels and up the towers. That night we had a bonfire for our class, with some fun parts and some spiritual parts. We had popcorn, scones and s'mores, and first we did some funny stories from our professors and then we had some testimonies from a few people in the group. I performed the Me Ke Aloha dance, one that Lani taught us that is about Christ. It was really special for me to be able to dance it there, since it was like my way of bearing my testimony.

Wednesday we went to Akko, another crusader city on the shores of the Mediterranean. We learned about the knights that came there and got a chance to walk around the city. It kind of had a little bit of the flavor of the Old City here in Jerusalem. We had another bonfire that night for the whole group, and it was a big testimony meeting. It was an awesome experience and the perfect way to end our trip to Galilee.

Thursday we stopped at a couple of places on our way back to Jerusalem, first we went to Sepphoris where there are some really beautiful mosaics. There is one that they call the Mona Lisa, and it really was pretty incredible compared to some of the others we've seen. The next stop was Megiddo, which was a crossroads in ancient times and always one of the first places to get conquered during wars. Megiddo is what all of the revelations about Armageddon are referring to. We went to an overlook of the Bahai Gardens (think Temple Square type views), and then to the Templar Cemetery. We all slept most of the way back to the Center, and it felt so good to be back in our own rooms.

Today we didn't have class so the laundry room was pretty much packed all morning, but I got all of mine done and cleaned up the room a little bit too. After lunch I went with Katie, Jessie, and Lindsey to West Jerusalem for some waffles and ice cream from this awesome little hole-in-the-wall restaurant called Babets. We hung out on Ben Yehuda for a bit, checking out some of the boutiques there and picking up some hallah bread for tomorrow. Then we changed money at Shaban's, and met a group of JC kids at the Austrian hospice. We did the Stations of the Cross with Father Angelo, the Fransiscan monk who showed us the Hyde Door a few weeks ago. It's a big thing that pilgrims do when they come to Jerusalem. After the traditional walk along the Via Dolorosa, Father Angelo gave us a private tour of some of the places in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre that are not usually open to the public. We saw an old chapel and did a procession through the church. He told us a lot of cool things about the church, one of them is that because of all of the different groups staking claims on the church they instated this "status quo" policy a few hundred years ago, so now nothing can be changed about it. The benches are from the 1600's or something and they can't wipe down the picture frames, even though they're starting to get kinda grimy. A couple of Muslim families are actually the ones who have the keys to the building, so that none of the Christian sects can take over it. After the tour I took the bus back to the JC for the first time. It was really nice after a long day of walking to not have to climb that hill again.

Some Galilee pictures- I will post more when I can collect them from everyone I mooched off of after my camera broke:

At St. Peter's Primacy- the apostle's church

On the boat going over the Sea of Galilee

On the Mount of Beatitudes

Me and Jessie at the Roman Aqueduct

At Caesarea Maritima

Day 78

2010-07-15T13:58:00.000-07:00

We got back today from our trip to Galilee, which was absolutely amazing! It was fun and spiritual, I learned so much, I really got to know people better and I feel like I got to know the Savior better while I was there. We had some pretty incredible field trips, like the Mt. of Beatitudes, the Mt. of Transfiguration, and Caesarea Philippi. We had some fun excursions too, like hiking to waterfalls and rafting down the Jordan River. There were some great firesides and devotionals too. We stayed at a resort run by a kibbutz, and it was sweet. The food wasn't the best, but we were right on the beach so I could wake up every morning and read scriptures or write in my journal with my feet in the Sea of Galilee. It really was the most amazing experience. I kept a pretty good journal of everything we did and saw there, and I will try tomorrow to condense it into a nice summary to post, hopefully with some pictures too. For now I have a bunch of laundry to do, and some catching up on reading and studying. We have our first test on Tuesday for New Testament, and we covered so much during the trip that there will be a lot to review.

P.S. I loved having mail waiting for me when I got back! Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!

Day 67

2010-07-04T14:22:00.000-07:00

Happy 4th of July!!! It was a pretty good one for us here at the JC. It was a free day, and a lot of it was spent getting things ready for Galilee but there was a lot of time for fun too. This morning we went to Aladdin's to exchange money and then to the YMCA. Me and Jessie had already been there but Natalie really wanted to play the bells. Brother Whipple let us play some patriotic songs, and I played My Country Tis of Thee. It was pretty fun, especially the parts where he jumped in and played some of the harmony or other random parts that made it sound really cool.

We walked back through the Old City and did some shopping on the way. We bought some cute bangles and I finally found a nativity that I love. Before we left we stopped at the Our Lady of Zion Convent, which is part of the Via Dolorosa. You go underneath the convent and there are a bunch of Roman-era roads and stairways that you can walk through. There is a game carved into the floor in one of the rooms, and it is supposed to be related to when the soldiers cast lots during the flagellation. We have to do site reports for New Testament, which is where you read scriptures that have to do with the place that you are at and then you write a short personal reflection. We have to do 20 of them before the end of the semester.

We got back to the Center in time for dinner, which was a full-out 4th of July barbecue!!! Almost. There were salads and hot dogs and hamburgers (veal and lamb) and potato chips and apple pie and vanilla ice cream and corn on the cob. It was one of the best meals we've had here so far. They even had sprite and fanta. After dinner when it got dark we did sparklers.

I have done a bunch of laundry, packing, cleaning, etc. for most of the rest of the day. We leave bright and early tomorrow morning at 6:30 and we have a pretty full day of field trip stops before we get to the kibbutz we're staying at.

Day 66

2010-07-03T13:01:00.000-07:00

Today was a really great Shabbat. I woke up early and had some time to read scriptures out on our deck overlooking the city. Church was awesome, we had an amazing Testimony meeting and the other classes were really good too. After Church I walked down to the Garden of Gethsemane with some friends. It was very peaceful there- quiet, not crowded at all, and it was a great opportunity for me to write a lot in my journal and just think about things. It's been getting a lot warmer, and the walk back up to the Center was really hot. But it was definitely worth it for the experience. We only have 3 or 4 more Shabbats left, and I want to make the most of them.
After dinner I rested for a little bit, and later we watched this movie for a fireside that was about Christ. President Brown, one of our directors, helped produce it and it was cool to see him in the movie. He is very smart, and he knows a lot about Luke and a whole bunch of other stuff. We love him. The movie talked mostly about Christ's pre-mortal existence and how He was the Jehovah of the Old Testament. I loved that I recognized the scriptures they were quoting and the stories that they related to it. I can appreciate things like that so much more now that I have studied and understand the OT better.
Tomorrow is our last day before Galilee! I started packing a few days ago because I was just so excited to go. I can't wait!

Day 65

2010-07-02T14:09:00.000-07:00

Today was our first day of New Testament. I loved it! It was basically an introduction to our new teacher, Brother Manscill, to what the class will be like, and what we will be learning this semester. We talked about all the different parts of Christ's life that we will be studying, and I was getting really excited because this is really why I came here, to learn more about the Savior in the place where His life, death, and resurrection happened.

After NT we had our Hebrew and Field Trip finals- piece of cake. They were really really easy, and it was nice to just have it over with and have absolutely nothing to stress about for the rest of the day.

At 3 I went with a group to this restaurant in the Old City where you can eat on the roof. We had all already had lunch, but they had delicious lemonade and it was really fun to sit on the rooftop, looking out over the city and seeing it from a different perspective. The lemonade had big pieces of mint leaves in it, and it was probably the best lemonade I've ever had.

After the restaurant we ran by Shaban's to get money for Galilee, and then stopped at the co-op on the way back to the JC to get some snacks for Shabbat. Tomorrow is Fast Shabbat, and we always try to have something to eat after Church because it's a long time before dinner.

Tonight was spent mostly resting, although I did get a little bit done on the reading for our first NT class in Galilee. I am getting so excited for the trip, and all of the things that we'll get to see and learn about while we are there, and I just can't help but want to get started now!

Day 64

2010-07-01T12:47:00.000-07:00

We had our Old Testament final this morning, and it feels so good to have it be over! I felt really confident about it, so hopefully I did well (fingers crossed). After lunch we had Hebrew, our final is tomorrow so it was good to review everything. Our teacher also showed us everything that they do in her family for Shabbat, including lighting the candles, saying the prayers, eating the hallah bread, and singing the Shabbat Shalom song. We sang a few other songs too, and even reenacted a Jewish wedding. We held the tallit over the "couple", sang the Hava Nagila song, and then lifted their chairs up in the air. It was really fun, I love all of the cultural things that we learn in that class, because they help us understand the things we see and hear about sometimes, especially in West Jeru.

After class I went with some people along the top of Mt. Scopus over to the Tomb of the Prophets. The tomb is basically catacombs, kind of caves that were all connected with nooks in the walls for the bones. Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi were supposedly all buried there. The coolest part was that it was so dark, and we didn't have flashlights, but there were candles there that you could use. It was fun to walk around and explore and scare each other.

I am really excited because this is the first night in a VERY long time that I will get to sleep before 11. It has been such a long week of studying, but we have our last 2 finals tomorrow and they are the easiest ones. I am so excited for Galilee too- we have a countdown in our room: 3 days left!

Day 63 & Pictures!!!

2010-06-30T03:44:00.000-07:00

Finally made it to Hebrew U!!! Here are some recent pictures:

The view of the Dome from the First Station of the Cross

The Fransiscan Priest at the Capella della Terra Sancta

The Hyde Door

The wall during our field trip, not too far from the Center

Just outside the JC on our way to Ammunition Hill

We found this on the street in West Jeru. It is definitely now on the back of our door.

The Wall at Bethlehem

The Manger at the Church of the Nativity

In Bethlehem

Drinking Diet Coke at the Palestinian Tent Restaurant

At the Zoo

At the Hurva Synagogue

Trying on dresses in the Old City

The Ethiopian Church

At the festival of lights in the Old City

Days 61 & 62

2010-06-29T13:16:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was a free day, and even though we had a ton of studying to do a couple of people had organized things to go do out in the city. First we went to the Capella de la Terra Sancta, which is run by Fransiscan monks. There is a really beautiful chapel there, and at the “old house” where the pilgrims used to stay when they would come to Jerusalem there is a door that has the name “Hyde” carved onto it along with hundreds of other names from guests there. They claim that it is Orson Hyde's name from when he came to dedicate lands here. It was really cool to see it, a piece of Mormon history here along with the history of all of the other denominations that we see every day.

We had a couple of hours after that, and we had picked up our sack lunches earlier so a few of us went over to the Austrian Hospice in the middle of the Old City to sit in the shade on the patio there and study a bunch of our terms for the Judaism exam.

After lunch we walked toward the Hurva Synagogue in the Jewish quarter. On the way there we passed a shop with super cute dresses and purses, so me and Josett each picked one up for the Galilee trip. The synagogue had a lot of interesting history to it. We took a guided tour, and first we went under to where you could see the remains of a Byzantine road. Upstairs there were parts of the original wall. The synagogue was torn down several times, supposedly by Muslims even though it was in the Jewish area, and now it has been rebuilt with the same designs, so the wall pieces that survived look really cool. The best part of the building, I thought, was going up to the roof because there were some incredible views of the city and out into the different valleys that surround it.

After the synagogue we were heading home when we saw an open door just inside Lion's Gate. Natalie told us that it is the first station of the cross, supposedly where Jesus may have been tried. She said she has been trying to get in forever, but the door is always closed. The basic policy on doors, as we have been instructed by Professor Hamblin, is that if they're open you should go in and keep going until someone tells you to stop. Well, we had a feeling someone might be coming soon so we ran to the other side of it where you could see the most amazing view of the Dome of the Rock and Temple Mount that I have seen, even compared to being on the Temple Mount itself. It was pretty incredible. Sure enough, some guy came running up a couple seconds later to tell us that it was private property now and that we needed to leave, but it was well worth it to see the view and get some great pictures.

Last night I basically studied..... ALL NIGHT. It was exhausting. We had our Judaism final this morning, and it went ok. Then we finished cramming for Palestinian. Right after lunch I went with Jessie and Katie to the post office and the money changers, and on our way back we found some sweet neon ninja turtles hats, and we decided that we needed them for Galilee. There were some random beach/water games too, so we picked up a couple of those and I got some sunglasses. We studied on the way there and back, and then for another hour at the Center before the exam. This one went... ok. The professor told us that we didn't need to know any dates. The first whole page of a 3 page test was nothing but dates. The rest of the test went better after that.

