Goodbye!

It is 2:37am right now, and we are leaving for the airport in 20 minutes! I just wanted to post one last time before I leave Jerusalem.

Over the past few days, we've been taking things slow, packing, staying up really late, and tying up loose ends. Today (yesterday, technically) was our last free day. I went with my roommates and a few other girls back to the Garden Tomb again, and we just sat there for awhile. I got to talk to a man in German for a little bit--he tried to ask me the time in three different languages before he got to German, and then I responded and we were able to have a short conversation! It was really cool.

Then, Bethany, Jessica, and I went into the old city for one last time to do some shopping, and then we came home and packed!

It has really been a wonderful summer. I'm so grateful that I was able to come here and see what this area looks like and feels like. It has been westernized in any ways, but it still has a unique aura--with the limestone everywhere, miniature scale landscapes, and rocks incorporated into buildings.

I have to go catch the bus!

Some Final Exploring

So, to finish filling in the past couple of weeks...

The day after that trip to the Kidron Valley, we took a field trip down to southern Israel to see the Dead Sea, Masada, Ein Gedi, and Qumran. All four places were amazing! Masada is a mountain that used to be a fortress in the 1st century, Ein Gedi is a little green area in the middle of the Judean wilderness where David hid out from King Saul for a while, and Qumran is where they found the Dead Sea Scrolls! That was definitely my favorite part, just because I've thought the Dead Sea Scrolls were super interesting every since I first learned about them. Earlier this semester, we also learned about the Covenanters at Qumran, the people who would have hidden the Dead Sea Scrolls, and we got to see the ruins of their community when we were down there. They have an interesting story--they felt they had been called by God to preserve the true covenant, because all the priests in Jerusalem had become corrupt (which was true). We have their customs and ceremonies preserved in some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and they have some interesting similarities with Latter-day Saints. For one thing, they called themselves Latter-day Saints...  Their records of the Old Testament are also important, of course, because they're some of the oldest we have. 

Here is a picture of Masada from near the top. You can see why it would have been so difficult to attack:

The day after that trip, we started getting ready for final exams in New Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, both of which were scary. I spent the whole rest of the week studying, except for a brief adventure Thursday night when a group of us went to Ben Yehuda Street in West Jerusalem. Every Thursday, people just gather on the street there to hang around and listen to street musicians. It was a fun atmosphere, and we ran into some Orthodox Jewish girls from Brooklyn who were fun to talk to. Most of the people we saw there were dressed conservatively and wouldn't dance, but there were a few Jewish men who danced a little bit. 

The next day we finished exams! Since then, life has been so relaxed around here. Everyone was so relieved--except that now, we have to worry about packing and getting ready to leave!

We had another free day yesterday, and my roommates, James, Jonah and I went to visit a Jewish neighborhood just outside the Old City called Yemin Moshe. There is a windmill there built in the 19th century (it was never actually used, but like that whole  neighborhood, it's picturesque). We also wandered into a Scottish church nearby, where, lo and behold, they found a fragment of an Old Testament scroll from the 7th century BC! We had never even heard of that before. But there was the cave where they had found it, right below the church, and a little sign explaining the find. 

There was also a park nearby that contained the Herod family tombs. King Herod himself wasn't buried there, and actually I'm not sure who from his family was, but the tombs were impressive compared to some of the others we've seen. They were just tucked into a hillside there in the park--once again, unmarked and unheralded. 

Then today, we went on our penultimate field trip! Today and tomorrow, we are retracing the steps of the last week of Jesus's life. So, today we drove to Bethany (it's only a few miles from the center, but it's in the West Bank, so we had to go drive to the closest checkpoint), where we saw Lazarus's tomb. Then we went to Bethphage, where Christ taught about the dead fig tree and started the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the Pater Noster Church, where Christ may have taught the disciples about the Lord's Prayer, and Dominus Flevit, a cool church shaped like a teardrop that commemorates the place where Jesus wept for Jerusalem. Then we ate lunch in the Orson Hyde Memorial Park and went to a room that may have been the Upper Room where they ate the Last Supper. (There are three potential sites I know of for this--one of them is actually Mary's Tomb.)

Tomorrow, we're going to finish the trip, ending up at the Garden Tomb. It should be great!

I got a good shot of the city today from Bethphage, with the Temple Mount right in the middle:

The Last Few Weeks

I'm sorry it's been forever since my last post! We went to the Galilee for 11 days, and now I feel so behind that I'm not going to try to cover all of that here, except for a few highlights:

1. Nazareth. The village of Nazareth was only 400 square miles when Christ lived there, so when we went and saw the village on this trip, we could be pretty sure that the places we were seeing were very close to the real spots. I thought one of the neatest things was seeing the cave where they believe Mary, Joseph, and Jesus lived. Of course, the whole thing has been embellished with newer walls now, and most of the remains are deep underground, but here it is:

There was also a beautiful church in Nazareth called the Church of the Annunciation, which is built around the supposed remains of Mary's childhood home. Here's a picture of that: 

We've seen lots of sites like this during the summer, and none of them are certain to be the settings of the stories in the New Testament, but I thought these two sites were especially good.

