Purim 2010

Today was another rainy day in Jerusalem. I went for a run this morning and after breakfast when people started making their plans we found out that we were on lock down and couldn't go into East Jerusalem or into the Old City due to some disturbances. But it wasn't a big deal and we stayed in and everything was fine. If you want to read up on what happened, here is the link: www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1152809.html. The kind of exciting thing about this "conflict" (if you can find anything exciting in it) is that I actually understand what's happening and what the problem is. So, I suppose it's kind of educational. But it is more unfortunate and I wish it weren't happening.

Our costumes for Purim-- The Mustache Militia

So I was in all day and I got super super antsy, so when I got a chance to go out to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Purim, I was all over that. The guy who taught our Israeli folk dancing class on Friday told us he was having a party so about 60 of us went dressed up (in Jewish Purim tradition) and loaded up the buses and were off!

On the bus on the way to the Purim party

When we first got there there was only about 12 people there. Which was really funny because when we walked in we pretty much dominated the whole place. We learned some more Israeli dancing and more and more local people started coming. Two times I had people come up to me and help me learn, it was really fun. My favorite part was when the DJ (our dance teacher) played the Macarena for all of us American kids and the Isrealis had no idea what to do. But they laughed and tried to follow us. It was a good night and it was so great to get out of the center!

It's Raining, It's Pouring

Caught in the rain/hail in Jerusalem

Today was an unexpentantly great day. We were schedule to have four hours of our Palestinian class since they've been canceled in the past due to our teacher not being able to get through the border. We also had a midterm this morning so we were all kind of dreading today. BUT the midterm turned out to be not so bad (I'm pretty sure I nailed it) and our four hour Palestinian class got canceled AGAIN. Which was exciting because we were able to go out into the city for a few hours, but sad once again because my teacher was just stuck and couldn't get to us. The Israeli government closed the borders due to a holiday they are having this weekend, (a holiday very similar to Holloween).

Blocking the rain water in the street. Check out how deep it was!

So we had the whole afternoon to ourselves! I tried to go to the post office to mail something off, so we went out in a group. It has been raining all day and all last night, but it was a little sunny for a minute so we thought we would be okay. Once we got out into the city we realized that everything was closed. And then it started pouring rain. Like crazy. And hailing. And we were right in the middle of the city with no where to go. But we made the most of it and played in the water that was rushing down the streets, and got splashed by every car that drove by. It turned out to be a really fun experience.

Us at the center, soaking wet!

When we got back we were soaking wet and so I did some laundry and then had dinner. After dinner we had a man come and teach us how to do some Israeli folk dancing, which was so fun! Probably my favorite thing that we've done here so far.

This week we had four tests, next week will be five! And then it's all down hill from there academically. So excited for that moment. This semester is halfway over, which is kind of sad. I love Jerusalem and I love being here. And I'm going to miss it tremendously when I'm home.

Dr. Musallam!

My Palestinian teacher hasn't been able to come teach class lately because he hasn't been able to pass through the border from the West Bank to Jerusalem. We were all saddened by this (not the fact that we didn't have class but the fact that he was stuck) and so we made him a card. Here he is, my cutie Modern Palestinian teacher, Dr. Musallam, with his card. He loved it!

Via Dolorosa

Marhaba from Jerusalem!

Wow, is it ever time for a blog update? It has been quite a while since I have updated, and quite a lot has happened since then. I will start from the beginning of this week.

At the end of last week I started getting sick, but it wasn't too bad. Just a regular head cold it felt like, so I felt alright with going out on my free day on Sunday. So I did, and it was a great day! We went to a little down called Ein Karem to go look at the Chagall Windows in the Hadessah Hospital. The windows are 12 stained glass windows, each one representing a son of Israel. At first glance they really don't seem that significant (to me anyway), but the more I looked at them the more fascinated I became with them. They really were incredible and I enjoyed them.