Tonight I've just been trying to keep doing homework and studying for the rest of the tests we have this week, even though it's so tempting to just crash. Tomorrow is our last day of Old Testament and Hebrew, and even though I know I'll miss them a little bit I am really really excited for Galilee and to start the New Testament class there.

Day 60

2010-06-27T15:03:00.000-07:00

Today we had a field trip to the Separation Wall. It was actually one of the more interesting field trips we've gone on. First the guide came and talked to us a little bit about why the wall is there and some of the steps that led up to building it. Then we went to a few different sites really close to the JC.

The first place we went was an overlook of the Old City, where he talked about the negotiations that would have to take place regarding the city in order for any kind of peaceful two-state solution to take place. He also talked about how the Christian representation in Jerusalem has dropped from 20% to barely 1% in the past years. He said that even though he is Israeli and a Zionist, he wishes that there could be more Christians here to balance out the historical and religious attachments to Jerusalem and the Old City.

The second stop was a portion of the wall just behind us on the other side of Mount Scopus. There was a lot of pro-Palestinian graffiti, and it was weird to see it so close to where we are. The guide told us that while he is pro-wall because of the positive results, like a decrease in terrorism, he also recognizes that it is inconvenient and unfair to all of the neighborhoods that are being divided and the people who are forced to completely rearrange their lives and find new schools and everything like that. He also told us that little kids in the neighborhood figured out that they can scale the wall by fitting their feet in between the slabs, and that they can do it in 9 seconds.

Finally we went to an overlook that looks East, out toward the Dead Sea. There were a bunch of Palestinian neighborhoods and then in the distance you could see an Israeli settlement. The guide talked about how there have been talks about building a land bridge or something between that settlement and West Jerusalem, and he told us how that would separate parts of the Palestinian lands. Every time they do this, it makes a two-state solution less and less of a viable option, because as they do it the areas become so divided that soon there will be no place to draw boundary lines, the map will be like polka-dots with random settlements of each group here and there but no definitive areas.

After the field trip we had a review session for our Judaism test, and I spent more time studying some of the things for Palestinian too. We came up with a bunch of mnemonic devices to remember all of the months, holidays, jurisprudence, pillars, tenets, and names of Allah. Most of them are pretty ridiculous, but I will definitely never forget them.

Day 59

2010-06-26T12:51:00.001-07:00

It was a really peaceful Sabbath. Same as usual, Sacrament, Spanish Sunday School, and translating in Relief Society. After Church I hung out on our deck for a little bit, reading scriptures and looking out over the city. We had a great dinner, as always, and then we got home taught out on the lawn. I've been doing a little bit of homework as well- we make googledocs for all of our study guides, so I was filling out some of the terms that I was supposed to be summarizing for Old Testament and Judaism. I watched probably the weirdest movie I've ever seen- Great Expectations. It was a little bit awkward and very creepy. Our internet is still HORRIBLE, and they say it's because they're streaming in the World Cup through the same connection, so hopefully once the Cup is over blogging and emailing and googledocing will be a little bit easier again.

Days 57 & 58

2010-06-25T13:09:00.000-07:00

We have not had the internet most of yesterday and today, which has been kinda frustrating. Today I went with my roommates over to Hebrew U, we were there about 6 minutes until the security guard came and kicked us out because they close campus at 3 on Fridays for Shabbat. So then we wandered around the outside of the campus gates trying to get a signal but we couldn't. I think we'll go back Sunday morning and then I'll be able to post some pictures!

Yesterday we had classes and then at night we had a Seder dinner. Seder is Passover, which is in Spring but we did a mock one so we could see what it's like. Our Judaism teacher, Ophir, came and led the dinner. It was way fun, we started out by reading through the Haggadah, or telling of the story of the Exodus. There were parts that were sung by small groups and parts that were narrated. I was one of the narrators, I told the story about the wise son. Halfway through we had the dinner, which included about 6 courses of fish, soup, chicken, salad, fruit, and dessert. Then there was more narrating and singing. I have always heard little things about Passover, but it was really neat to see what it is really like.

Today we couldn't go out til 3, when me and my roommates tried and failed at Hebrew U. So after that we went to crash corner, which is just on the other side of the Center from the University. We just stopped at a little market and a fruit stand. The fruit place was awesome, there are a lot of them around and they always have really really good fruit- I have yet to get anything that was less than delicious. At this one I found an odd large, flat-ish banana. I bought it, and when I peeled it I found out that there were 2 normal size bananas inside the same peel! It was kinda the highlight of my day... is that sad?

The rest of today I just did a little bit of studying and a lot of movie watching. Throughout the day I've watched parts of Chronicles of Narnia, Phantom of the Opera, Anne of Green Gables, and all of Footloose and The Proposal. It was a really long week, and nice to just chill and hang out with everyone here.

Best part of yesterday: Getting a package from my dear mother!!! Thanks so much!!!

Day 56

2010-06-23T13:51:00.000-07:00

Old Testament and Ancient Near East this morning. We had a site report due in OT... We have to read scriptures while we are at a site that has to do with the Bible, and then write a paper about the site, the scriptures, and how we felt, etc. This was the 3rd of 5 we have to do this semester.

After lunch some of us went over to Ammunition Hill, which is in West Jerusalem just down on the other end of Mt. Scopus. It was a little longer walk than usual, but it was cooler and breezier today than it has been lately so it was actually really nice.

The site is all about the IDF, Israeli Defense Force. It was a battle site during the War of 1967, and there were still tanks and trenches that you could walk through that winded all over the place, and the fence was covered in barbed wire. There was also a museum and a movie, that were pretty heavy Israeli propaganda. The movie was cool because while it was playing and they were telling the story about the war, there was a topographical map in the room and colors were projected onto it so you could see where the boundaries moved and changed during the course of the war.

We walked back to the Center, I read for a little bit, had dinner, and did my homework. Not much else tonight, but I did watch a little bit of Anne of Avonlea with some girls after dinner.

Day 55

2010-06-22T12:48:00.000-07:00

We had one more long day of classes today- 7 hours. Old Testament, Judaism, announcements, linen exchange, Judaism, Palestinian. We got our first papers from Palestinian back, and I was pretty happy with my grade but there were a lot of people who were not- the grading didn't seem logical at all, but I didn't have any complaint. We didn't have any time at all to go out into the City, which was kind of disappointing.

The best part of the day was our forum, which was by a Holocaust survivor. His name is Elias Feihzilberg, and he was in his late teens in Poland when Germany took over and started concentrating the Jews into ghettos and labor camps. He talked about how his family was moved to the ghetto first, and then over the course of 5 years he worked in 9 different camps. He was able to go home a couple of times, but then he found out that his father had died of hunger and his mother and sisters had been killed in one of the camps. He worked on the highway and in the mines, and saw some terrible things in the camps. He talked about how he was always basically free, there were only 2 guards per group of 50 workers and they could run at any time, but there was nowhere for them to escape to. They had food, even though it was hardly anything, and if they ran they would just run into more Germans and perhaps meet a worse fate. At the end of the war they were finally liberated by Americans, he was married shortly after that and then he and his wife moved to Guatemala for 22 years before moving to Israel.

He speaks Hebrew and Spanish, and told his story in Spanish. It was amazing how optimistic he stayed throughout his story, and he said that he still couldn't quite believe that he had made it through, and that he didn't really know how he was able to stay positive throughout the ordeal. It was really cool to hear from the mouth of a survivor what it was like, and to see how happy he was now, with several children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. He had a really inspirational story about staying positive throughout all of the challenges that life brings and moving forward and finding happiness in life.

Day 54

2010-06-21T13:14:00.000-07:00

Today was a free day, and I actually slept in a lot later than usual. Then me and my roommate Katie headed out with Lindsey and Kendel. Kendel is super good with computery stuff, and he has pretty much every single thing there is to see in Jerusalem plotted out on googlemaps. So we just found one thing we wanted to see, found things close to it that looked fun too, and figured out all the streets so we knew exactly how to get there.

We started out by going to this Ethiopian Church. It was a Christian church, but the style kind of reminded me of the Hindu temple in Spanish Fork, with lots of colorful rugs and paintings and candles and incenses. It was probably the most colorful church I've ever seen. There was nobody else inside but a sleeping guard, so we actually hung out there for a while because it was really cool inside, temperature wise, and a peaceful place to talk and reflect on life. It also had this really amazing painted dome ceiling, with saints and angels all around it.

Right down the street from the church there is this street called Me'a She'arim. It is a Hasidic Ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood. They had up all these signs that tell you that you have to be super modest and that they don't like groups to come through and disrupt their neighborhood. A few people who have gone there told us that they got some dirty looks if the girls were wearing pants or if there were a lot of them, but we were all in skirts (except for Kendel) and since there were only 4 of us people were pretty nice. We stopped at a bookstore to look for a journal for Katie, and it was cool to see all the books they had- 100% of them were in Hebrew. There were also a lot of little stores and fruit stands, and we even saw a shoe-maker's store, where this guy was sitting at this intense sewing-machine stitching a black leather shoe. All of the little kids' sidelocks were longer, thicker, and curlier than any I have seen anywhere else in the city. They were sweeeeet!

On the way there we had stopped for falafels for lunch. Falafels are pitas filled with fried chick pea stuff, some hummus, french fries, chopped tomatoes and cucumbers, and then onions or pickles or a couple other things. They're pretty good. This is the second one I've had out in the city, but I don't know if I'll get many more. On the way back we stopped for fruit and I got some mangoes and apples. I ate a mango earlier tonight and it was SOOO good. So I'll probably get a lot more of those.

We had FHE tonight, and our FHE dad had put together this scavenger hunt that took us all over the inside and outside of the JC, and ended in this hidden room in the wall with a bunch of gummies. It was pretty fun. After that, just some reading, homework, a movie, and now I'm just about ready to go to bed.

Day 53

2010-06-20T13:19:00.001-07:00

Happy Father's Day Dad!!!

Today we went to the Holocaust Museum, Yad Veshem. The name comes from a verse in Isaiah, that talks about how they will be remembered, that their children will carry on their story. There were some parts of the museum that were really hard to see, and there were others that were really awesome. One of the good parts was at the entrance to the Museum, which is called the Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations. They have a tree planted along the pathway for every non-Jewish person or family that helped Jews escape at the risk of their own lives or those of their family. There were 23,500 trees there, with a plaque at each one with the name of the person/family on it. There were other stories of people ("gentiles") who helped save Jewish people, sometimes strangers, just because it was the right thing to do. It was nice to see how good people could be, since most of the rest of the museum was showing how evil people could be. They also made a big deal about honoring the people who fought back against the Nazis, like in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, whom they saw as kind of modern Maccabees.

I don't feel like this is the place to talk about a lot of what I saw, no matter how respectfully I tried to do it. To briefly give an idea of what the museum was like, it was a concrete hall built into the mountain, with the walls sloping down on the sides and light coming in from windows above ground. We walked through rooms to the sides of the hall, that went in order. There were pictures of people before they entered the camps, and pictures of them in the camps. There were stories of people who survived and people who did not. There were stories of times that brought out the best in people, and some that brought out the worst. We got an idea of what it was like for the people who lived, and the hardships they still had to face. In the end, though, there was almost a hopeful feeling, or maybe more of a conviction, to never let anything like that happen again to people in the world.

One part that was really beautiful and sad at the same time was the memorial to the children, which was a room with panes and mirrors. It was all dark, except for 5 lighted candles that reflected through the glass to make a million little lights all over the room, while someone said the names of each of the children and how old they were. It was a really moving thing to see.

After Yad Veshem we went to Mt. Herzl, which is the site of Theodor Herzl's grave. Herzl was a leader in the Zionist movement in the late 1800's and early 1900's. When he died in 1904 in Vienna he asked that his body be moved to the Jewish State whenever it was established. The Zionists did just that in 1949, and now it is a really big deal to the people of Israel, and the mountain is now the site for many other graves of Zionists and early leaders of the State of Israel, as well as the military cemetery.