2. The Sea of Galilee. We actually stayed the whole 11 days in a kibbutz right on the beach of the Sea of Galilee. It is great for swimming, and it has waves as long as there is a little bit of wind . The sea is also small enough that you can see all of its shores from any side. So, the whole Galilee region feels really cohesive, even though it's fairly large. I spent a lot of time just swimming and reading out on the beach, but our group also travelled around and saw sites commemorating so many New Testament events: the Sermon on the Mount, Christ feeding the 5,000, the legion of devils being cast into swine, the resurrection of the son of the widow of Nain. All of these were close to the shores of the sea, just scattered around on all sides. I wish I could go into more detail about everything!

3. The Golan Heights. I was excited to see this, because it is one of the 3 contested areas in Israel--it used to belong to Syria. It's really a beautiful place! We hiked there twice, both times to waterfalls. On one of the hikes, we also went to a vulture overlook, and it was surprisingly lovely! 

After we got home from Galilee, we had one last week of class, plus several free days to see some last minute things in the city. On that Sunday, I left with a small group at 6:15am to go to early mass in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It was amazing! We got to the church just as the Catholics were finishing their mass, and then we walked around and saw parts of the Armenian, Ethiopian, and Greek Orthodox masses. They were all super interesting--lots of incense, chanting, ceremony--but it was hard to follow, not being able to speak any of their languages. Later that morning, though, we went to a German mass in the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, and it was so incredible! It was definitely a highlight of the summer for me. Most of the congregation there was German, and the lady leading the service had a clear voice and perfect pronunciation, so I could understand most of what she was saying. There was a German woman out in the lobby before the service started, and I went and talked to her for a little bit! I don't think I have ever had so much exposure to real German in my whole life. I loved it! I have been trying to revive my German the past couple of weeks so that I am able to talk when I move into the German house this fall. I just finished reading Harry Potter und die Kammer des Schreckens, and now I think I might start it over again--it really helps quite a bit. 

The day after that, we went on a field trip back into the Old City to see some of the churches. It was nice, but when we got home, my camera wasn't in my bag! I called and asked the bus driver to check for it, and it wasn't there, so I realized I had left it in the city and gave it up for lost. It was really depressing! But the next day, my wonderful roommates came with me into the city to look for it, just in case there was a chance we might find it somewhere. I thought there was a possibility I might have left it at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, so we went to the front desk there and asked them if we could look inside for a camera. They responded by saying, "Oh, it's at the secretary's desk," and they pointed us back into that room. We walked in, and there it was! I couldn't believe it! I thanked the secretary a million times for keeping the camera, but she just said, "Well, what else were we going to do with it?" Really, though, in a poor city like Jerusalem, I was shocked that my camera had fallen into honest hands. And that we had found the right place. I was so happy all the rest of the day.

After that, we ran into several interesting people before we went home--a couple of nice merchants, a merchant in the Jewish Quarter named Dan who talked to us for about 15 minutes about the Mormons he had known in San Francisco when he used to live there, and two little Jewish girls named Esther and Rifka who I bought a painting from (they had been left in charge of the store, for some reason).  We also met another Jewish merchant named Ruth, who was highly amused when she looked at Bethany's credit card. Bethany's last name is Bateman, and when Ruth saw that her eyebrows went up and she said "Batman? Your name is Batman?" She thought it was just wonderful--she talked for quite a while about how she had seen the Batman movie, and then she thought the whole thing was so funny that she had to call her husband. So she did. She told him, "Guess who I have in my store? A very important person--Batman!" Then he must have told her the proper pronunciation, because she said, "Bateman, Batman, same thing." She still thought it was just hilarious.

After that adventure, we had a few more days of class, and then another free day the next Sunday. A group of us went exploring the Kidron Valley--the valley in between the Mt. of Olives and Jerusalem, which we walk through every time we go into the city. This time, though, we walked down through it and saw Absalom's Pillar (a monument to David's son) and Zacharias's tomb. On the way there, we also saw the Tomb of the Virgin Mary, a church near the Garden of Gethsemane. It is down in a cave, and it has such a neat atmosphere. The minute we crossed the threshold, we could smell strong incense, and it was dark inside, and we had to walk down a long staircase to get down in the chapel. There were some Russian Orthodox priests down there having mass, so we watched that for awhile. I videotaped a lot of it, because their singing was some of the best that I have heard yet. We also went in the Grotto of Gethsemane, a cave where some people believe Judas betrayed Christ. There were three people in our group--Annie, Isaac, and Andy--who had learned a song called Dona Nobis Pacem, and their goal was to sing it in as many churches as possible that day. So they sang it in that cave, and it was just lovely.

Later that day, they also sang in the Church of All Nations (also next to Gethsemane) and Terra Sancta, a church in the Old City where we have made friends with one of the priests--Father Angelo. He took us back into a reception room to show us a book, and it turned out that this was a giant prayer book of Gregorian chant written by Franciscan monks in the 1400s! It was just amazing. It was just sitting inside a cabinet, hidden away back there. We are always stumbling upon things like that here.

I will try to continue updating soon!

Pictures from Last Post

This wasn't working last night, but now here are a few pictures:

Here is the corner of the temple where Jesus stood when Satan tempted Him to jump off. This is actually the exact location. (I have lots of great pictures of the temple--I wish I could post more!)