The Chagall Windows

After we saw the windows we walked down a little trail that followed the valley and walked up to the Church of the Visitation. The church was closed until later that afternoon so we just explored the city until it was time to go back to the church. This town was so cute, I loved it. I felt like it was very European, like Italy or something. Cobblestone streets, flowers everywhere, very green and charming. I really enjoyed it. There were a ton of hills though, I felt like every road we went up to explore was very steep up hill. We went to the Church of Visitation and then we went to the Church of John the Baptist where I met a Franciscan who lived there and I talked to him for a little bit.

Church of the Visitation
Church of John the Baptist

The only bad thing about Sunday is that all of the activity pretty much sent me over. By the end of the night I was very sick and had lost my voice almost completely.

Monday we our field trip to the City of David, including our trip to Hezekiah's tunnel which I was very excited about. The only catch is that I was late for the bus and got left, so I spent a morning alone at the center. I was really sad about it, but it was probably a good thing because I was still feeling pretty sick. I also got out that afternoon and went to the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and went to some museums, which were cool. The next day I went to the doctors at the center and they said that I had bronchitis and gave me an antibiotic for it. I slowly but surely have gotten better and have returned to health.

Yesterday a big group of us got out of the center and went to the Christian Quarter or the old city to walk the Via Dolorosa with the Catholic Priests and Catholic pilgrims. Lent started this week and people here are celebrating it. The Via Dolorosa is the road that Jesus walked from where he was charged by Pilot to Golgotha where he was crucified. There were fourteen stops along the way signifying something that Jesus did at the stops. We would stop and the Priests would explain what happened and then everyone would recite prayers and sing. The last few stops were in the Church of the Holy Sepluchre where Christ died and is was buried.

Church of the Holy Sepluchre

Right when you walk into the Church of the Holy Sepluchre there is a piece of stone where Catholic believed Jesus' body was prepared for burial. At this point a lot of people knelt down and would reverently touch the stone. Priests in the church really like incense. The place smelt so strongly of incense, sometimes it was almost unbearable.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre, stone where they prepared Jesus' body

After we walked the Via Dolorosa me and three other people went and explored a little further. We found an Ethiopian Monastery and talked to a monk there. We then went down into Helen's Cistern where ancient people gathered their water. It was a huge cave deep in the earth and it was wet and damp. At one point the lights went out and that kind of freaked me out. But on the sign for the cistern it said that down below we would find a "musical surprise" which we thought was funny, so we sang a few hymns and a few other songs as well. After that we went home to make it back before sundown. The rest of the night was uneventful, I tried to get homework done but it was Friday night and I felt like I deserved to relax, so I watched Cool Runnings instead. Such a good movie. Helen's Cistern at the Ethiopian Monastery

Today nursery went great, my partner brought her Ukulele for singing time and the kids were mesmerized by it. It was fun just to be able to sing and enjoy it rather than chase kids around the bomb shelter! I really like my calling.

Tonight we went to some permanent ward member's house for family home evening (on the Sabbath). It was so nice to be in an actual home! And I can't tell you how amazing it was to eat homemade brownies. You really don't realize how much you love the simple things in life, like sitting on a couch or walking on plush carpet until you don't have it anymore. We were all living the change of setting for a few hours.

And now it's time for bed. This week is going to be a good one, I have three tests I think. Yikes! So with that, حسن الليلة!

The Good Samaritan

Today I had a good opportunity to serve the people of Jerusalem. I went with a small group to the Good Samaritan Center for the Elderly and delivered lunches to the people and sang hymns to them.

These people are for the most part healthy, but they are home bound due to the circumstances of the Old City such as the uneven streets and the staircases leading up to their houses. We took them lunch and sang hymns to them which they really enjoyed.

The Good Samaritan, to point out the obvious, is a Christian organization. I think it's interesting to hear the different takes on religion from different religions, for example today when we were learning about this center the director (who seems like a great guy, all of the elderly people love him) was really ripping into Muslim people and their religion. A lot of things he said I thought in my mind "that's not true". For instance, he was saying that the Qur'an is an evil book (not true) and that all it teaches Muslims is to kill for their God (not true). What I also found interesting and strange is that the Christian schools in the Old City don't teach their children anything about the Old Testament. The director was telling us how he thought this was a bad thing, which I agree with. But then when I take a step back from the situation I realize that I never really studied from the Old Testament before now. How did I miss the importance of it? I don't know.