It was a really really long day with a lot of walking, and usually we all kind of space out around hour 5 or 6. Today was 8 hours, but amazingly I was able to stay focused, and it was really great because I learned SO much and I felt like I got a much better idea of what a Jewish State meant to the people, especially after the Holocaust left them as refugees, with nowhere else to go. It seems like the more we learn, the harder it is for me to form a real opinion on the Conflict here. I never realized before I came here just how complicated it is and how many events have transpired over the past few thousand years that make it seem impossible to ever find a solution that will work for everyone.

When I got home me and my roommate Natalie almost napped through dinner. We woke up at 6:51, ran up to the Oasis, and had about 8 minutes to eat. Since dinner I've mostly been hanging out, reading a little bit, and trying to decide what to do with our free day tomorrow. Yesterday was hump day. It is so crazy, we're already halfway done, and there is still so much to see and do! I think tomorrow I will try to hit up a handful of churches/museums, since I feel like I still haven't seen enough of those yet.

Day 52

2010-06-19T12:01:00.001-07:00

Today was such a great Sabbath. Our area authority, Elder Kacher, was visiting and spoke in Sacrament meeting. We also had other great talks and an awesome musical number by Daniel, he's this way cool guy here that is also an amazing piano player. The two Spanish-speaking sisters weren't here today, so we all went to the English Sunday School instead. It was the first time I had gone, and it was really good. In Relief Society since I didn't need to translate it was fun to get to listen and participate more in the lesson.

After Church I went with Brooke and Jared over to the Garden Tomb. I mostly just wrote a lot in my journal, but it was really cool because there were a bunch of different groups that moved in and out while I was sitting there. There was a kind of hippie group that were singing campfire-style songs in a foreign language, a baptist group with their preacher, and some other people that were kind of warbling and chanting. Despite all of this, it was amazingly peaceful and I could hear the birds chirping and feel the soft breeze. It was cool too, because as different as all of those people were expressing their worship you could tell that they all had a great belief in and love for the Savior.

After dinner there was a fireside with Elder Kacher. He talked about timing and why we are all here in the Holy Land. He said that even if we may not know it, or see a direct effect while we are here, that there is a reason for each of us to be here and that the more we get to know the people here and talk to them, the more of a difference we will make in someone's life. It was really interesting to hear his perspective on that.

Tomorrow we are going to Yad Veshem, a Holocaust memorial. Over the weekend I have been reading in Anne Frank's Diary, and we just got finished watching Life Is Beautiful. We have been learning about the Holocaust a little bit in our Hebrew and Israeli classes. I think it will be interesting to see Yad Veshem, but I also know that it will be very hard to see and hear about all of the things that took place.

Day 51

2010-06-18T13:47:00.000-07:00

This morning was the Old Testament midterm. It was a lot harder than the last one, with a lot of details about places and scriptures but I think I did ok. We had ANE for an hour after that, then I watched You've Got Mail with a few girls before lunch.

After lunch I took a nap until we could go out at 3. We went over to West Jerusalem first, because my roommates had never tried Challa bread, but they ended up being out of the good kind at the bakery we went to so we got fruit smoothies instead. While we were walking back toward the Old City, we heard a bunch of music coming from a couple streets over so we went to check it out and there was this huge street party! There was really good music and a bunch of people dancing, so we hung out there for a little bit.

We had to stop by Shaban's so people could exchange money, and I bought a sweet tshirt and a necklace from him. We stopped at this Christian place that is a “guesthouse” for pilgrims. I talked to the guy at the desk there, and he was telling me about all the people they get from Italy, Spain, and South America who come stay there while they are visiting the Holy Land. There are a lot of really cool hostels and hospices that seem like they would be really fun to stay at if I come back here some day.

As we were walking back toward Damascus Gate, we went into this little shop and ended up talking to this Palestinian man for a while. He was talking about the Conflict, and his feelings about how unfair it was for the Arabs to lose their land and become refugees in their own country. It is always interesting to hear peoples' personal experiences and how they view what is going on and how it affects their day-to-day lives. This man had a more down-to-earth perspective than some others do. When we asked him what he thought a solution might be, he said there could never be peace without the Palestinians getting back to their homes and their lands. He said there are many people who fled during the war who still have the keys to their homes and are waiting for the day when they can safely return to them.

After dinner a Jewish man came to teach us some traditional Israeli folk dancing. It was really fun, there were a lot more steps than there were for Palestinian folk dancing, but they weren't too complicated. There was a lot of shimmying and one part that was kind of like a Virginia Reel, it was pretty sweet!

Day 50

2010-06-17T12:26:00.000-07:00

Today was a really really long day. We had Old Testament this morning, right after that we had Judaism, then we had Palestinian from 1 to 3, a one hour break and then again from 4-6. Added to that the fact that we have an OT midterm tomorrow, and there was not a lot of free time today.

I did get a chance between Judaism and lunch to run out to the Old City for a little bit to exchange some money. We went to Shaban's, as usual, and he gave us juice, as usual. After getting shekels we hit up this little grocery store that's hidden in a random corner of the Old City. We'd never been there before, and we were surprised at how big it was. It had a couple different aisles, a bakery section and even a refrigerated section with meats and an upstairs with household cleaners and stuff. It was a great discovery. I bought a box of legit ritz crackers, and it was nice to have a taste of some good U.S. food.

Palestinian class was actually ok today, even though it was long. I got a lot of studying done for the midterm, and caught up on some other reading. Tonight, mostly just more studying. Our test covers everything from Judges through 2 Kings and then Hosea, Micah, and Amos. It is amazing how similar all of the OT names are, and we have to remember each individual person, what they did, when they did it, and why it was important. Some of the stories are familiar, like David and Bath-sheba or Solomon and the 2 mothers, but mostly it's a lot of wars and people assassinating kings and conquering other lands and being wicked and idolatrous and stuff like that.

Pop quiz:
1. Who was Rahab and where did this person live?
2. What was the main way the Ammonites worshiped Molech?
3. Where did the widow live who shared her meal with Elijah?
4. What is the name of Hosea's wife and what is her occupation?
5. What do the Philistines put in the Ark of the Covenant when they return it to the Israelites and how is it returned?
Extra Credit:
What was the name of the fish god of the Philistines?

Day 49

2010-06-16T14:11:00.000-07:00

So I did pretty well on the ANE midterm this morning- it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be and we did a review in class right before so I felt pretty good about it. We had our Judaism class after lunch and then I took a nice long nap because I was up a lot later than usual last night studying.

After dinner there was a talent show. They have a formal and an informal talent show, so tonight was all classical violin and piano and vocal pieces. I was amazed at how many hidden talents there were in the ward. My roommate Natalie played the violin and Jessie sang, and there was an Italian aria, a duet to All I Ask of You from Phantom, and one guy played the piano and sang at the same time. It was really fun to watch.

Later, about 20 of us headed over to a light show in the Old City. Normally we aren't allowed into East Jeru or the Old City after dark, so it was really cool to get to see some of the night life there. It was a lot of Jewish families or young people mostly, and there were some pretty sweet light sculptures. There were these lighted up figures climbing the wall, some twinkly lights that looked like a horse running, this cool light garden with green and red poles where if you touched the green ones they could sense body heat and they would turn green, and there were lots of other little things to see. There was this cool movie about the Jewish history of Jerusalem projected onto the side of this big building. It was in Hebrew, so we didn't know what it was saying but it was really fun to watch it anyway. We got some great pizza before we left from this pizza and gelato shop. It was so delish. We took a big taxi van there and back, and made it just in time for curfew (midnight). I still have some reading and a take-home quiz to finish before tomorrow, but it was way worth it to take a break and get a chance to see the city at night.

Day 48

2010-06-15T13:43:00.000-07:00

Today was not very exciting- we have a midterm tomorrow for our Ancient Near East class and basically everyone has been studying for it all day long. There was Old Testament this morning, announcements and linen exchange, studying, lunch, studying, more studying, Palestinian class this afternoon, dinner, more studying, and I am taking a break from studying right now to post this.

We have been here 7 weeks, and class is only for 2 more so the midterm will cover at least 3/4 of what we will be learning all semester, and covers all the way from the beginning of time. It's cool to have it at the same time as Old Testament, because we learn about things that were going on outside of the Bible stories but sometimes the religious gets mixed up with the secular test information in my brain, and I forget to remember the dates and the archaeological evidence that goes along with what's happening in the Bible.

Day 47

2010-06-15T00:10:00.001-07:00

Bethlehem was so amazing! First we went to this place where there is a think tank on how to improve the situation for the Palestinians. The guy who started it gave us this presentation on how much land the Palestinians have lost and everything that is going on from their perspective.

After that, we went to Bethlehem University. The first building we went to was a chapel, which had paintings all over the walls of children martyrs that the church honored. It was really sad but really beautiful.

We got to meet some students there and do a Q&A. They were all studying different things, all hoping to find jobs in the West Bank when they graduated. 2 of the girls are from Jerusalem, but said that they chose Bethlehem U over Hebrew U because they didn't want to study at an Israeli school. They talked about what it's like to have to go through checkpoints everyday to get from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, the cards they all have to carry that say what their nationality is, all the things that make up their day to day lives amid the conflict. We asked them about politics too, and one guy thought a 1-state solution to the conflict would work, but the others all argued that they could never live peaceably together and that the only way was to have separate Palestinian and Israeli states. It was really interesting to hear their opinions, since we usually hear from older, more politically-active scholars or professors, but these were more like our peers. We took a quick tour of the campus too, and saw a hole in the wall of the library from a missile during an Israeli attack a long time ago.

Next, we went to lunch at this place called the Tent Restaurant, traditional Palestinian food. It was SOOOO GOOD! First they brought out pitas and lots of different kinds of hummus, then lamb and chicken and potatoes and broiled vegetables... I didn't like the lamb a whole lot, but everything else was delish.

We finally got into the city of Bethlehem, which has been getting a lot bigger over the past few years but is probably one of my favorite cities that we've been to so far. The houses are all white stone with blue doors and shutters, and there were colored flags hanging all over the streets from a celebration they had a few days ago. We walked through the streets and saw some of the different churches from the outside, but we went into the Church of the Nativity, which was built by Constantine over the place where they believed Jesus was born. There was one spot that was the birthplace and one that was the manger. It was a really cool place to see. There was a chapel connected to it that had a grotto underneath where Jerome translated the bible into Latin. This one wasn't decorated like the Nativity one, so you could see what the stable really might have looked like back then. We went down and sang some Christmas hymns, and there was a really special spirit there.

There was one other church that we could go see, called the milk grotto. It is supposedly a place where Mary and Joseph stopped at while they were fleeing into Egypt, and Mary was in such a hurry to feed baby Jesus that some milk spilled on the rock and turned it white. Kind of an interesting tradition, but it was a neat little church all the same. The one thing that I thought was neat about Bethlehem is that there was only one Nativity Church, whereas in Jerusalem you have 5 different locations or churches for everything- for the crucifixion, the tomb, the ascension. Even though we don't know for sure exactly where these things happened, it was neat that there weren't a bunch of competing churches in Bethlehem. We knew that if it wasn't the exact spot, it was at least very close to where the Birth took place.

Day 46

2010-06-13T14:17:00.000-07:00

Today was such a blast. We went to the zoo, which was SO fun. I went with really low expectations, because of the website that only had 2 animals on it. Luckily, there were a lot more animals than that. It was called a biblical zoo, but that included most of the animals that were on the ark, so maybe that's what they meant. There were zebras and hippos and rhinos and giraffes and a lion and a red panda and snakes and monkeys and flamingos.

There were pretty cool looking birds too, and while we were looking in the birds of prey exhibit the workers were trying to catch this vulture so it could get weighed. They kind of chased it around for a couple minutes, and this bird was HUGE. It was almost the size of the guy that was trying to catch it! He finally came up behind it and grabbed it by the neck so it couldn't bite him and then they carried it over to this little cage and sent it off on a golf cart to wherever they were going to weigh it.

We got to watch the penguins getting fed, but it was pretty boring because the penguins basically lined up and got fed one by one, instead of throwing the fish into the water so they would dive and swim all over. My very favorite animal was the tiger. He was big and sooooo pretty. He wasn't doing much but he would look over at the window sometimes and his eyes were big and really cool looking.