This is Heather, Elise, Monica, and I sitting in the Cave of the Nativity in Bethlehem. We are sitting on a slab where they believe the manger for baby Jesus lay.

And here is a picture of my roommates (Bethany, Jessica, and Hannah) and I with our flowers at the Russian Church of the Ascension.

July 6-11

Sorry it has been forever! First, here is a post from a couple of weeks ago, which I meant to put up earlier, but didn't:

On Monday this week, we went to Bethlehem! I have to admit it was a little bit of a disappointment for me. Well, I was expecting that it would be, because of course a large Palestinian city currently near the border of the West Bank is not going to be the same as the village that was the setting of the Christmas story. I still enjoyed going, though. There is a 6th century Church of the Nativity there, and it's built around the remains of an even older church. From there, you can go down into a cave that they say is where baby Jesus was born. It was so neat to be there. While we were in Bethlehem, we also got to see the cave of St. Jerome, an early Christian who translated the Bible into Latin. This one was less decorated, so it helped us get a clearer picture of what the nativity cave might have looked like 2000 years ago. (The real nativity cave is operated by Orthodox churches, so it's very ornamented with tapestries, icons, incense, etc.). It was a great trip overall--I wish I could go back and visit again before I leave, but we unfortunately can't do that since Bethlehem is in the West Bank.

There are a couple of important Russian Orthodox churches here on the Mt. of Olives that are only open from 10-12 on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. This week was the first Tuesday that we didn't have class at that time, so my roommates and I and a few other people all left Tuesday morning to explore them. We dressed super modestly (including covering our hair), because the Russian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox churches appreciate it, and we'd heard stories about students not being let in even during times when the churches were supposedly open. It paid off--we got to see both places. They were so beautiful! The first one was the Russian Church of Ascension, a convent at the top of the Mt. of Olives that marks the places where Christ ascended into heaven after meeting with the disciples. It was a beautiful convent, very peaceful and quiet inside. Nobody spoke English, though--we wandered into one chapel where a nice old Russian nun was sitting, and she communicated to us with hand motions that she wanted us to take some carpets off the floor of the chapel and beat them outside. We were pretty excited about that, and there were 9 of us, so we could do it pretty easily. Once they were off, she showed us some mosaics in the floor of the chapel that were made in the 2nd or 3rd century (I can't remember), and then she gave us some flowers from a shrine on the floor! (The picture below is of me and my roommates with our flowers right outside the chapel.) The nun was really a friendly lady and looked so excited to see us--I was a little sad that we didn't have any Russian speakers with us (there are some here at the center).

After that, we shot an impromptu Fellowship of the Ring scene, since we realized there were 9 of us and we had scarves to use for costumes. Then we walked to the Church of St. Mary Magdalene. It is probably the most striking church on the mountain, because it has 7 golden domes at the top and looks very Russian--I loved it! 

The next day was exciting because we had an Oscars Night here at the center! It was basically a film festival, and lots of people had been working on making movies throughout the summer. It was such a cool event! The activities committee laid out red carpet in the lobby outside the auditorium, got 2 guys to dress up and be bouncers, and recruited some people to be paparazzi and take pictures of everyone the whole night. They also got Isaac to play jazz piano music out in the lobby (he's another music major), and everyone was supposed to come dressed up as movie stars. We all milled around out there before the show started, and it just felt super classy and elegant. Everyone really got into it! There were some amazing costumes, considering most of us here only have about 5 outfits that we have been recycling the whole summer.

The films were all great, too--some of them were really major projects! I was in one, though, that was only 14 seconds long. When we had been back in Jordan, our group had gone to visit a mosque where they required all the girls to put on these long, black, hooded shrouds in order to come in and visit. Naturally, some of us noticed parallels between these shrouds and certain costumes from certain fantasy films... So, Cary came up to me and asked if I would do a scene with him where he would be Luke Skywalker and I would be Emperor Palpatine. I couldn't pass it up! We just shot a really short scene which involved me zapping him with the lightning bolts that come out of Palpatine's fingers in Return of the Jedi.

Well, somehow, this clip got submitted to the film festival, even though it wasn't a real movie, and everyone was so surprised to see me playing a villain that I got the best actress award for the night! I still have my Oscar--it is a water bottle covered in tin foil. :-)

The next day, we went on a field trip to the Temple Mount, where we got to see a lot of the Western Wall (and the southern wall) from the time of Christ that has been recently excavated. We saw the corner of the temple where Jesus stood when Satan tempted Him to jump off (we're pretty certain this is the exact spot). We also saw the front steps of the temple, and got to walk around on the ancient streets down there. It was so neat! I really love being around the temple mount--in many ways, I would say it is the richest spot in Jerusalem (or at least the most contested).

The Sunday after that, I went with a group of 10 to visit the Knesset--home of the Israeli parliament. We took a tour and got to go inside the chamber where they hold meetings. It was exciting! But it made me kind of homesick for the Capitol Building in the US... That day, we also walked through Mea Shearim, which is a neighborhood in Jerusalem for Ultra-Orthodox Jews. I felt a little guilty walking through there, because they have huge signs at the entrance to their neighborhood saying that tourist groups are very offensive to them. (Plus, you have to be super modestly dressed to go in, but we were.) There wasn't much to see, since we weren't really welcome and didn't feel like we could linger anywhere in the neighborhood. But at least we got to see what the people there looked like--the whole place had an old fashioned feeling.