After visiting the people of the Good Samaritan we waited around for our van to pick us up and explored the mall in West Jerusalem. I was curious about how much more expensive the prices were here, so I went into a Gap. Interesting and funny, I had to go through security to get into the store. That was a new experience! Anyway, the verdict was about $20 dollars for a cotton t-shirt. Seeing clothing stores kills me because even though I'm not a big shopper at all, I'm so tempted to buy new clothes because I am getting tired of my same seven shirts. But then I see the price, and I suddenly feel very content with what I have.

One thing that irks me (I hope this isn't turning into too negative of a blog post) is the West Bank. Israel has a separate walled section for Palestinians to live in called the West Bank. From what I have gathered, the government claims that this wall is put in place for security reasons, but any Palestinian I have talked to says that that is nonsense. In order for a Palestinian to get into Jerusalem (if they are qualified to or have good enough reason) they have to have several different permits and passports to get through the gate. My Arab teacher passed around his permits in class, I think it's a little ridiculous. And my teacher is even an American, but because he is of Arab descent he has to aquire these permits and renew them every six months.


The Wall and the West Bank


The reason that I am bothered about this especially today is because on Tuesday my teacher couldn't make it across the border to teach our class. (He said that in the mornings he has to leave 3 hours early to make time to get through the border). Today in class he told us that they just wouldn't let him through, they didn't tell him any reason, they just kept him from crossing. He went in the next day to get all of his fingerprints and permits checked on and they were all valid, so he has no idea why he wasn't permitted into Jerusalem. How humiliating to be turned away from going somwhere where you need to be, for no reason.

Through learning about both Jewish and Palestinian history I feel like I can make more informed opinions on the conflict of Israel. I may still be ignorant, however, because I know a lot more than what I know has fueled this conflict for so many years. And I hope I don't give off the impression that I dislike the Israeli Jewish people, because I don't. I love my Judaism teacher, Ophir Yardin, and I have met some very nice Jewish people in West Jerusalem. I just don't understand why they do what they do. I really don't understand it.

But then again, I will be here for more time and part of the purpose of this program is to thoroughly educate me on this matter. So I'm interested to see how my opinion will change and evolve throughout my time here.

By the way, I stumbled upon this link: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/02/10/jerusalem.road.discovery/index.html

It's kind of cool, check it out. I was actually just here today! This city is my play ground!

20 Free Wedding Dresses?

Today was an awesome day. It started out with a two hour Old Testament class, but our midday class got canceled so we got some free time! On Sunday we went to the post office where we met a very interesting man named Ibrahim. (Mom and dad, maybe you should just skip over the next few paragraphs....) He invited us over to his house to come and talk to him more, so today we took him up on that offer. We called him and twelve of us went to his house to learn more about Ibrahim and his family. It was really cool to go into a different part of town than I'm used to. We were walking through the Arab neighborhoods just as school was getting out so there were a lot of children in the streets, all of them said hello to us and waved. I really enjoyed seeing the real part of East Jerusalem, the homes and the people, rather than just the Old City.


Ibrahim, leading the way


Turns out Ibrahim is an awesome guy! He has lived on the Mount of Olives his whole life but travels the world. He said that he travels out of the country at least once a month. The address he first gave to us to meet him at was a house he owned where he let people stay for free when they were visiting the Holy Land. When we asked him how many people were there right now he said that 17 people were living in that house. On the walls in his living room were pictures of him in the United States, Holland, Russia, and many more places. He also had newspaper clippings of him and important people taped on his walls. He had books laying around his coffee table, and he told me that one of them (it was in Korean) was a biography about him. (To learn more about Ibrahim go to www.jerusalempeacemaker.org/ibrahim).