There was a giant ark there, which was pretty much empty inside but it had a great view of the zoo and the surrounding area. We got to ride on a little train too to get around. One of the best parts of the day was that there was this group of preschoolers who all had down syndrome, and it was so sweet to see how excited they got at all of the different animals, even the boring ones. They were really cute. Another good part of the day is that when we got in the van to get over there, the driver was listening to Pit Bull, and he turned it way up so we could have a dance party (there are not very strict seatbelt laws here).

After the zoo I ran into my OT professor's kids, Will, Joel, and Sarah. They were playing chess, really well actually considering they are 4, 9 and 12 or something. They wanted me to play with them, and even though I am fairly lacking in chess skills me and Will did pretty well. I spent most of the rest of the day reading and trying to get some rest, cause the zoo kind of wiped me out. After dinner I listened to my roommate practicing a song that she wrote on the guitar about Jerusalem. My other roommate has ben writing a Jerusalem song too, on the ukulele. It's way fun to hear their songs, they're both really good at writing both the music and the lyrics.

Tomorrow we are going on a field trip. Field trips mean an early morning and usually a long day, but they are so fun and we always get to see really cool things and learn a lot. Tomorrow is the FT to Bethlehem, and I am really excited!

Day 45

2010-06-12T11:18:00.000-07:00

Today I sang a hymn in Church with some other people. We sang the first verse in English, then 4 of us sang the second verse in Spanish and another 4 sang the third verse in Portuguese. We had some really good speakers in Sacrament, and Spanish Sunday School was awesome as usual. In Relief Society me and Ashley translated for Hermana Dulca again, on a lesson about following the prophet.

I napped for a while after Church, and barely made it to dinner. After dinner I did some journaling and scripture reading, and mostly just hung out with my roommates. We straightened our room a little bit, so it looks really neat and clean. We do have an issue with sugar ants in our room, mostly by my bed since I'm close to the window. Today I put up a barrier with kleenex and tape along the edge of my window, but there were still a few of them scurrying around. So I am going to ask for some bug spray before I go to bed tonight.

People have been going a little crazy this weekend because of the World Cup. They are playing it live at the Center, the only live tv we'll get this summer. Tonight is the US vs England, and it is a pretty big deal. I am super excited for tomorrow- it is a free day and a bunch of us are going to a biblical zoo over in West Jeru. It sounds fun, but we aren't quite sure what to expect because the website only shows two animals- a macaw and an ibex, but we are hoping that there will be at least 2 or 3 more than that.

Day 44

2010-06-11T14:04:00.000-07:00

Breakfast, Old Testament, ANE, and then a break before lunch. After lunch (pita sandwiches, one of my favorites) I went with Grace, Scott, Judd and Rachel over to this Suk in West Jerusalem called Mahane Yehuda. We had to take a taxi since we aren't allowed out into East Jerusalem on Fridays til 3.

The Suk was really cool, it is basically this huge market that is only open on Fridays so the Jews can buy food for the Sabbath and the rest of the week. There were all kinds of pastries, fresh fruit and vegetables, dried fruit, nuts, meat, fish, candy, everything you could think of. We sampled a bunch of stuff and bought a few things. It was all really delicious. It was super busy and crowded, with Israeli Jews and a lot of foreigners too. We were surprised how many Americans were there today, more different groups than we've ever seen at one time since being here. From what some of them told us, it seems like a lot of Jewish people from the States come out to visit the homeland and get back to their roots. For most of the young people it is just an excuse for an all-expenses-paid party, but there were some families there too.

At the end of the Suk there was this really good juice place, where you could get any combination of fruits that you wanted in a drink or smoothie. Me and Scott got one with strawberries, mangoes, banana, nectarine, dates, orange, and a hint of mint. It was super good.

We walked back toward the Center through West Jeru, ending up back on Ben Yehuda street at Sam Booki where we bought some challa bread, the Jewish Sabbath loaves. We kept going til we got to the Mamila Mall, which has awesome abstract statues all around. We were almost back to the Old City when we got a text that East Jerusalem and the Old City were off limits because of "unrest," so we had to call another taxi to take us back to the JC. We found out later that there was a Palestinian who ran into a group of Israeli soldiers with his car, and I don't know all of the details but he ended up getting shot. Once again, I was reminded of how much there is going on here in Jerusalem and in the whole Holy Land, and we only hear about a fraction of it. It is so much more real when affects my day to day plans, and it helps me understand why the Prophets have asked us to pray for peace in Jerusalem.

Dinner was delish, pretty much the usual menu: potatoes (today with pesto), rice, veggies, salads, salsa-type stuff, soup, chicken, beef, fish, rolls, pitas, hot chocolate (or my favorite, hot milk with honey and cinnamon), and always a dessert but sometimes they look kind of questionable. After dinner I chatted with a few different people, and then there were some people having a party in the weight room. I found out that I can max out at 105 on the bench press. It was fun.

Here are pics, it took me half an hour just to get these ones up but I will try for more next week when our internet stops being crazy.

In Hezekiah's Tunnel on our field trip on Monday with Becky

Outside the Tunnel. It is a National Park site or something, so they had children's signs.

Drinking juice at the Suk with Scott and Judd

Dancing at our Palestinian culture night last week

Day 43

2010-06-10T12:39:00.000-07:00

So this morning we had Old Testament, another quiz, and then some free time before lunch. I finished up my paper for the Palestinian midterm, and then after lunch I ran out with a couple people to go to the Tower of David Museum. We have to write a paragraph about it for one of our classes, and somehow I didn't make it out there earlier this week. We walked in through Lion's Gate on the East side and then through the Jewish quarter of the Old City to the museum, which is on the South side by Jaffa Gate. The museum is really cool, it is partially inside and partially outside of this stone building and it had all kinds of stuff about the history of Jerusalem, including the 1st and 2nd temple periods.

On our way back to the JC we went out Jaffa Gate, because we were in a hurry to get back for Hebrew, but then we got kind of lost and ended up in some random valley. It was cool to walk around and explore and try to figure out where we were, but in the end we decided to take a taxi back to the Center so that we wouldn't be late for class. We only have a couple of classes left before the final, so missing is not a good thing.

We had an hour break after Hebrew, and then we had our Palestinian class. We handed in our midterms, and then we had 2 hours of class. We were all so wiped out from all the hours we put in on the papers that nobody was really in the mood to sit there for that long. I actually ended up laying down in one of the back rows where the professor couldn't see me and taking a nap on the floor there. It was great.

Tonight after dinner we had to watch a movie for our Judaism class. It was called Sallah Shabaty or something and it was in Hebrew with English subtitles. It was about this guy, Shabaty, who comes to a transit camp when he moves with his family to Israel. He doesn't like the shack they have to live in and he wants a house, but he doesn't want to work and he spends all his money drinking. In the end he tries to get money for his daughter's dowry, because she wants to marry this guy at a kibbutz. When they finally convince the kibbutz that this is their custom and that they have to pay a dowry for them to marry, his son comes and tells him that he wants to marry a girl that's a member of the kibbutz so he has to give all the money back to them. In the end he uses reverse psychology on the housing authorities to finally get a house for free. It was a crazy movie, but there were some funny parts.

After the movie, a bunch of the guys played basketball for a couple hours and we watched them for most of the time. One girl who was playing hurt her foot, so they had me step in for her. After a few minutes they decided that even injured she was still better than me so she went back in. Oh well. I try to upload pictures every day and I still can't get a good enough internet connection, so I think tomorrow I am going to break down and finally head over to Hebrew University so I can put up pictures from the past week.

Day 42

2010-06-09T23:01:00.000-07:00

It was my roommate Katie's birthday today, so we bought her a huge bag of gummies and put up a sign in our room for her this morning. I woke up really early to work on homework, then breakfast, Old Testament and ANE. Some more homework (almost finished with the Palestinian midterm), lunch, then I went out with Becky and Bridget to go to the Old City and the post office.

In the city we went to Shaban's to change money, and did some other shopping. I found a super cute skirt at this store just down the street, but the guy there was an über creeper. I was ready to pay him full price just to get him to stop talking in a really awkward, trying-to-be-charming-but-sounding-like-a-slimeball voice. Ew. Definitely my worst shopping experience in the Old City so far.

At the post office I was surprised to find that buying a padded envelope to send a small package cost more than actually mailing the thing. Total: 13.7 sheks, about 3.50 American. Not too bad! It was a pretty nice day to walk around. I don't know if the weather is actually changing or if I'm just adjusting, but every day this week has seemed a little nicer.

When we got back there was some time before dinner, then schnitzel with noodles, and then we had a forum by a professor who has worked at Harvard and several other prestigious schools. He was Jewish, and presented what he thought might be a way to start working for a solution in the conflict. He talked about negotiations, and the possibility of reaching compromise. It seems like the longer they wait, the more reason each side will have to resist compromising, because bad things will keep happening to make them hate each other even more. It was really interesting to compare his thoughts to what our forum speaker last week, the Palestinian activist, had to say about it. This professor was definitely more hopeful for a peaceful solution than the last one. It was very obvious though that both speakers talked about it by placing pretty much all of the blame on the other group. Neither would admit that it was two-sided, and that both of them have done things that were wrong. Nobody wants to take ownership for their actions. I think that's one of the major issues that's standing in the way of them coming to peaceful agreements.

More Palestinian and Old Testament reading... We made it to 1 Kings, so we're learning about Solomon. I love learning about the temple he built, since you can still see where it was. The Dome of the Rock is built on the temple mount now, but you can tell how big the temple would have been and picture what it would have looked like back then. Some of the stories are still a little bit hard to understand, but I feel like I'm getting a better sense of all of the good things that you can learn from the Old Testament, and reading it is actually more enjoyable than I expected.

Day 41

2010-06-08T13:38:00.000-07:00

Today we had Old Testament, announcements, and linen exchange in the morning. After we made our beds, my roommates and I and a couple of other girls went out for lunch in the Old City. We started at this Armenian place that had been recommended to us, but then they let us know that you have to pay 50 shekels minimum to eat there. So instead we walked around til we found this pizza place by Jaffa Gate. It was pretty good, they had lots of choices of toppings including corn, which looked interesting (I might try that one another day). It was a really nice day to walk around the city, not too hot and not too crowded.

We hurried back for Hebrew class, where we learned the last few letters of the alphabet. Now we know the whole song! And "th" was the very last one, but now I can write out my whole name. Judy, our teacher, says we will be able to read the 10 commandments in Hebrew by the end of the semester, but I think she means we'll be able to say it out loud but we won't know what each word means.

More homework, Old Testament reading, etc. I organized my pictures, but our internet connection is as slow as turtles in peanut butter right now so I will try to put them up tomorrow instead.

Day 40

2010-06-07T13:51:00.001-07:00

This morning we went on a field trip, really close by in the City of David. Picture Utah County, where all the different cities really connect so you wouldn't really know if you crossed into another city. That's how the City of David is compared to Jerusalem. The Old City is West of us at the JC, and just South of that is the City of David. Jerusalem grew around the original city that David conquered, and they built the temple on the hill to the North, and that's the part that's inside the walls of the Old City today.

For the field trip we were checking out some of the sites associated with David and when he first conquered the city here and the city of Jerusalem first became important as far as events in the Bible. There are some walls and structures that they've found that date back to David's time and that they think might have been part of his palace. We watched a 3d movie at the beginning about the history of the city and the archaeological work they've been doing on it. It was really neat to see what the whole area of Jerusalem would have looked like then and how it has evolved over the past few thousand years.

The funnest part of the trip was when we went down into Hezekiah's Tunnel, which is a tunnel they built to carry the water under the city so the water supply couldn't be taken over during wars. The water came up mid-calf most of the way, but there were parts where it came all the way up to our thighs. The tunnel is pretty narrow and goes all the way from the highest point of the City of David to the bottom of the hill into a pool. There were several different pools that held the water over time, but one of them is the pool where the Savior sent the blind man to wash his eyes after He put mud on them. It's so cool to be able to physically see where biblical events like that took place, it makes them even more real.

We were back at the JC for lunch, then homework, reading, resting, lots of laundry, FHE (Disney Scene-it), and some more of the Palestinian midterm from Hades. I have most of the sections done but the ones I have left are pretty long. The good news is that at the end of June we are done with most of our classes- Palestinian, Judaism, Hebrew and Old Testament will all be over and then we'll just have New Testament and ANE for July. So I guess it's worth all the work now to have more free time later in the semester, instead of the other way around.

