O Little Town of Bethlehem!

Turns out... the little town of Bethlehem isn't so little. It's quite large. And even though its just a stone's throw from Jerusalem it took a long time to get there because we had to go through the West Bank border. We got to spend the morning at Bethlehem University which I loved! We got to interact with the students a lot and that was really interesting. Bethlehem University is a Catholic University but 70% of the students are Muslims. And of course, since it is in the West Bank there are absolutely no Israeli's (Jews). When I'm talking to people my age it's really easy to forget how different your lives and culture really are. I proved this to myself when I asked a girl how she met her husband. I should of known that most of the Muslims have arranged marriages! So she looked at me kind of funny and said she met him 6 months ago when her family brought him to their house and they got married 2 months later. And she said something that reminded me of a scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. She said; "At first I liked him. But now, I love him." And she is also pregnant! They certainly didn't waste any time..

After we had lunch at a place called the "Tent Restaurant". It was really good but the food was a depressing attempt at hamburgers and french fries (with no ketchup). I'll definitely be ready for In and Out when I get home. After lunch we went to the Church of the Nativity which is the supposed place where Jesus was born. Unfortunately we were in Bethlehem on the very busiest day because someone important was in town and all kinds of tourists were there. So we waited way longer than we anticipated. 3 hours long! And the Church is ran by the Greek Orthodox and they are intense. You're not allowed to laugh inside. Needless to say... we got yelled at. And I'm still trying to decide if the wait was worth what we saw... I wouldn't have felt like my visit to Bethlehem was complete without seeing where Jesus was born so of course it was worth it but it was just a cramped room of tourists with a golden star inside a grotto marking the place.

Walking through Bethlehem was really special. It has a very unique feel. The building are pretty, the roads are very authentic and you just feel like your walking through history.

Sunday was one of my besties birthday. So we celebrated by neglecting all responsibility and spending the entire day in the city. We ate, shopped, ate, walked, ate, relaxed at a park, ate. One of my favorite places in the city is the Shuk! Which is just a big food market! This time I got candied nuts. Delicious. And we all split some famous gelato and I couldn't leave without getting some gummies too. Also, In Israel dessert waffles are really famous. So we went to this little waffle shop called Babbette's and shared waffles. A cute mom and her son also ate with us. They were delicious! So delicious that after the mom and her son were done they left like 3/4 of a waffle and as the girl went to throw it away we freaked out and we finished their waffle too. We weren't embarrassed but looking back I think we should of been... The cutest girl worked there and her name is the first name I like enough to name one of my kids after... Adi.

The rest of the week has been really stressful as we've been getting ready for finals and finishing papers. But it's over now! I just finished my Old Testament final (cross you fingers!) and turned in my 12 page paper on Tuesday! A few weeks ago I saw a flier for a Susan G.Kommen Breast Cancer Run and Me and a couple girls and one of my professors' wife ran in it! I'm so glad we got to go! It didn't look like it was going to work out because we have to go everywhere in groups of 3 and Jenna and I couldn't find anyone else because everyone is so studious and wanted to stay and study. We reviewed in the car and when we had a question our professor's wife called her husband to set us straight. I wish professors were always that reachable! Anyways- the run was huge! Pink balloons, banners and flags lining the streets, roads closed the whole shebang! And the best part of it.. I have a Jerusalem, Race For the Cure shirt written in Hebrew! All for 30 shekels.

It's killing me to not be able to post pictures! Words only do so much... But here are a couple pictures of the center that were on the internet of the center.

These are the huge windows of the Jerusalem Center Auditorium that I sit directly in front of for sacrament meeting every Saturday. You can see Dome of the Rock, the Holy sepulcre, everything!

This is a picture of Mt. Scopus. Home of the Jerusalem center! Its the largest building right on the hill! And the the right is Gethsemane. 

Sometimes when I think about living here for nearly 2 months now I feel like it has flown by! But once I think about all we've seen and all I've learned and all the people I've gotten to feel so comfortable around it feels like it's been years! But I'm starting to realize that no amount of time here will ever be enough. I suppose I should start trying to accept that now so that I won't be too terribly depressed when I will have to leave in a couple months!

This week has been another week full of classes but fortunately it will end this next week. Our Palestinian class and our Israeli class will end this week and we'll also be wrapping up the Old Testament. Then we'll only have our Ancient Near Eastern Class and we'll start New Testament. So our schedule will be a lot more open. We're all looking forward to finishing finals and turning in our last few papers.

On Friday we had a really fun guy who was an Israeli, come teach us Israeli folk dancing. It was so much fun! I guess he has some kind of big studio here where he teaches dance and he's quite well known. It was especially fun to learn because most of the dances were dances I've seen people do around the city. It's a big part of the Jewish culture!