The next day, we left on a trip to the Galilee region, and I just got back from that yesterday! I will update (hopefully soon) about that trip. It was wonderful! 

Finals Week...

This week we had finals, and they were so hard! I haven't written much here about the classes I'm taking, but they're actually quite difficult, especially since most of them are graded on curves and other students here are competitive. On Tuesday, we took finals for Israeli/Jewish history and Palestinian/Muslim history. The Israeli final was fine, but the Palestinian one was super hard to study for because I felt like I hadn't learned very much before this week. That class was all over the place: the basic tenets of Islam, the story behind al-Qaeda (which I'm so glad I've learned now), and a lot about the history of the Arab/Israeli conflict. The final went okay, though.
Then, Thursday, I took finals for Hebrew and Old Testament, and they both went great. I can read Hebrew now! Some of my roommates came home with T-shirts on Friday, and I could tell that they both said "Shalom" :-). Of course, I don't know what most Hebrew words mean, but as long as I'm reading something with vowels written in, I can at least tell what the words are supposed to sound like. Old Testament also went pretty well. I feel like I'm full of interesting trivia about the Old Testament now: etymologies of names, geography, and obscure stories.
Last night we watched Ben Hur, which I liked a lot, but I'm still trying to figure out all the symbolism in it.
I'm afraid I don't have any pictures to show for this week--I hardly went outside at all. Today, though, we had a wonderful barbecue for the 4th of July! The setup committee decorated the cafeteria, and we had all the traditional foods. They were in Middle Eastern form, though--the potato salad was made with potatoes, dill, and vinegar. :-) Still, it was a lot of fun and helped redeem the holiday, even though it fell on a Fast Sabbath for us.
Also, today I finally finished reading The Poisonwood Bible! My roommate Jessica is always reading for fun, and she inspired me to do it. I really liked the book--the ending tied it up well.

Jordan and the Jewish Quarter

So much has happened the past few weeks! Most importantly, our group went to Jordan for 4 days this past week, and it was marvelous. I had not really learned anything about Jordan before coming here, so I didn't know what to expect, but it turned out to be a really fun trip. On the first day, we saw Mt. Nebo, where Moses was taken to see the Holy Land before he was translated, and then we stayed in a city that night called Wadi Musa. That translates as "Moses's river", which people believe originated when Moses produced water from a rock in the area. Anyway, that night we had some free time, so a group of us walked around the town a little bit and did some shopping. As we were coming back, we passed a group of Jordanian boys playing soccer, and one of them kicked a ball our direction. Fortunately, there were several capable soccer players in our group (not including myself :-)), and soon, we had started a full soccer game. I sat on a bench and watched with a few other girls in the group, and some Jordanians came along and started watching too, and it just felt like being part of the community for a little bit.

The next morning, we saw Petra, which is one of the new 7 wonders of the world and is difficult to describe in words. (I took tons of pictures, though!) It is basically a city of tombs built by the Nabateans in the 5th century, and it is tucked away behind a slot canyon in a red rock area that looks a lot like southern Utah. I talked to a 9-yr.-old Bedouin girl there named Tamam--there were lots of Bedouins in the park, mostly selling souvenirs. The kids are all really sharp and have picked up on the adults' lines for selling things: "I'll give you a special price because you are student! Normally it's $20, just go ask down there in the market, but I give it to you for $5 because you're American and I like Obama..." The kids were cute anyway, though.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was the next day, when we visited the ruins of a Roman city called Jerash--it is so well preserved! We saw temples for Zeus and Athena and a "gladiator show" and chariot race in the hippodrome. It was amazing! We also saw an amphitheater with amazing acoustics (you can see it in the picture here). One boy in our group stood on the floor of the theater and sang, and we could hear it all over. There were also a group of Italians visiting there, and one of them went to the stage and started singing opera! (Is that typical, Mom?)

 

Our last day in Jordan, we saw an incredible archaeological museum. It was just this tiny old building sitting in the middle of the ruins of old Amman, but they had some extremely important artifacts inside! Statues of Daedalus, Icharus, and Nike, the hand of Hercules, parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls (!), ancient human skeletons, and every artifact you could think of from the Stone Age, Ammonites, Greek/Roman civilization, and Islamic civilization--all the different inhabitants of Amman through the ages. The picture below is, as far as we know, the first sculpture ever created in human history! I couldn't believe I was seeing all these things with no fanfare, in an old building with no air conditioning and little aesthetic presentation. Things are so different here from how they would be in the US. (Overall, though, Jordan is a fairly modern country, especially compared to Egypt.)

The week before Jordan, I went on several other fun excursions. On one of our free days, my roommates and I went to Ein Kerem, which is a little suburb of Jerusalem where they believe John the Baptist was born. We went to a beautiful church there called the Church of the Visitation, which houses a cave where they believe Elizabeth and Zecharias lived. This is the spot where traditional Christianity believes Mary met Elizabeth, and their children "leapt within the womb." Because of this, one of the chapels in the church was a shrine to the Virgin Mary. This was a painting on one of the walls:

Then there were other paintings all around the chapel depicting different scenes throughout Catholic history when the Virgin Mary has been defended and glorified. Later, our group also went to the Church of John the Baptist, which has the rock they believe John the Baptist was born on. 