Day 39

2010-06-06T12:17:00.000-07:00

Eilat! We had to wake up at 5:30 for breakfast and to pack our lunches and then we were out the door by 6 for the 4 hour bus ride to the beach. We broke it up with some pixar and some ipod karaoke, so it went by pretty fast. When we got there we got briefed by one of the national park reserve guys on where we were and weren't allowed to go, not to grab the line around the reef or try to feed the fish. Then we jumped right in and started snorkeling. There were a lot of really pretty fish, some Nemos and some Dorys and some long needlefish and these really cool neon pink and green striped ones, all of them were so beautiful and interesting in their own way.

The reef runs all along the beach, and most of it is roped off so you can't swim there, you have to swim parallel to the coast a few yards out and look at the back side of the reef. We started off at one "bridge" boardwalk and let the current carry us down to a second bridge. It was the clearest, bluest water I've ever seen! It was so interesting too to see Jordan and Saudi Arabia across the water, which both looked like a solid gray, from the lifeless mountains to the dusty sky. The contrast was pretty cool. Definitely glad we were on our side of the sea. There was a shallow lagoon-type area right up next to the beach where we could swim and play, and a lot of the day was spent in chairs at the edge of the water, getting the perfect combination of the hot sun and the cool water. I even got a little bit of homework done while I was soaking in the sun.

We packed up around 4:30 and were back on the bus at 5 to head back to the JC. We stopped on the way at one of the Kibbutzes for dinner (schnitzel, hot dogs, and gelato) and then made the long trip home. It was such a fun day, but definitely exhausting. I'll try to get some pictures up tomorrow, one of the kids has a waterproof camera and got some great pics of the fish!

Day 38

2010-06-05T12:15:00.000-07:00

Today was District Conference. I slept in past breakfast, because I still had some halla bread and an apple in my room. It was so nice- I didn't wake up til 10. It's been over a month since I've slept in that late! We had some really great speakers- the theme was temples, which was a little bit different than when we talk about temples at home, because there isn't a temple near enough to go to here. The first session was really good, there were a ton of members there from the Tel Aviv, Galilee and Beer Sheva branches.

We had an hour break, and then we had the Relief Society and Priesthood sessions. My friend Ashley and I translated the session for some of the Hispanic sisters who were here from other branches, and it was a really cool experience. Normally when we translate for Hermana Dulca in our branch, it is pretty easy because it is one-on-one and she helps us out a lot. But today we sat in the back with a microphone that was going out to 5 or 6 sisters, so we had to be better about really following exactly what the speakers were saying. It went pretty well between the two of us, but there were a couple of challenging parts. I was translating during the talk by the Jerusalem RS President, Sahar, who was speaking on the importance of genealogy work as something we can do here in Jerusalem since we can't do work in the temple. It was going ok until she started getting into all of the technological details about microfilming and indexing and all of the different websites and computer programs that you can use to do genealogy. I think I got most of the gist of it. I felt bad for Ashley, who had to translate the next talk which had some pretty blatant comments about what the law of chastity involves. There were parts where she just kind of looked at me and we both shrugged and then she would say something like "you should just never do things that are against the law of chastity." It was definitely a unique experience.

After Conference we had dinner, then we watched some movies and had an info meeting about our trip to Eilat tomorrow. Everyone is going, and we are all so excited! So I'm working on my Palestinian midterm right now, trying to get done as much as I can so that I don't go crazy next week trying to get it finished. 2 single-spaced pages down, 12 to go.

Day 37

2010-06-04T12:59:00.000-07:00

Old Testament this morning, then just an hour of ANE. We were talking about the things we're going to see on our field trip on Monday, so it was exciting. And we didn't have a quiz! Which was even better. We had sandwiches for lunch (a bunch of different types of bread, meats, cheeses, tuna and egg salads etc.) and then hung out in the Center til 3 when we could go out.

Since tomorrow is the Jewish Sabbath, they always make this bread called halla bread on Fridays. This was the first time I'd gotten it, but it was so good. We had to walk over into West Jeru to get it, and as usual we passed a party on Ben Yehuda St. They had up a bunch of stands and a huge screen with music videos on it. We didn't have much time so we didn't stop but it looked like a lot of fun. We found a bakery and got a couple loaves to share between 4 of us. It's this big hunk of braided bread, super flaky inside and kind of sweet and a little sticky on the outside. We ate a bunch of it on our way back but I made sure to save some for tomorrow. We only have two meals on the Sabbath- breakfast and an early dinner- so it is always really nice to have some snacks in the room for right after Church and right before bed.

We ran through the Old City on our way back to run a couple of errands. I stopped at an olive wood place to pick up a Nativity for Aunt Jenny- it is beautiful, you are going to love it!- and then to Bassal's. I bought some genie pants from him the other day but I only had 20 shekels and they were 25. He said I could just bring the 5 sheks back later, but it's been almost a week now since we couldn't go out for so long. Anyway, when I went to give him the money he goes, no no it's ok I forgive you it. Some of the people here are really cool like that, very friendly and not super sticklers, and those are the people you know you will keep going back to buy stuff from because you just love them so much.

After a quick dinner, 20 of us hopped in taxis to head over to the Synagogue. Our MNE Israeli teacher set up these trips so all of us could go in groups to see the Shabbat services. It was a really neat experience. They mostly read/sang a bunch of the Psalms and some Torah verses, and we tried to follow along in the little books. I was impressed yet again by how devoted the people are to their faith. The service lasted an hour and a half, and they have another Shabbat meeting tomorrow morning for about 2 and a half hours. There were a lot of young girls there about our age, and a few really old ladies. The men and women were separated by a screen in the middle of the Synagogue, which was really a boy scouts building that is converted into a synagogue for the people in the community every week. At one point one of the old ladies started a line walking/dancing around the women's seats. Did I join the line? Of course I did. It is so fun to be a part of the way they worship, because it is really joyful. Even though it's different from the way we do our Church meetings, you can tell that they rejoice so much in worshiping God and reading the Torah as often as they do. There were a lot of people who prayed silently during a lot of the meetings. From what we've learned, their prayers are mostly repetitions of Torah verses, but you can tell in their faces that they really mean what they are saying.

When we got back, there was a movie going called Journey of Faith. It's this documentary about Lehi's family and how they wandered from Jerusalem through the Arabian peninsula and then sailed to the Americas. There were a lot of archaeological elements, things that were discovered after the Book of Mormon was translated that corroborate the stories, which was really cool. They also talked about how difficult it must have been for them to take their families and travel for months in the desert, camping at oases for a few days and then making the long trek to the next water source, for miles and miles. The landscape looks a lot like what we drive through on our field trips- a whole lot of nothing. It is so amazing that they were able to survive that and that Nephi and Lehi were able to stay so strong and faithful throughout the whole thing. The best part was that Brother Hamblin, our ANE teacher, and Brother Brown, the assistant director of the Center, were both in the movie. It was like being back in class!

I'm soooo tired, and really excited because tomorrow is District Conference and Church isn't til 11, so I will finally finally get a chance to sleep in!!!

Day 36

2010-06-03T14:35:00.000-07:00

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.

Day 35

2010-06-02T10:29:00.000-07:00

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!

Day 34

2010-06-01T13:47:00.000-07:00

A.K.A. My Birthday!

It was such a great day. It started off with me waking up to a giant pile of balloons and a web of streamers across my room. My Mom and my roommates teamed up to decorate my room the best ever. Plus the outside of my door was covered in notes from people at the Center (they do this for everyone's birthdays). Then I had breakfast, and studied for a little bit. Announcements (including some more info on what happened at Gaza), linen exchange, Old Testament midterm (dominated), lunch (Mexican food. Yes.), Hebrew class (midterm review), Judaism review, playing, dinner, almost going to see Iron Man 2, going to an obligatory forum instead, learning about the I/P Conflict from the perspective of a Palestinian activist, more playing, laughing with roommates for a really long time, and now blogging. Since the day wasn't filled with too much excitement I have a different surprise: Pictures!

At the Knessat

Zoom in close and see if you can see the mustache Jessie accidentally gave me when she was taking this picture

A cool building right outside the Old City on the West side. I just liked how the construction materials matched the shutters!

The Supreme Court building and me and Tyler taking a nap.

Dancing with Palestinian kids outside the lower gates

Going into the Micah Caves

Birthday decorations!!!

Me and Jessie on the deck at dinner. You can see the Old City and Dome of the Rock behind us

Me and Bridget in the Bell Caves

Days 32 & 33

2010-05-30T21:41:00.000-07:00

It was a free day, so we picked up our sack lunches at breakfast and hopped in a taxi over to West Jerusalem. First we visited the parliament building, called the knessat, then the Supreme Court building. Both were so beautiful and cool to walk around. We saw murals, offices, we even got to sit in on a SC hearing, with a criminal and everything. We couldn't understand anything that was happening, because it was all in Hebrew, but it was a neat experience anyway. We saw lots of kids on field trips at the parliament building, and since we got there at the wrong time we had to have half of our tour in Spanish. We met these German students there, so the tour guide was translating from Hebrew to Spanish, me and a couple others were translating from Spanish to English, and the Germans were translating from English to German. Love it.

It was about an hour walk back to the Center, so we just kind of meandered through different parks and side streets. We finally ended up on Ben Yehuda street for a few minutes, then back around the other side of the Old City.

Not much else that night, just homework and reading.

Monday was a field trip day. We went to some different places where the Israelites fought against other people, including the place where David fought Goliath. We got to practice using slings, which was kind of dangerous but really fun. I got to be ok at it... I had the distance ok, but not always quite the right direction. We went to a couple caves too- the "Bell Caves", where we sang a bunch of hymns with these really cool acoustics, and Micah's Cave, which was a real caving experience. I get very claustrophobic, so I crawled through the tunnel to the main cave but I couldn't do much else. Some people started crawling into tiny holes in the sides of the walls and coming out of other ones. The Bell Caves were man-made- they dug out the limestone to use for building and left the caves behind as cisterns or for storage or whatever. There were a couple we went to where they farmed pigeons in little nooks in the walls of the cave.

We found out while we were on the bus about the fiasco at Gaza. A humanitarian boat was trying to deliver supplies to Palestinians through the port at Gaza, the Israelis wanted them to go to a different port so Israeli customs could make sure nothing was being smuggled in, the boat refused, and fighting broke out. Last we heard, there were at least 15 dead on the humanitarian boat, and more fighting along the Gaza strip. The Old City went on strike for 3 days, so we are not allowed to go into East Jerusalem or the Old City until further notice. The JC is in East Jerusalem, so that means that if we want to go out at all we have to go to the upper gate and get a taxi to take us through East J to get over to the West side. Stuff over there is more expensive, because it's the nicer part of town, so it's not as much fun as wandering around places close to here, but still worth the trip. We have midterms this week, so it's actually kind of good timing. It would be worse if we couldn't go out when we had lots of free time with nothing else to do.

More homework and reading last night, for our OT midterm this morning. Still don't know if I'm totally prepared, but we have a little more time this morning to cram.

Day 31

2010-05-29T10:31:00.000-07:00

Early this morning I walked down to the Garden of Gethsemane with some friends. We sang some hymns and then just spent some time walking and and reading scriptures. It was the perfect way to start out the Sabbath.

We had fast and testimony meeting today, and it was really cool because there were a bunch of people there who were tourists from different places, so we heard some testimonies from people from England, the US, even Switzerland. Sunday School in Spanish was fun, and in Relief Society I helped translate for one of the Hispanic sisters, Hermana Dulca. We spend about a quarter of the time talking about the lesson, and the rest she just likes to talk about other random stuff. I really like her, she's a really sweet lady. She is working here in the hospital for a few more months.

After Church I got visit-taught, took a long nap, and woke up in time for dinner. Since dinner we have just been hanging out, watching some movies and playing some games. It has been kind of a lazy day, but sometimes it feels like we keep our days so busy that it's nice to have some time to relax.

Day 30

2010-05-28T09:52:00.000-07:00

We had Old Testament and Ancient Near East today, but only an hour of each. When we have class for 2 hours it is very draining. So today wasn't too bad. We can't go out til 3 on Fridays because the city is totally packed for Muslim prayers, so after classes we watched a couple movies, Overboard and Ever After. We did a service project too- putting together a bunch of the humanitarian hygiene kits that the Church distributes. We made about 600 in an hour, and they told us that every single one already has a home to go to, someone who has already requested it.

