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.