For another free day recently, we toured through the Jewish Quarter in the Old City. I really loved it! I think it helped me to understand the Jewish population here in a new light, now that I know what their part of town looks like. In the morning, we went on a tour of the Kotel Tunnel. Basically, the part of the Western Wall that is now exposed aboveground is only a small portion of what the wall looked like before the city of Jerusalem was built up to a higher elevation. The Kotel Tunnel goes under the city and allows you to see parts of the Western Wall that used to be exposed, but are now hidden. Our guide for the tour seemed to be a fairly religious Jew, and I liked hearing her talk about the Temple Mount. There was a Jewish family on the tour with us, and I heard the father talking to his son about Jewish history and asking him questions along the way--I thought that was neat. Later that day, we saw an ancient Jewish house, and they showed us a video there that dramatized the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. The video was pretty cheesy, but it helped me understand the history quite a bit (even though I've been over it in classes here already.) While we were eating lunch that day, a group of school boys passed by us and I had to take a picture of them! Notice their hair, if  you can see it... 

We also went on a field trip last week to Neot Kedumim, which is a biblical landscape reserve near Tel Aviv. It is a park that a group of people planted with vegetation mentioned in the Old Testament, to try to recreate that environment. While we were there, we got to herd sheep! They really do all follow each other--which makes for easy herding, as long as you can get one sheep to follow you. They were also very soft and adorable. :-) This is a picture of me and my roommate Jessica with some of the sheep.

The next adventure is final exams! This whole week will be studying and test taking, but then after that, we'll only have 3 classes to worry about for the rest of the time we're here!

Pools of Bethesda

This is a picture of the Pools of Bethesda, from last week.

!שלמ

Shalom! I am now fluent in Hebrew transliterations. We had our Hebrew midterm this week, and a lot of us practiced for it by writing notes to each other in Hebrew characters (but still English words). It's so much fun! The title of this post is in block Hebrew, but there's also a script Hebrew alphabet that looks just like a great secret code.

This past week I got to go see the City of David Archaeological Park, which was amazing! It is an excavation for the Jerusalem of David's time (which also made up most of Jerusalem during Christ's time). I saw the place that they think was King David's palace, which means Isaiah would have been there, and we also walked through Hezekiah's tunnel under the city, which still has water running through it. It was so fun! Then we went to the pool of Siloam, which is where Christ healed the blind man. It was really an amazing site, because we were able to sit right there on the steps of the pool (even though it's dry now, of course).

On Wednesday, we went to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. It was similar to the Washington D.C. museum, except with even more specific focus on the Jews. Our teacher told us that every time an important dignitary comes to visit Israel, the very first thing they do is tour Yad Vashem (and then they're taken to plant a tree on Mt. Herzl). I just thought it was interesting that Israel places themselves within the context of the Holocaust to introduce themselves to visitors. 

I was so shocked when we got home afterward, though, and found out there had been a shooting in the Washington D.C. museum the same day! A neo-Nazi somehow got in, and one of the security guards there was actually killed. That was significant, though--a reminder that the problems we had seen in Yad Vashem are still extremely current.

Thursday night, we had a Passover Seder here at the center! This is a picture of me, two of my roommates Hannah and Bethany, and our Judaism teacher, Ophir Yarden. He is an Orthodox Jew, and he conducted the seder for us (some of it sung in Hebrew). We also got to go to his synagogue Friday night for their Shabbat prayer. The whole thing was sung in Hebrew, and I thought some of the songs were really lovely. They seemed to be kind of improvising their harmonies, but I don't know for sure.

Aside from all that, we are getting ready here at the center for a talent show this Wednesday! I'm going to play piano (Kabalevsky again :-)), but I'm also on the talent show committee, and we're doing "So Long, Farewell," from The Sound of Music for the last act. We're doing all the choreography straight from the movie, and I'm going to be Louisa, and I'm really excited! This should be a good talent show, because we're doing it in our auditorium/chapel, so we said all of the acts have to be fairly serious. (We'll do another less formal talent show later in the semester.)

Today I saw the largest rodent in the world! I went with a group to the zoo in West Jerusalem, and it was so much fun! It is nicknamed the biblical zoo, because it has one exhibit featuring animals mentioned in the Old Testament, but most of the zoo is just regular. I wish I could post some pictures here, but picture uploading hasn't been working for the past couple of days--maybe I'll try again later. Anyway, the rodents I saw today were called capybaras, from South America, and they could have come straight out of The Princess Bride. They weigh about 60 kg, and when I first saw one, I just thought it was some kind of really furry pig, but then I realized it was a giant rodent! Besides that, it was a really fun day. The weather was nice, and afterward we went and got brownie sundaes at a hotel near the center.