After 3 my roommate Katie and I went with a couple other people to the Old City. We met this guy at one of the shops and he was telling us about his girlfriend, how they had been dating for a year, would be engaged for about a year, and that he would already have everything they needed when they got married. I guess families here really provide for their children when the get married- he said he already has a house and furniture and everything like that. It's so interesting to find out the random parts of people's daily lives that seem so obvious and familiar to them but that we have so many questions about.

After that we went to Shaban's, I finally bought a pair of awesome genie pants, and we checked out this cool olive wood shop. They had nativities, scenes of the apostles, statues of Christ, Bibles with wood covers, and other neat stuff. It is all hand carved and so beautiful. Shopping is always fun, especially since Shaban always breaks out a couple bottles of juice when we show up, and keeps pouring us more and more while we look around. It's a really big part of their culture to offer people drinks, usually tea or coffee, but he knows the Mormon kids just want juice.

We went out through a gate we hadn't been through before on the opposite side of the Old City, and walked through some newer neighborhoods on our way back to the Center. We ended up taking a detour to buy some fruit at a small shop on the street where the Garden Tomb is. We stopped there and spread out for a few minutes. I was surprised how peaceful it was even with so many different tourist groups there. Everyone is very reverent and quiet, and lots of the groups will start singing their hymns and it is just a really good place to pray and ponder.

On our way back down the hill we ran into an Arab Christian lady. She started telling us how we shouldn't buy anything because they jack up the prices so much, and how dangerous it is to go around the city. She was about 85 years old. She invited us to come over and visit her sometime, since she lives pretty close. When we got to the lower gate at the Center, there were a bunch of Arab kids hanging out there. There are kids there pretty often, but usually just 3 or 4. Today there were about 15, from probably 6 to 16, and they were dancing! They had music and they were doing some cool Arab folk dancing, and then they taught us some of their moves. Mostly the little ones just kept laughing at us trying to dance but it was really really fun. It took us a while to catch on, and we still looked totally off, but we felt like we were doing pretty good and then they said that those were the moves kids do when they are first learning to dance at about age 5. So we have the dancing abilities of kindergarteners.

After dinner I had a meeting with the committee that I'm on to set up for the cultural dinners that we do. Next Wednesday we are having Arab night, so we were planning what we needed to do to get ready for it. I am in charge of napkin folding, so that summer working at the country club is finally going to pay off- I am now a pro at making napkin fans. I'm trying to plan something fun for Tuesday too for my birthday. Yesterday in Hebrew we learned the tradition of putting the birthday person in a chair and lifting them up as many times as how old they are. So maybe we will do that. Any way we do it I am super excited to celebrate!

Day 29

2010-05-27T12:58:00.000-07:00

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!

Day 28

2010-05-26T19:34:00.000-07:00

A long morning of classes today... All interesting stuff, but we're all exhausted about half way through and it makes it hard to focus. Lunch, then we went on a tour under the JC. It was so cool! The Center is on the side of a mountain, so it is built like a set of stairs, like this:

Underneath all of those is the basement, which slopes down with the mountain. There were a million pipes and wires, and it was so interesting to see how much it takes to keep this place running. We had to wear hard hats, because the ceiling was really low in some places. There was one area where a bunch of students had written their names on the walls and pipes, and our director let us write our names there too. It was fun to try to guess what part of the Center we were under, because it is seriously like a maze down there.

After the tour, I went to the Rockefeller Museum with a couple of other people. We have to visit there and write a short report by Friday, and there was only a small handful of us who hadn't made it there before Egypt. They had a lot of clay and iron artifacts, and some really cool rooms where they reconstructed parts of buildings so you could tell what it would have looked like in the past. There were some crazy old skeletons and skull fragments, including one from the Galilee Man, who is part of the species that came right before man. They even had a tomb that they had found intact and reconstructed it at the Museum. It was cool to see tangible objects to go along with a lot of what we have been studying in our Ancient Near East class.

I had Hebrew class in the afternoon, where we learned the birthday song and the alphabet song. Aleph bet vet, gimmel daled hey, vav zain chet tet, yud kaaf chaaf, lamed mem noone... that's only half of the song but that's all of the letters that we have learned so far. We have a midterm next week, so I'll be practicing the letters a lot.

The University of Utah Singers were here yesterday to do a concert. They ate dinner with us in the Oasis, and then we could watch their sound check since there are rarely extra seats in the concerts for us to use. We heard them practice some of the different songs they would be singing, and they were really good! It would have been cool to see their whole performance.

Just finishing up the paper for our Islam class- someone submitted theirs to have the professor's input and found out that our citations have to be a lot more detailed than we thought, so I have to go back and fix some of mine before I print it off. Luckily the class isn't til 4 pm so there's lots of time after morning classes to get everything finished.

Day 27

2010-05-25T12:26:00.000-07:00

Old Testament this morning, then out into the Old City for a little bit to finally go see the Dome of the Rock. Up close it is absolutely amazing. The tile work is so beautiful and there is elaborate Arabic script all around it with teachings from the Qur'an. It is blue and green and yellow, but from far away only the blue stands out. It is on the Temple Mount, with these incredible views of the valleys surrounding it. We got there a little after 10 and they close it to visitors at 10:30, so we didn't get to stay very long but I will definitely be going back a lot I think because it is one of the most peaceful places in the Old City, since everyone there is reverent and quiet, unlike the people selling and shopping in the streets.

The fastest way to get to Dome of the Rock is by passing through the gate by the Western Wall. We stopped there for a minute on our way back, and saw a bunch of little boys and girls all dressed up with gold paper crowns, kind of like the ones from Burger King but way more legit. I asked one of the moms what was going on, and found out that they all go to a Jewish school, and today was the day the first graders were all going to get their first Torah. It was really neat, there were Rabbis and it was kind of like the school programs that we have in the States. The kids didn't seem to think it was as cool as their parents did, but they all looked so precious in their little suits and dresses.

On our way back we walked through the Kidron Valley and saw Absalom's tomb and a few other really really old tombs there. The Kidron Valley is what separates the Old City from the Mount of Olives, which is where the JC is. So normally when we walk to the city we walk down the hill and then right back up the other side, but if you're going through different gates it's fun sometimes to walk down to the valley and then follow it for a little bit before going up to the city.

Still working on reading and homework... We had our Hebrew class again today, learned 3 new letters and reviewed the old ones. We had to review for a while, since we haven't had class for 2 weeks and with all of the other work we have, not much studying has happened lately. We have a bunch of midterms and quizzes coming up next week, (on my birthday), but I'm still going to try to go out into the city as often as I can.

After dinner we had the second round of games in the volleyball tournament, and my team won both games again! It shows less that I have any skills and more that my teammates have amazing skills at rescuing my poor shots. But either way, we are on to the semifinals!

Egypt Pics!

2010-05-24T11:02:00.001-07:00

Camel Ride!

Hiking in the Wilderness of Zin

Inside the Muhammad Ali mosque

Lunch at the Hard Rock

Pyramids!

On our way to Egypt we stopped at this archaeological site and we had to wear these awesome hard hats

This one is me and all of my roommates, Jessie, Katie, and Natalie, over the Nile River.

We went on our felucca ride while the sun was about to set, and it was so beautiful!

Day 26

2010-05-24T08:57:00.001-07:00

I'd like to start by sending a special birthday shout-out to my dad and my Grandpa Tom- I love you guys and I hope that you have a great birthday!!!
So unfortunately today has been kind of boring. There is a 7 page research paper due Thursday, so I opted to spend my day getting through most of that. I know, I know, this is so uncharacteristic of me. Those of you who know me well are shocked that I would even start this paper before Wednesday afternoon. But I have turned a new leaf and I am determined to use this summer to get rid of my horrible procrastinating ways. I've finished 6 pages of the paper so far. Yay me! I also got through some of the endless list of Old Testament readings for this week.
The one thing that made my day not entirely monotonous was a picnic. We always pack sack lunches on free days since the Oasis is closed for lunch, so a few of us who were all diligently working in the library took a break to go out on the lawn and eat our lunches looking out over the city and the Dome of the Rock, which was shining really bright today in the sunlight. We learned that there was a Muslim prince who sold one of his palaces or something to put real gold on the Dome. It really is the most beautiful building in the city and you can see it from almost everywhere because it stands higher than any of the other buildings near to it.
For FHE tonight we are playing Disney Scene-It (yes, someone actually used their 60" of packing space to bring that game with them), and then I will be working on homework for the rest of the night. not very exciting, but hopefully all of my hard work will leave me lots of free time later on this week to go out on adventures.

Day 25

2010-05-23T12:23:00.000-07:00

Today we had a field trip, probably my favorite so far. We went to this place called Ne'ot Kedumim, which is a biblical land reserve. They have all of the plants and animals from the Bible, like sheep, goats, sycamore trees, dates, figs, basically everything mentioned in the Bible. We got to herd sheep, hold a lamb, grind oregano, we saw a wheat thresher, we made pitas from scratch and made popped wheat(it doesn't really pop open like popcorn but it tastes really good), we saw water wells and cisterns the way they would have existed in biblical times, it was really fun. At the end we got to watch this Torah scribe copying some of the Torah. Apparently there are a whole bunch of rules that apply to scribes, not just anyone can do it and there are all these things about what to do if they mess up while they're writing. They make the ink from all-natural ingredients and write with a quill. We also got to see how they make the phyllacteries they wear during prayers (the boxes they wrap around their arm and head with prayers inside).
I spent most of the time after we got back doing reading, we all have a ton of homework due this week and I definitely didn't to any of it during our Egypt trip.
We had the first round of a volleyball tournament tonight, and my team won both of our games. It was pretty exciting. Almost everyone gets really excited about activities like this because we don't have any other sports to really play or watch, considering we have no access to tv. It's refreshing though, not having tv or facebook to distract from all of the amazing things that we could be doing every day here.

Day 24

2010-05-22T21:51:00.000-07:00

It was the Sabbath, and it was such a great day! We woke up, had breakfast, went to Church, had some great speakers. I translated for one of the Spanish-speaking ladies in Relief Society, only she spent a lot of the time just chatting with me about stuff that didn't really have much to do with the lesson but she had a lot of really good insights and I still got a lot out of the meeting.
After Church, visiting-teaching, then I headed over to the Garden Tomb with some friends. We all had to kind of take a step back and remember that we weren't just "heading over to the Garden Tomb," but we were going to one of the most sacred and meaningful sites in the world. It was humbling to re-realize just how lucky I am to be here and to have the opportunity to visit and revisit these places and feel the Spirit that is there.
After dinner there was a meet the branch activity where we got to meet the permanent members of the branch, and it was fun to hear why the parents were here and what their kids thought of being here.
Later, my apartment got home-taught out on the lawn with the Dome of the Rock and the sunset in the background. It was really cool. Kudos to our home teachers. After home teaching, we watched an episode of Planet Earth. Luckily there are some people here who love it as much as I do, so I think we will start a weekly tradition of Planet Earth on the Shabbat. Super exciting!

Egypt

2010-05-21T23:45:00.000-07:00

Wow where to even begin? It was a very busy week packed with some amazing sites and experiences but I will try to keep it as short and sweet as I can.

Thursday morning we started the long bus drive. We stopped at a couple places along the way, and did this really cool hike at the Wilderness of Zin. We were climbing the face of this really steep mountain with steps cut into the stone and even ladders some places where it was too steep for steps. Thursday night we drove down to a Kibbutz in southern Israel. It was really interesting, it's basically this self-sufficient socialist compound. The people raise these algae for anti-aging products along with dairy animals and date trees and there are a few other random things they do to generate money and then it all goes back into running the kibbutz and everyone gets an equal share of food and services and a small income every month. There were a lot of hippies who were there for a few months or a year.... To me it seemed like the kind of thing that would be a cool experience for a summer or something, but I was amazed at the “permanent residents” who spend their whole lives there.