Today was sabbath and I spent the afternoon in Gethsemane with a handful of friends. I had been there before but today we got to go to a special olive garden that is a little more secluded. It's usually locked but the people who have been here before us have gotten to  be pretty good friends with the guy in charge so he lets us in then locks the gate behind us so no one else comes in. Its really beautiful. And certainly an excellent opportunity to think about all Christ suffered for us.

This week we got to pick, press and process olives! It's quite a process! There are lots of olive trees around the center and they also have an ancient olive oil processing garden. This probably doesn't sound to exciting, because it certainly didn't to me when I saw it on the schedule. But it ended up being a really neat experience. We did everything by hand and took turns, 4 people at a time, pushing the huge log, connected to the 2000 pound stone to crush the olives. Then we stuffed this baskets full of the olive mash and stacked them under a press then squoze out the juice! Then watched it as the oil separated. In ancient times olive oil was a huge part of life. It was the only source of light and was one heavily used in medicines and cooking. So it was neat to participate in something that was so important to all the people we read about in the bible and think about what it meant to them. Also, there is a lot of symbolism between the atonement and olive processing that general authorities have mentioned. Gethsemane actually means oil press. And there is a lot of interesting symbolism that makes everything so meaningful.

Erev Tov!

Shalom! Nights like tonight are when I enjoy blogging the most, it is the most productive way to put off homework. The last couple if days have been a lot of fun. Last Friday our professor for our Jewish class (who is a local, orthodox Jew) took a small group of us to an orthodox synagogue where we participated in their normal, daily service and we also welcomed the Shabbat (the Sabbath) because the next day in the Jewish culture always starts at sunset. Of course the whole thing was in Hebrew but we had little pamphlets that had some of the songs written out so we tried to sing a long a little. There was a nice lady sitting next to my friend and I and she saw us struggling so she'd keep pointing out where we were but unfortunately it didn't help much because most of the songs were in Hebrew script. I'm sure she thought we were idiots. But I must of been doing something right because one lady turned around, put her hand on my knee and said; "Welcome back!", like I belonged there, I guess she thought I was someone else!

Yesterday we went to Elat for our free day! Elat is a city 4 hours away on the coast of the Red Sea and you can see Jordanian flag on the other side. It's a big resort city and their famous for a big coral reef with great snorkeling. So we spent the day on the beach and went snorkeling which was a lot of fun! The Red Sea certainly isn't red. It's the bluest water I think I have ever seen! It's beautiful! I love the time I've been able to spend at the beach here! It makes my summer feel endless! And unlike my fall semester in Provo last year, I'm managing to keep from turning pasty white!

Today we went through the Holocaust museum. That was a really neat experience but so terribly disturbing. The pictures, documentaries and displays were so graphic and depressing. Everyone was kind of in a daze after spending over 4 hours there. It's just impossible to comprehend everything that happened during the Holocaust and it really does make you lose a lot of confidence in the human race. It's really sickening. The museum did such a good job at displaying everything. And Ophir (our Jewish professor) led us through it and he had a lot of interesting things to say about the Israeli perspective on the Holocaust. That was interesting because that is a side I've never been exposed to. Here in Jerusalem, almost everyone has a close relative that was a victim in the Holocaust. I learned so much.

I mustn't forget; I had a scary snake encounter on Saturday. We were on our way to the garden tomb and this kid on the street had a snake he was holding. And so I did my best to walk around him but before I knew it he stuck the snake in front of my face and it leaped toward me and almost grazed my face! It completely freaked me out! I didn't think that was a very pleasant way to introduce me to his pet snake. Needless to say, I walked home on the opposite side of the street.

As always, there are dozens of other things I could spend time reporting on but I suppose I have put off homework long enough...

Boker Tov!

This morning when I went running I said "Boker Tov" which means "good morning" to everyone I passed... then I was delighted to hear them say "Boker Or" back! which means "morning of light", and that's the custom here. I like it! The last week or so has been really busy with classes, tests and papers. But we've managed to squeeze in a few fun things. Last week we had one of the big events of the semester here at the center, Arab night! We got to have 2 well known men who lead the call to prayer and are the voice that reads the Quar'an everyday, 5 times a day, as they read the Qur'an. It is a huge honor to be able to do the call to prayer and it's a career that stays in a family that not all people are eligible for. The father and his son are who visited us. And they repeated some of the verses. It's beautiful how they say the verses, they don't like you to call it singing but I don't know how else to describe it. Then we ate a huge, traditional Arab meal. Earlier in the day I got to  help out in the kitchen making special meatballs, Arab pastries and hyssop flat bread things. After dinner some local, young, Palestinians came and taught us some Arabic dances! And they played and sang some songs for us.