The past week or so has been exciting--last Friday was the Jewish holiday Shavuot, one of the three major feasts of the year (along with Passover and the Feast of the Tabernacles). The tradition around here is for Jews to stay up all night reading the Torah on Shavuot, and I thought it would be really cool to do it with them! I ended up not doing that, but Mary Kate and I got up at 2:30 that morning and read some chapters from Leviticus and Numbers. It was really fun! Than at 5:00am, a group of us went over to the Western Wall to welcome in the sunrise. There were a lot of Jewish families there, all praying and reading the Torah.

Last Sunday, I finally got to go see the Temple Mount! I've been wanting to go up there, even though non-Muslims are not allowed inside the mosques on top anymore. The Temple Mount (Mt. Mariah) is the place where Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac, and the Muslims believe that Muhammad was transported to Mt. Mariah one night to ascend into heaven and receive a vision (similar to Jacob's at Bethel). The Jews also believe that Mt. Mariah existed before anything else, and that God stood on it to create the rest of the universe. So it has an amazing history! Actually being up there didn't feel spectacular, but it is just a noteworthy place (and the Dome of the Rock on top is probably the most noteworthy landmark in Jerusalem.

On Monday, we took a field trip through the Shephelah—the foothill region of Israel. We saw the hill where Samson used to live, the valley where David defeated Goliath, and archaeological remains of cities that the Israelites conquered when they first came through. One city, Maresha, was taken over by the Idumeans after the Israelites were defeated, and they built a whole underground city there. It wasn't huge, but it had lots of interconnected caves, with some for keeping doves and some for pressing olive oil (two of the main industries at Maresha). It was so cool! The picture here is of me and Tricia standing at the site of Lachish, an old fortress city which is featured in Joshua 10.  We went in some caves afterward that were really exciting! I don't know who used to live there, but the walls were all decorated inside, and it was really hard to get in and out. The entrance was a little tunnel we had to crawl through on our hands and knees, and then the exit was too scary for me, but the people who did it had to lie down on their backs and then just wiggle their way through backwards—no room for arms (I went back out through the entrance).

On Wednesday, I went to see the Pools of Bethesda, one of the few structures in the city that was part of ancient Jerusalem (you can read about it in John 5:1-9). I wish I could show the picture here--it is a very pretty spot. I really wanted to go down to ground level, just to be there, but I didn't see any ways down. The modern area around the pools is at a higher elevation now, of course, because it is built on the ruins of the previous city.

Then Friday, I walked the Via Dolorosa with my roommates and a couple of others, and that was amazing! We went on a tour led by Franciscan monks, and I think a lot of the other people on the tour were Catholic, because they all knew a "Pater Noster" chant that they would sing every time we moved to a new station of the cross. The trail winds through the heart of Old Jerusalem, mostly through the Muslim quarter, so it's very crowded and and the streets are covered with tourist shops. But there are also churches along the way with shrines to various people (for example, Veronica, who is traditionally thought to have wiped sweat from Christ's brow at a certain point along the Via Dolorosa). It was a really neat experience, partly because of the events we were commemorating, but also because I felt so connected to international Christianity and historical Catholicism throughout the tour. The end of the tour leads to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which Catholics believe is built over both Golgotha and the Tomb. We had to go up to the 2nd floor to see the shrine for Golgotha. I'm not sure if there's any 1st floor below that part of the building, because the stone from the mountain protrudes from the floor and the walls in the shrine. And they have a statue of Christ on the cross right above there, and then candles, ornaments, paintings, and altars for Mary everywhere. I tried to take a picture, because it was amazing, but a priest told me photos weren't allowed. It is hard to capture the atmosphere of the church in pictures anyway, though. It is all very dim inside, but very ornate. 

Egypt

We got back from Egypt on Sunday night after being gone for 8 days. It was such an exciting trip! We left on busses last Sunday and started driving south through Israel, stopping at some sights along the way. We went to Beersheba, where Abraham's family lived, and then to David Ben-Gurion's grave. That overlooked the wilderness near Kadesh-Barnea, where the Israelites camped for 38 of their 40 years in the wilderness. There were wild ibexes all over the place, and you can see two of them in this picture, as well as the wilderness in the background. 

Then we drove south to the Machtesh Ramon, which claims to be the largest crater in the world. It's not a volcano crater--the geology of the area just happened to form the land into a large crater shape. It looks similar to all of southern Israel, extremely desolate and dry. 

Later that day we went to the Kibbutz Yotvata for a tour. It was so exciting! I remember learning about the kibbutz in 7th grade, and I never thought I would actually see one. This kibbutz grew date trees. It was so hot and sandy there that it was hard to imagine anything being able to grow, but then there were fields of date trees everywhere. They look just like palm trees to me, so it felt very tropical. We got to try the dates, too, which were huge and super sugary. After that, we drove to another kibbutz to stay the night. It turns out a lot of the kibbutzim run guest services--it's part of how they sustain themselves. Later this summer when we go to the Galilee, I think we're going to stay in a kibbutz the whole time.

The next day, we crossed the border into Egypt, and then we spent most of the day driving across the Sinai Peninsula. It was very desolate--a lot like driving through Nevada. And then when we got to Cairo, it was still desolate, except for the area right around the Nile River. I was so excited to see the Nile! The river itself is not that impressive compared to the Mississippi, but just knowing how long it stretches makes it exciting. 