Friday we crossed the border, then drove for about 7 hours until we got to Cairo and went to church at the branch there.
Saturday we saw the pyramids! It's the kind of thing where you can't even believe that you're even there, but looking back it's incredible. They were huge. Like, huge. It's amazing because driving through the city you can always see them, because they tower over even the tallest sky scrapers in Cairo. We got to go inside one of them to see where the tomb was. All of the pharaoh's tombs in Egpt that they've discovered were robbed thousands of years ago except King Tut, so all we could see was a stone coffin but it was still amazing. Then we went over to the Sphinx, which was also huge and amazing. There were little kids everywhere who kept trying to take our cameras and have us do kissing or other funny poses with the sphinx. We saw a few other cool tomb sites and then we headed to the Cairo airport and flew to Luxor.

Sunday we went to the Valley of the Kings, which is where most of the tombs are located. They were all getting robbed at the pyramids, so they decided to try to hide them in the mountains instead, but the builders were the ones who went back to rob them later so it didn't work out too much better. We saw Queen Hatchepsut's temple, which was built into the mountain and it was so cool, it had a lot of history written on the walls in hieroglyphs and our tour guide wanted to make sure that we heard each and every story written on the walls... so we were there quite a while. And it was hot. Really hot. Over 115 all day. So we were all sweating out of our eyeballs the whole time. After lunch we went on a felucca ride (sail boat) down the Nile and then we rode camels! They were super smelly but it was soooo fun. Mine was named Sindebad, and most of the rest of them were named Michael Jackson or James Bond. The guy who was leading my camel spoke pretty good English, so he was telling me everything I was looking at. He started out by pointing out the alfalfa, maize, date trees, and other plants, but I think he thought we don't have the same animals they do in America, because he kept saying, and there is a cow, and that is a cat, and that is a sheep, and that is a horse, and that is a donkey... in case I wasn't sure. That night I went out into the city for a while to do some shopping. We went to the Suq, where they have a ton of little shops kind of like in the Old City. The merchants were super pushy and kept asking the guys who were with us how many camels they would trade us for. It definitely made us miss the men in Jerusalem who are way less creepy. We went to a mosque too, which was built into Luxor temple so you could see some of the columns from the temple, which was lit up really cool. Our taxi driver was really nice and waited for us everywhere we went so we didn't have to call a new one. They drive crazy there, and when we asked him if he'd ever hit anyone he went, hahahaha yes, it's no big deal. So we felt pretty safe.

Monday we took a boat ride Karnak temple and then a carriage ride to Luxor temple. They were huge and amazing! It was astounding to hear how they built them, how long it took and how much effort went into putting up so many columns and giant obelisks. Our professors told us a little bit about the symbolism and how they resemble modern-day LDS temples. We had some more free time for shopping and then we went to the train station for our overnight ride back to Cairo. The train was fun, but smelly and a little bit itchy. The food was awful but it was still a cool experience. We all felt a little bit like we were on the Hogwarts Express.

Tuesday we went to the Egyptian museum and saw King Tutankhamen's treasure and the mummy room. There was so much gold in the museum, it was amazing to think that his was the smallest of all of the pharaohs' tombs. The mummies were amazing too, it's incredible that they have been able to stay intact for thousands of years- they all still had all of their teeth. We went to Hard Rock Cafe for lunch and then to another bazaar.

Wednesday morning we went to an old church and a couple of synagogues in Cairo and then to the Citadel and the Mosque of Muhammad Ali. They were all so beautiful and the mosques especially were incredible, the size and the detail were unbelievable. We had another long bus ride to the Sinai, then at 2 am we woke up and hiked Mt. Sinai. It was the most amazing hike I've ever been on. The sky was so clear that I could see a billion stars and even the Milky Way stretched across the entire sky. It was quiet and peaceful, even though it smelled really bad of camels. At the top we sat and sang hymns as we waited for the sun to rise. I have never seen a more beautiful sunrise. All you could see were these dry, desolate mountains all around us, and then this glow moving slowly up over the top. We had a small devotional and hiked back down the other side on a million and a half stairs (I exaggerate) then got back on the bus. We drove back to the border, which took a lot longer coming his direction, dipped our feet in the Red Sea for a minute and then drove back to the Center.

It was amazing how much we missed Israel, since we hadn't been here that long before we left. I was grateful for the simplest things, like being able to wash my hands with soap and water instead of just hand sanitizer. The first thing I did when I got back was brush my teeth with tap water. All we ate yesterday were fresh fruits and salads and drank all the cold water with ice that we could get. It was a free day, so most of it was spent catching up on sleep, doing laundry and unpacking. As soon as I get all of my pictures put together I will put up some best-of photos.

Day 14

2010-05-12T13:09:00.001-07:00

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!

Day 13

2010-05-12T00:06:00.001-07:00

We had class all morning, Old Testament and the Modern Near Eastern class from our Israeli professor. After lunch I went with some people down to a 24-hour mart to pick up some food for Egypt, since apparently we can eat approximately 2% of the food there. It wasn't too far away, but getting there involved walking down the side of the freeway, hopping a fence, getting yelled at by a bunch of kids and their chickens, then walking on a dirt trail trying to find the right paved road that meets up with the store. The way back was mostly the same, except we couldn't find the short fence so we ended up jumping off a wall on the side of the freeway. We ran all the way back to make it to Hebrew class, where we learned a few more letters and practiced writing all of the ones we have learned so far. We had our Palestinian MNE class after Hebrew. It is only the second time we've had the class, but I think it will be interesting.

For dinner, me and my roommate Jessie made a funfetti cake that we found at the grocery store for our friend Lance's birthday. After dinner I spent most of the night trying to catch up on all of the reading for this week. Tomorrow is Jerusalem Day, so we want to spend most of the day after classes in the city watching the parades and doing the rest of the shopping for Egypt!

Day 12

2010-05-10T23:27:00.000-07:00

We had a field trip to Jericho. We drove out to some different archaeological sites for Herod's winter palace and a tower that is supposedly the oldest structure in the world and a sign of the first settlement society.

We hiked up to this monastery in the mountains. It is supposed to be the Mount of Temptation, and they have a stone there that they think is the stone that Satan tempted Christ to turn into bread. It was a pretty incredible place, especially considering how steep the hill was and how much it would have taken to build the monastery there.

Then we went out into the Judaean wilderness, which is where Christ went when He fasted for forty days. It was the most desolate place I have ever seen. When I had heard about a wilderness before, I pictured what you pass on the way to Southern Utah, scrub brush and desert. No. It is way worse than you could have ever imagine, and it was hot. Really hot. It is crazy to think about all of the different people in the Bible who wandered through there on their way from Jericho to Jerusalem.

After dinner mostly homework and reading... But I did dominate in the first round of the Rummikub tournament. This week there's a lot going on to get stuff ready for Egypt... I am so excited!!!

Day 11

2010-05-09T11:20:00.001-07:00

Today was one of the greatest days of my life. About half of us took busses out to Tel Aviv, and it was amazing. We laid on the beach, swam in the Mediterranean Ocean, explored the city, ate pitas and hummus in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, shared some of the biggest pizzas I've ever seen, and finished the day with some delectable Italian gelato. It was warm with a breeze, the water wasn't too cold... it was just a great day with great people. We met some cool people on the beach... There were some Jewish kids from Ohio that were here for a "religious year abroad", where they come out to Jerusalem to learn more about their heritage and go to every bar in the city and get drunk every night. But they were nice. Then we met a couple of Israeli guys and these 2 guys from Rwanda during a pretty intense soccer game. A lot of the other people we tried to avoid, since a large percentage of them were old men in speedos. Ew. But I did have my first full conversation in Hebrew. Amazingly it included only phrases that we've actually learned in class, and it went like this:
Man(in creeper voice): Shalom
Me: Shalom
Man(in creeper voice): Ma Nishma? what's up?
Me: Be seder everything's cool
Man(in creeper voice): Yofi wonderful
Sadly, I forgot my camera so I will have to post pics later when I can get them from friends. We all came back tired and a little sunburned, but it was well worth it.

Day 10

2010-05-08T11:47:00.000-07:00

Today was our Sabbath, so we had breakfast at 8, Church at 10. After church we walked to the Garden Tomb. It was so amazing. So amazing. There was the most peaceful feeling there. There were trees and flowers everywhere. First we went to look at Skull Rock, a hill that they think might be Golgotha. Then we went to the tomb. They told us where in the tomb they thought Jesus was laid, and on the door there was a sign that said "He is not here for He is risen". We sang lots of hymns about Christ and the Resurrection, and there was the most powerful Spirit there.
After dinner we had a fireside by Elder Pieper of the Seventy. It was a question/answer thing, and he had some really cool insights to some of the questions that students and permanent members had.
We just got done watching The Prince of Egypt, because we are all getting so excited to leave for Egypt on Thursday! At every scene of the movie someone would yell out, "Guys, we're going to see that!" It was really cool. Tomorrow a bunch of us are getting a bus to take us over to Tel Aviv to shop and play on the beach! Sooooo excited for that too.

Day 9

2010-05-07T22:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was such a fun day. We had classes in the morning, then some time to study. In the afternoon I went to the mall with a couple of girls who were looking for real clothes, but everything was super expensive so we ended up just walking back through the Old City and making some fun purchases. We ran into this old guy who wrote a song for us: "Moooormons, we loooove you...... All the way to Jeruuuuusalem...." Haha it was so great.

After dinner we took a field trip over to the Wailing Wall (a.k.a. the Western Wall) to celebrate the arrival of the Jewish Sabbath. Let me tell you, the Jews know how to party! Everyone was singing and dancing and going around in circles. They separate the men and the women for prayers, and the guys were going even more crazy. We'd look over the wall and see a random BYU kid in the middle of all of these rabbis, and they all had Kippahs (Yamakahs) and it was a blast. We decided we need to start our own tradition of huge parties on Saturday nights.

The coolest part about it though was the actual praying at the wall. Past all the singing and dancing you could walk up to the wall (more like push your way through everyone else who's pushing their way to the wall). I wasn't quite sure what to expect, because all of the Jewish ladies who were praying walked away just sobbing. Some of them would stay there praying for 5 or 10 or 15 minutes, others would say a quick prayer. It was actually a really spiritual experience, because everyone there had their own prayer and there was a really powerful feeling there. Some of them were very Orthodox, others were obviously not, but you could still tell what a special place it was to all of them.

Here are a couple pictures from the last few days:

This one is from when we were walking around the ramparts of the wall

This is the monastery where we were chastised by Russian nuns

This is the other Russian Orthodox Church, the Mary Magdalene church

This one is from one of the stops on our fieldtrip, with a really great view of the Dome of the Rock and the part of the city by the temple mount.

Day 8

2010-05-06T12:52:00.000-07:00

Last night we had a forum by Brian Steed, a lieutenant in the US Army stationed here in the Holy Land. It was neat, he talked about some of the conflicts in the Middle East, specifically Israel, and how they relate to some of the things in the scriptures and how the prophets and leaders dealt with them then.

This morning two of our classes were cancelled, so we had free time til lunch. After breakfast I went with a group to some of the sites on the other side of Mt. Scopus. First we went to the Roman Orthodox Church of the Ascension. The church itself was amazing, and the grounds were so peaceful and there were beautiful flowers and gardens everywhere. One of the guys had this small, flexible tripod thing. We wanted to get a picture of all of us sitting on the steps with the tower behind us, so we all got settled on the steps, he set up the tripod (which took like 10 minutes), got the timer going, came and ran to sit with the group, and we all smiled and looked at the camera.... as the tripod bent over backward and the camera took a picture of the sky. We all started laughing, he went back and set it all up again, and took the picture.... as a bunch of Russian nuns came over to chastise us for laughing in the monastery. We ended up with a group shot of angry nuns and apologetic looks on all of our faces, and they weren't very friendly with us after that.

The Ascension church is on the very top of the hill. If you walk out of the Jerusalem center and go up a little bit, you are on the right street to go right to it. Of course we didn't decide until we had all the way down past the Garden of Gethsemane that we wanted to go there first, so we had to walk all the way back up this other really steep hill. The road is not very wide, so you have to climb single file and cars honk and go zooming by, close enough you could reach out and touch them, even at the farthest edge of the road. Even though it was only about 9:30 it was still REALLY hot. We are just imagining how hot it will be when we get to Egypt next week.

