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.