Cairo is kind of a mess. Our guide told us the population was 14 million, though I've also heard higher numbers, and most of the people live in huge, dilapidated apartment buildings. It's dirty, and noisy, and everything throws their garbage in the minor channels connected to the Nile, so there were some spots that looked more like sewage than river. The merchants in Egypt are also super aggressive, even compared to the ones here. I don't mind Jerusalem merchants at all anymore. The Egyptian ones will grab your arm, and if you even look at what they're selling, they'll assume your interested and start following you around. I was walking with a group into town one day in Luxor, and one of the Egyptian carriage drivers rode up to us and offered to give us a ride for 5 pounds. We told him no, but then he kept following us for at least 5 minutes, saying the same thing over and over again. It's very difficult to decide to buy anything, because the merchants never leave you alone once you're inside their shop. 

Besides that, though, the sites were amazing! On our first night in Cairo, we went to a sound and light show on the Giza Plateau in front of the pyramids! It was pretty outdated, and for some reason, they got bagpipers to play the music beforehand (surely that's not Egyptian, right?), but it was fun anyway. My favorite part of the Giza Plateau was definitely the Sphinx. The pyramids were exciting too, though! We got to go inside one of them. The shaft inside is narrow, so we had to bend over and then climb up into the center of the pyramid. It was actually kind of scary, just because we had so little room and there was not a real staircase. Then the tomb inside wasn't exactly what I was expecting. I knew that tomb robbers had already cleaned out all the pyramids, but I guess I thought the walls inside would still be decorated with hieroglyphics. It actually just turned out to be a bare stone room. Still pretty cool, though!

Later that day, we went to the Cairo airport and took a domestic flight to Luxor. I was excited to see the Egyptian airport, but it actually turned out to be pretty similar to all airports. When we got to Luxor, it turned out our hotel was right on the banks of the Nile! And it was really fancy, too--a fun place to stay. Unfortunately, about 1/2 the students got sick while we were in Luxor, so they weren't able to enjoy it. I was lucky not to get sick the whole time, but I had to be so careful--no fresh fruits or vegetables, no tap water, no meat served room temperature, etc. 

While we were in Luxor, we saw the Valley of the Kings, which is where most of the Egyptian pharoahs were buried. That was impressive. All the walls were covered in hieroglyphics and artwork, and some of it even still has color. I saw King Tut's tomb! His mummy is in there, but all the other treasures are in the Cairo Museum (which I also saw).

This picture is from the Karnak Temple Complex in Luxor--acres of ancient ruins just sitting there. We also went to the Luxor Temple, which is where women would have gone to worship, and we saw the Colossus at Memnon--that's the picture here of the two huge statues.

One other cool thing we saw is the cave where they think the mummies with the Abraham scrolls were found--Pit 33, near Queen Hatshepsut's temple. The professors had to bribe the guards to let us take pictures there, but I'm glad we saw it!

We took an overnight train back to Cairo, which was amazing! We had very comfortable sleeper cars, and they knocked on our doors in the morning and brought around breakfast. I wish I could have seen what the Egyptian countryside looked like out the window, but it was too dark. Then in Cairo, we went to the Cairo Museum, which was incredible, and then shopped around a little.

The next day, we saw some old Christian sites, including a church built around a cave where they say the Holy Family stayed when they fled to Egypt. I loved that, but they didn't let us actually go inside the cave. And then the next morning at 2:00 AM, we hiked Mt. Sinai to see the sunrise! It was so cool, one of my favorite parts of the Egypt trip. It was amazing climbing up there in the dark and looking around at the horizon--just jagged, shadowy mountain peaks everywhere. There were some places where I couldn't even see level ground at the bottom, and I felt very high up. There are also Bedouins who live up there and offer you camel rides, even right at the top of Mt. Sinai. 

Then we got back to Jerusalem late that night. I am so glad to be back! Israel feels very comfortable and safe compared to Egypt.

The past few days have been amazing! On Saturday (the Sabbath here) we went to the Garden Tomb, which many people believe is where Jesus was resurrected. It is a beautiful spot, and very quiet inside the garden walls even though it's in the middle of market streets. It is a very peaceful, welcoming place. In some ways it reminds me of the Sacred Grove, because it's hard to comprehend the place exactly, but for now I just enjoy being there.

Then, yesterday, I went to Tel Aviv! Almost 30 of us from the center went over in vans, and it was so much fun. The picture I have here is of Andromeda's rock--it's the little black speck just to the left of the balcony in the foreground. This is supposedly the rock Andromeda was placed on when she was being offered as a sacrifice to a sea monster (before Perseus came and rescued her).  We walked around and saw lots of historical sites and then swam at the beach,

 which was wonderful! I got a few beautiful pictures of the Mediterranean Sea, but I can't put very many up from here.

Today was incredible because we got to go to Jericho!  This picture is of the oldest building in the whole world! Brother Huff (my Old Testament teacher) said today that when Noah's family came down from Mt. Ararat, they may have settled in Jericho. At any rate, some people think it is the oldest city in the world, and the circular building in this picture was a tower during the most ancient period of the city. 

The lower picture is a view of the Mount of Temptation--that is where tradition holds that Jesus was tempted after his 40 days of fasting in 

the wilderness. It's hard to see in this picture, but halfway up the mountain, there is a monastery (the Quruntul Greek Orthodox monastery) built into the rock--it just looks kind of like a light horizontal line on the mountain in this picture. 