We walked back down the hill to another Roman Orthodox Church, dedicated to Mary Magdalene. It has all of these cool gold orbs on the top, kind of like St Peters Basilica but not nearly as elaborate. But they're very shiny so you can see them from lots of places in the city. This one had really beautiful grounds too.
Just up the hill from the Mary Magdalene church was Dominus Flevit. It has an incredible view of the city, which makes sense because it is supposed to be where Jesus wept over Jerusalem.

One really cool thing that we did today that I hadn't done as much before was reading scriptures at each of the places we went to that tied in to the site. It really helped to emphasize that we are standing in the spots where some of the most amazing events in the scriptures took place.
We headed back to the Center for lunch, and then we had Hebrew class. We learned 3 new letters and a song. I like the songs, but I'm excited to start learning ones that have more than 2 or 3 words that just repeat over and over. They seem really simple, but these are the songs that they really sing before certain meals and ceremonies.

We had our Judaism class again today. I like the professor, I think he's really interesting. It's cool to get a true Jewish perspective on their history and beliefs, since I don't think I've ever really met a practicing Jew before. Even though they understand a lot of the principles in the scriptures differently than we do, it still helps them make more sense in context of the history. Today he talked a lot about how the Israelites and other people in biblical times understood the concept of God, and then it was a little easier to see how the people could learn from the prophets and still have all of the idols and graven images that they had.

Dinner was Mexican food, some of the best Mexican food I've ever had. The chef was like, it's Palestinian Mexican food! The chips were especially incredible. They said we can get some of the recipes of food they make here when we leave, and this dinner will definitely be on my list of recipes to ask for. Later we had a Cinco de Mayo fiesta. Don't ask me why they are celebrating it on the 6th. But it was really fun.

Photo Update

2010-05-05T22:28:00.000-07:00

There is this empty, weed-filled field on the way up to the Center from the Old City, and we passed this donkey just chillin. Yesterday there were a couple of horses that came trotting out of nowhere as we were crossing the street and they ran into the same field. We don't really know where they come from or what they are doing.

This is a random piece of modern art that we found near Herod's tomb. They have stuff like this all over the city. I think it was meant as kind of a playground too because it worked like a slide, with kind of steps on one side and then you could slide down through the inside.

This is the signature the Black Eyed Peas left at the King David Hotel. There were actually a couple of people that had illustrations with their autographs but this was by far the most creative.

This is at the YMCA. You can't tell it's a YMCA because it looks like a church or some other super fancy place. The other girl is my roommate, Jessie, and the guy on the Organ is Brother Whipple.

Day 7

2010-05-05T07:50:00.000-07:00

Last night I had Hebrew for the first time. It was really cool! We learned how to read and write aleph and bet, the first two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. We also learned this really fun song called Shabbat Shalom. It basically just says those 2 words over and over again but it is to welcome in the Sabbath and you sing it every Friday night before dinner. We had class again today, and we learned 3 new letters and a couple vowels. It is hard because the way they print the letters and the way they handwrite them is very different, so it's like learning 2 different symbols for each letter.

Last night we also had 4 hours of Modern Near Eastern studies, 2 from the Palestinian perspective and 2 from the Israeli perspective. It was a very long 4 hours (we didn't get done til 9) but it was really interesting to hear the different histories of the two different peoples.

After class one of the girls who is a yoga instructor did a class. There were only about 6 of us, and it was really fun! I was glad that everyone else was as new to it as I am because it is definitely a little intimidating to see the teacher doing handstands and crazy backbends.

This morning we had Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern classes, then some free time. I went with some girls to the post office and then to the Old City for some shopping. There is so much to see there! Every shop has a million things in it and we started figuring out which shops we wanted to go back to and which we wanted to avoid. Some of the merchants are rude or pushy or impatient or super creepy (one guy started telling me that he loved me thiiiiiiiiiiiis much, with his arms stretched as far as they would go...) but others are really chill and give you a good price. It is fun because you can walk up and down the same street 4 times and still feel like you see new things everytime, because there is just so much merchandise. One merchant, Shaban, is really cool. He exchanges money for the best rate in the city and he has a bunch of merchandise especially for the BYU kids, like scripture cases and BYU Jerusalem shirts and CTR rings and necklaces in Arabic and Hebrew. He is really friendly and he loves to make jokes. His English is good, but a lot of times we still just don't get the joke and then he'll go, "Haha, I got you!" Needless to say I'm a big fan.

Day 6

2010-05-04T03:09:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was a crazy busy day. We woke up early and went on a fieldtrip. We went to 5 different spots to get views of Jerusalem and other important places in the holy land. The first one we went to was Deir Mar Elyas, a monastery with a good view of Bethlehem. Then we went to a couple of towers around the city, and the last place we went was Nabi Samwil, which was dedicated to Samuel the Prophet. It was one of those places where it was kind of like a Moslem/Jewish/Christian place, each had connections to it over the years and now they all more or less share it. It's cool that they can do that for at least some of the sites, since so many other ones cause disputes and rifts between the different religions.

When we got back we got to go out in the city. I went with 2 of my roommates and a couple other people. We did the other half of the rampart walk we started the day before, the Northern side, which goes around the Arab quarter of the Old City. We walked through the quarter for a little bit, then back to the Center. We stopped on the way at this wholesale market, where you can buy big packages of candy or drinks or whatever. Everyone at the Center refers to it as "the Costco place", even though it's not really like Costco since they don't have samples or pizza and smoothies.

We have a ton of reading due for classes tonight and tomorrow, like 170 pages altogether plus 15 chapters in the Old Testament, so everyone spent the night reading and studying, as well as this morning and afternoon. We had classes again this morning, for the first time since Friday. It's kind of cool how sometimes we'll go 3 or 4 days without classes, but then you forget you have all the homework due all at once and it's easy to put it off when there are so many more fun things to do outside.

Highlight of yesterday: There was a shepherd wandering around with his sheep at Mar Elias, and while we were all out looking around, he came up to me with a little baby lamb and let me hold it! Then everyone wanted to hold it and so we passed him around but after a while the man started coming up and asking for money for the pictures. Our professor gave him 30 shekels (about $12) but then he started saying that he wanted $10 per picture. He said a lot of the people are like that, they want money for every picture you take.

Day 4

2010-05-02T07:51:00.001-07:00

Started out the day with a run. I went with a few girls and we ran up around the Hebrew University next door. Came back, breakfast, then out into the City for the day!
We started out by doing the "Rampart Walk." It's really cool, you can climb up to the ramparts of the wall that goes all the way around the city and follow it from one end to the other. It gives some amazing views of all of the different angles from the wall, and we found some cool niches and stairways to explore. It's amazing just how old Jerusalem is, how many years of history are in that wall. It has been destroyed and built back up so many times. We even passed some guys who were repairing part of the wall.
After that, I went with 5 other people to the YMCA. Brother Whipple, half of one of the service couples here, plays the carillon bells in the tower every Sunday, and we got to go up and see the bell tower and the view from the top. Then he played some songs. He is an amazing musician, one of the best organ players in the world. Then he let me play the bells!!! I played Abide With Me, 2 times through, on bells that everyone in Jerusalem can hear. It was an amazing experience. Those piano lessons finally paid off! We met these ladies who are execs in the YMCA organization, and they said that the Jerusalem YMCA is the most astounding of all YMCA buildings in the world by far. They call it a sermon in stone, because there are so many inspiring quotes and incredible reliefs and stuff from Christianity but also from other religions too. It was really a neat place to see.
After the bells we went to a sweet hotel and saw autographs printed on the tiles from famous people who had been there, including Yoko Ono, Barack Obama, Candace Bergen, the Dalai Lama, and the Black Eyed Peas.
We saw Herod's tomb, which is actually where his family was buried, not him.
We walked through the city some more and exchanged our money, so I finally have shekels! I feel so legit.
It seems so crazy that it has only been here 4 days because it feels like we have already done and seen so much, and I can't wait to keep seeing more! Everything is new and exciting and every day is so fun.

Day 3

2010-05-01T07:13:00.000-07:00

We had church today, and it was SO cool! Sacrament was filled with this group of doctors traveling from Provo with their families. Then there's the BYU kids of course, and the permanent members. A lot of them are Americans who work for the consolate or different government groups, but the relief society president is this really cool Palestinian woman who grew up in Bethlehem. Her life story is incredible, apparently, and I'm excited to hear more about it. There is a Spanish Sunday School class, with a couple of ladies from South America and then all of the RMs. Who would have thought that I'd be in Jerusalem learning about the Old Testament in Spanish?

After Church a group of us walked through the Orson Hyde Dedicatory Garden and the Garden of Gethsemane. Both of them are so beautiful and peaceful. It seems like you can't walk more than a block or two without coming across a place that has religious significance to one group or another. They have a lot of differences but really they are all the same, just people who want to worship their God in the way that they feel is right. It's hard to believe that after thousands of years so many of them in this land still haven't seemed to realize that.

The weirdest thing we saw today: These huge centipedes, literally 4 to 6 inches long. Not exaggerating. They are thick and black and creepy. They were all over at Orson Hyde and we all realized why they tell us not to leave our patio doors open... those things are sick!

Day 2

2010-04-30T12:35:00.000-07:00

Oh my gosh today was such a cool day! We had classes this morning, Old Testament and Ancient Near East. They were both really interesting and I can't wait to keep learning more. It's the kind of stuff that maybe wouldn't be so exciting except for the fact that when you look out the window you actually see the stuff you're learning about!!!! Then we had some free time so a bunch of us went to go exchange our money, but the place was closed so we broke off into smaller groups to explore. I got to see the Garden Tomb, but it was crazy busy with a bunch of European tourists so that will definitely be one I go back to. Then we went through the Old City. We found an open door (which we've been told we can go in until someone tells us to get out) and we found a cool roof with clotheslines and an awesome view. Lots of the places have really cool views, it's just hard to get access to them.

We went out through Lion's Gate. There was a really cool Arabic cemetery right outside the gate, so we walked through that. It was really beautiful- the tombstones were exquisite and there was such a pretty view of some of the gardens they've put in on that side of the wall.

We went to the Garden of Gethsemane, which is probably the most peaceful place I haveever been in my life. There were some other tourist groups there but everyone was quiet and the trees were blowing a little in the breeze and there were pretty flowers and it was just calm and really easy to feel a still spirit there.

Most memorable thing today: We walked around through West Jerusalem to get to the upper gate of the Center. While we were walking we came across this field with these kids riding horses, and then we saw some other kids playing soccer, so we all went in and played soccer for a while, and some people rode the horses (bareback) but I was in a skirt so I will have to do that another time. It was so fun, especially since we don't really get to interact that way with many of the people. The men freak out if you even glance in their direction and the women don't really look at you at all, so hanging out and laughing with those kids was a blast. They seemed like they were having lots of fun too, even though they were a little intimidated by the big guys on our team.

Funniest thing today: Some of the guys are creepers, and they'll say things like "hey beautiful" or "sweet face" or whatever. One guy was like, "nice eyes" in that creepy voice and one of the guys in the group turns around and goes, "thank you"! haha the man was surprised, I don't think he was quite expecting that response but he didn't say anything else after that!

Day 1

2010-04-29T08:42:00.000-07:00

The flights here were crazy: Salt Lake to Denver to Dulles to Vienna to Tel Aviv. It was really fun though because I got to know the people on my flights really well, and it was nice not to have to be on a plane for 12 hours straight like the other group.

Today was the first full day in Jerusalem! We walked around and toured the city, got to see a couple of different buildings and go inside the Temple of the Holy Sepulcher. It was amazing! So much to see that it seems like 4 months will hardly be enough. We start classes tomorrow morning, and we already have a bunch of reading that we have to do beforehand. All of you will be surprised and impressed to hear that I have finished all of them already. Whether or not that enthusiasm will continue throughout the semester is still yet to be determined.

The coolest thing about the walk we did was going into the old city. Everything is so old, but then with hundreds of years of stuff built over and around it. It is all made of white stone, and there are hills and stairs everywhere. The ladies are all covered up in scarves and long coats. We saw some Israeli guards all decked out with big guns... definitely don't want to get on their bad side.

The Center is amazing- breathtaking view right off the patios outside our rooms, good food and great people. The staff are so great, all of the professors and service couples are so nice and friendly and they help us get really excited about all the things we get to do and see.

Miss you all, lots of love!