Us at Ibrahim's house


Ibrihim is a peace activist and travels around the world to petition for peace in the Holy Land. He has been to the White House and at the end of this summer he is coming to Utah (again) and it has been arranged for him to meet with President Monson. He is invited all over the world to speak on peace in Israel and to share his side as the Palestinian.


Ibrahim showing us the view from his roof


When we met Ibrahim at the post office one of my friends asked him if he knew where any good wedding dress stores were in town. Ironically enough, he said that he had a business that made schools and gave supplies to the Bedouins in the West Bank who get no help from the Israeli government--along with supplies, he also happened to have about 20 free wedding dresses that he was dying to get rid of. So after we talked to Ibrahim in his "hostel" like house he took us to his home to meet his wife. Sure enough, right when we got there we saw all of the wedding dresses laying out on his front porch! Hilarious. So we decided to take all of them back (some are nice, some are ugly) and then figure out what to do with them. Conveniently enough Ibrahim had boxes ready for us to pack our dresses in (can you see how badly he wanted to get rid of them?) I think my favorite part was the guys' reaction when the girls decided we wanted all of them...we had walked quite a distance to get to Ibrahim's house and some guys were a little sketchy about carrying wedding dresses all the way back to the Jerusalem Center. Luckily Ibrahim called a taxi for us and so we got back home humiliation free.


Outside of Ibrahim's house, with our dresses


Loading up the dresses into the boxes


When we got back to the center we decided that we were going to wear these dresses to dinner. We had to sneak them into the building without anyone seeing them and we hid them in "The Dan Jones", aka the student lounge area. After our classes we all met and put on our dresses, the girls picked out the biggest, most obnoxious dresses of the bunch and the guys dressed up to be our escorts/grooms. We got a good reaction from everyone and it was actually really fun. We are pretty confident in saying that we made Jerusalem Center history tonight. Pretty confident, indeed.


Eating dinner at the Oasis


Photo Shoot

Shepehelah Field Trip

Today has been a great day of homework and recovery; our afternoon class got canceled today.

Yesterday we had a packed field trip day. On our field trip we visited the sites of the Shepehelah. We saw places where Samson lived and where David fought Goliath.

First we went to Beth Shemesh and the Sorek Valley. We overlooked the valley and watched shepherds herding their flocks in the valley. This part of Israel is really pretty and green, lots of farm land and very few houses and civilization. At Beth Shemesh we explored a cistern, which are underground wells used to collect water in Old Testament times. This was the valley where the Philistines sent the Ark of the Covenant back to the Israelites. (1Samuel 6)

After Beth Shemesh we went to Lachish which was the Shephelah's largest city in Old Testament times. In the Bible Joshua conquered Lachish in Joshua 10:31-32.

Then we went to Mareshah, which was a fortress in the Old Testament. There were underground rooms full of pigeon holes; these people raised pigeons for their industry and also for sacrifices. We also saw an olive press where these people crushed olive for olive oil. Mareshah can be found in Joshua 15:44 where the tribe of Judah is assigned to this area.

Next we went to Elah Valley (1Sam 17) where David fought Goliath. We were given slings to try out our slinging ability; I wasn't too bad but I could definitely improve in my slinging skills.

We also went to some bell caves which were really cool, they were huge caverns of limestone where they used to quarry the limestone. We also went to the Micah caves which are similar to the Nutty Putty caves. Those were fun to crawl through and such. I didn't explore as much as other people did, I just sat in the main cavern and enjoyed sitting and relaxing.

At the end of the day we went to Azekah where old Old Testament times they built up a fortress. Azekah was beautiful and it overlooked the whole Elah Valley, on a clear day you can see the Mediterranean Sea and the ridge of Jerusalem. Azekah can be found on Joshua 15: 35

All in all it was a good field trip. It was a long day but it was good to connect all the things I'm reading in the Old Testament to the places where they happened.