Anyway, we hiked up there and went inside, and it was incredible! You have to hike a steep trail to get there, and then the monastery itself grows out of the mountain. Originally it was just some caves inhabited by hermits, but then they built around those caves, so some of the walls inside are still just the natural rock face. (And some of the floors are just natural rock, too.) There are some beautiful paintings inside on the walls and the ceilings, and in the top chapel of the monastery, they have the rock that they believe Satan asked Jesus to turn into bread. Only a couple of monks live there, so we were lucky that one of them came to the door and let us in. I just loved it because it is so remote, in the middle of a mountain, and then you get there and it is beautiful inside.

Western Wall

Tonight we went to the Western Wall at sundown, when the Jews were there praying and welcoming in the Sabbath. It was amazing. There were so many people there! The men and women were separated into different parts of the wall, and they were all wearing nice clothes. The men and the married women cover their heads, but we didn't have to. 

We actually got to go touch the wall! It is the same wall that was there 2000 years ago, I think--part of the temple built by Herod. I had to wait in the crowd for about 15-20 minutes before I got to the front. Then I touched the wall and kissed my fingers (that's what I saw everyone else doing). I also had a prayer written on a small piece of paper, and I folded it up small and put it in one of the cracks in the wall. They believe that when you do that, the prayer has extra weight. The Muslims actually say that one prayer in Jerusalem counts for 500 prayers somewhere else in the world.  (And a prayer in Medina counts for 1000, and a prayer in Mecca counts for 2000.)

Afterward, I went to the back of the crowd, and there were a group of girls there, about our age, singing and dancing. They pulled about 4 BYU girls into the circle and danced with us. It was so cool! Usually the women don't dance, but I guess this was okay because it was all younger women. We got to talk to a couple of the girls, and it was very interesting.

Just now, I was sitting by a window studying (since we're up on Mt. Scopus, we can see most of Jerusalem from here) and then someone sitting near me saw a giant column of smoke rising from Old Jerusalem . We went outside to look and saw flames, so I started worrying that there had been a huge accident of some sort. The security here at the center said not to worry, it was probably just a house or a store on fire, but it was the first time I have ever seen anything like that. I guess we see every fire that goes on from here because of our view.

I started learning Hebrew yesterday! Evidently, the letters in Hebrew are basically just consonants, but then the vowel sound that should accompany each consonant is indicated by dots or lines underneath the letter, like a subscript.

Then last night someone from the U.S. embassy in Israel came and spoke to us. His name was Stuart Tuttle—he's LDS and has worked in the foreign service in several countries, but has been here in Israel for the last four years. He reviewed the whole Israel-Palestine conflict for us, starting with World War I, and then explained what the issues are today in trying to make peace. It was amazing! I have never really understood what was going on over here, but now I finally think I do. Mr. Tuttle explained who owned this area in the first place (the Ottoman Empire), how the Jews started moving in, how they were able to create a country, and why both sides are unhappy with the current situation. It was so interesting and really helpful. 

Today we had a lot of free time, so I went shopping in old Jerusalem. There is one Palestinian merchant in the Christian quarter named Shaban who is very friendly with the BYU Jerusalem students. I think he's had kind of an informal association with the center for a few years, because he sells Jerusalem  scripture cases (that he made himself) and BYU Jerusalem T-shirts in his shop. :-) He's a really nice guy, too--whenever we go into his shop, he pours everyone juice. He says, "First drink, then shop!" and he tells us to just pour ourselves something to drink whenever he's not there. One of the faculty showed us his store on our first day here, so they're all on good terms and we can feel safe shopping there.

At the other stores, though, we have to haggle. They tell you a price, and then you say, "Oh, but I only brought this much," and then you say a much lower, but still reasonable, amount. Then they'll say that there's no way they can sell you something for so little, so then you start to walk away, and they'll give in. I haven't done it yet, but we today one of the girls shopping with me did a pretty good job with it. It was a good natured process, just kind of a game.

First Week in Jerusalem

I am currently at the BYU Jerusalem Center! It is a beautiful building, made mostly out of limestone, and it is up near the top of Mt. Scopus looking out over Jerusalem. I've been here since last Wednesday. I'm going to try updating here as often as possible as I start to see more of the city and travel around to Egypt, Jordan, and the Galilee. 

The old part of Jerusalem is currently enclosed by a kind of fortress wall built in the 1500's. It only costs 8 shekels (about $2) to go up to the top of the wall and walk around the perimeter of city, so a group of us went and did that today. It was very interesting! Jerusalem is a multi-layered city. Its streets are built on top of layers of rock from ruins of the ancient city, and then there are gardens and buildings and trees planted on the rooftops of those buildings. So sometimes when we were on the wall we were very high up from the ground, but then we would come to a stretch where the rooftops would become the new ground level, so we would feel much closer to the ground. There are actually giant palm trees and houses just sitting on the roofs--it's very pretty.

I might post a few photos later, but the Internet connection here is small and we're not supposed to do a lot with pictures over the Internet! They don't really capture the feeling, anyway, but some of them are fun to look at.