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"...
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