On Sunday a group of us had a craving for the beach so we went to Tel Aviv and spent the day there. It was beautiful, as always. It happened to be the first day of the windsurfing season and there were lots and lots of windsurfers on the beach that were so fun to watch! Sunday we had a field trip to the City of David and Hezekiah's tunnel. That was really fascinating and it meant so much because it is exactly what we've been studying in Old Testament and our history class. Hezekiah's tunnel was built around 700 BC to fortify the water from the Gihon spring. It was a huge project! It's 130 feet underground, about a third of a mile long and runs under the entire City of David, or the city of Jerusalem at the time of David. It still channels water and we got to wade through it down and up the narrow and low tunnels all the way to the Pool of Siloam where it empties into. The Pool of Siloam isn't much of a pool anymore... more of a bath. But in Bible days it was big! And that is where Jesus healed the Blind man.

Yesterday we went into a suk in West Jerusalem, which is just a market. We've been to lots of different suk's here but I especially like this one! It was a little roomier, a little cleaner and there weren't any haggling shop keepers. It was mostly fruit stands, pastry and bread stands and nut stands. I got myself some dried figs that were delicious. I had never seen those before! Last night we had a really interesting forum address. A journalist named Matthew Kalman came and spoke to us. he immigrated here in 1994 and had a lot of interesting insight to the Middle Eastern problem. He was really entertaining and we all thoroughly enjoyed the stories he had to tell.

Whitney, Katie and I discovered 2 shekel Popsicles at a little store up the street. And that same shop has all kinds of delicious chocolate. It could certainly be a downfall. oh well, "When in Jerusalem"...

Sukkots, Lulav's, Singing and Dancing

It's been a great week, being able to be back in Jerusalem! Were getting to know the city so much better. A few days ago we were in the Old City and I was shocked with how many tourists were scurrying around kind of in a daze. Then I realized there were no more tourists that usual, they just stick out to me more because I'm finally not one of them. And another day a girl asked me how to get somewhere and I could help her!

The Jewish holiday Sukkot started while we were in Egypt and ended on Wednesday. It's a pretty neat holiday, all the Jews set up sukkots, which are little huts covered with palm leaves, and they eat all their meals in there for a week. Some Jewish people even sleep in them. In the West City, where all the Jewish people live, there are dozens of sukkots set up on the roads and on apartment balconies because there is no where else to put them! It's pretty cool! I got lots of pictures of them. All restaurants in the Jewish districts set them up too. And like any Jewish Holiday, there is party after party! We went to the Western wall Last Sunday because it was a huge day for Bar Mitzvah's. Then Tuesday we woke up early to get to the wall at 6 in the morning to watch the Festival of Tabernacles. Everyone waves Lulav's (bouquets of the 4 sacred species; willow, palm, myrtle and etrog) around and sings songs and dances. It's a lot of fun. On Thursday there was another holiday that is always at the end of Sukkot and a couple of friends and I saw a flier advertising a big festival in the park so we went and it was a lot of fun! We did our best to look like we belonged there and just danced and sang (sort of) Hebrew songs. We ended up meeting a bunch of Jewish girls our age and we danced and talked with them.

We also saw a flier the other day for a clothing sell! So a few of the girls I'm closest to decided to check it out! It was in an cute, little apartment on the 6th level of a high rise apartment. A couple of sisters and their friend were selling a bunch of their old clothes. We all left with something. I got a couple shirts and some sandles. The girls were really cute and want us to come over for Shabbat (Sabbath) dinner sometime. They couldn't believe we didn't have big Shabbat dinners!

One day just 3 of us, Whitney, Katie and I, ended up just walking around the West all afternoon. I love the West City. It's really comfortable there and there are so many people that are so eager to talk to you. We hung out at a cute little park for a while and before we got really sick from spinning on a merry go round we met a a cute family that was in Jerusalem with family for the holidays. They had a little boy named Yosef and we had fun talking with him. He asked if any of us had family in Israel and he could not believe we didn't. He says; "No aunts?! Uncles?? Cousins?? No one?!"

After being in Egypt I feel so comfortable and happy to be in Jerusalem. The atmosphere in Egypt is very unwelcoming. At first, I was really intimidated with the new culture here in Israel but I've come to really appreciate the people.  Most everyone is thrilled to have you here. Everyone is completely accepting and excited to talk to you. I've been really impressed with a lot of the locals. There are so many humble, devoted people here and there is a lot that can be learned from them.

I visited the Tower of David museum with a couple of friends on Thursday I think. That was really interesting. It was especially neat to see it because were studying David in the Old Testament so the information was fresh! Everything means so much more when you know a little bit of background. But finding out about all the stuff I don't know is still completely overwhelming.