West Jerusalem

This morning a group of seven of us (Allison, Diana, Jason, Carrie, Dan King, Corina, and myself) went out and explored West Jerusalem for our free day. We meant to walk to the Israel Parliment building and take a look there, but we actually ended up at the City Hall instead by accident. We went with the flow and looked at a huge scale model of the city that they use for planning purposes. This thing was incredible, it had all of Jerusalem in a little model. It was probably about the same area as our swimming pool, so it was really quite a thing to look at. We all felt a little ripped off when we realized that the Mount of Olives, including the Jerusalem Center, wasn't on it. We asked where the Parliment building was and learned that it was way further than any of us wanted to walk, so instead we went and explored West Jerusalem some more.

Our goal was to find a pastry shop that everyone around here keeps talking about. In that process we found a pizza shop called The Big Apple and I had my first piece of Kosher pizza. It was actually really good; I have been craving pizza for a very long time now. It hit the spot and it was super cheap since 7 of us split a whole pizza. A friend and me found a neat little designer dress shop that we perused through for a little bit. Then we were all off to the market/pastry shop.

I think the highlight of my day was when we were walking in the market and we came upon a butcher's van. You can probably imagine what a butcher's van may look like; the back was wide open and hanging up on racks were animal carcasses everywhere. That's not even the best part. There was a man in the van and he had a grocery cart on the ground. Into the grocery cart this man was throwing HUGE cow heads. One after another after another. Into a tiny grocery cart. We all stopped dead in our tracks and were mesmerized by this, something none of us had ever seen before! One of the cow heads even had its tongue hanging out. He packed that cart full and just wheeled it in right into the market. It was disturbing to see, but totally epic and hilarious at the same time.

I really liked being on a different side of town, but it really made me realize how poor the East (Palestinian) side of Jerusalem is and how much of an injustice the Israel/Arab conflict is. On our way back to the Jerusalem Center, we were talking and realized that the Jerusalem Center wasn't on the map because we are located in East Jerusalem. Since East Jerusalem is populated by Palestinians they didn't even put it on the map. I'm glad that I live on the East and more on the poverty side of Jerusalem so that I can really get a feel for the difference between the Israelis and the Arabs. I can see the right on both sides and understand why it's such a heated conflict, but being here I can really see the injustice and the way the Israeli people treat the Palestinians. It's not right at all, it's very dehumanizing and condoning. That was the impression I got from experiencing both cities and peoples.

For the rest of the day I'm just going to relax and do homework and the such. Today was a long and very fun day, my feet are hurting and I'm really tired. Thank goodness for free days to break up the monotonous weeks of classes and homework.

Yad Vashem

I suppose it's probably time for a new post.

Since we got back from Egypt things have been a little crazy around here. We had two free days full of laundry and resting and homework. On Tuesday we had a seven page paper due, thankfully I got most of mine done before we left for Egypt, but a lot of people didn't so it was kind of crazy around the center here. Today I had two midterms; one for Judaism and one for Old Testament. Lets just say that I'm glad they're over...

On Monday we took a field trip to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum. That was a powerful experience. The things I saw there were intense, as I'm sure anyone who has been to a museum like that can attest to. I was shocked at the cruelty and horrible acts brought about by humanity. I would say that going there and seeing those things was a life changing experience.

Ever since Monday nothing super exciting has happened. We got a new service couple; our other one is going home because their time is up. Which is actually really sad, but I'm sure we'll grow to be even more attached to this couple than the other. We threw a party for them and it was really sad, I felt like we were all going home the next day, it was horrible. But after we said our good byes we had a dance party and had a good time.

It's almost the weekend! One more day of classes and then I have some time to relax and go out and enjoy the city, finally! It snowed today and I hope it warms up, otherwise it's kind of miserable to be out and walking around in. (I know all of you Rexburg people are cursing me right now thinking about how easy I've got it. I know, I know...) Things at the Jerusalem Center are great, I'm making good and lasting friendships and learning all kinds of things about myself and about the people here. So far it has been a fantastic learning experience.