City of David/Palm Sunday/Singing in the Streets

You might be thinking to yourself, "that is a very packed title to a blog". And I'm telling you yes, yes it is. And that is because I had a very packed day with many various activities.

The day started out first and foremost by visiting Schindler's grave. That was really cool, I was kind of expecting a high and mighty tomb stone or something but it was actually very simple and humble, which I liked a lot. I put a stone on his grave, which is the custom here rather than flowers.



Next we went to the City of David. I finally got to do Hezekiah's tunnel!! Everyone else did it earlier in the semester but I missed it because I was late for the field trip and got left. But I finally got to do it today, with my head lamp and all! So exciting.



Hezekiah's Tunnel is a tunnel that Hezekiah made to divert the water from the Gihon spring to prevent the Assyrians from poisoning or blocking the water in case of a siege. It was built very quickly and you can tell by looking at the sides of the tunnel that these people were in a panic, just hacking away at the sides. As my friend Jonathan (aka Bible John) said, "You can almost see how they were saying 'Freak, the Assyrians are coming! Freak, the Assyrians are coming!!'"

When we got out of the tunnel our pants were soaked to about mid thigh, but we pressed forward. We went and saw Area G in the City of David which is an archaeology dig site. It was actually pretty cool, from one spot you could three places of evidence of different time and different people. You could see a Jebusite layer, a Nehemiah layer, and a layer from King David's Palace.

We then went to the Pool of Siloam where Christ told the blind man to wash to be healed. After that we started heading back to the center but on our way back we stopped at Absalon's Pillar and Steven's Church. This picture of me is me inside of a cave in Absalon's Pillar. We had to go down what we called the "birth canal" which is literally a tiny hole in the rock that you shimmy yourself down into and to get back up someone has to pull your whole body weight to the top of the cave. Kind of intense and I skinned my elbows doing it (first timer). But it was fun being inside a big structure high above the ground.




When we got back from the center I had about 45 minutes to rest from the morning and then it was time to go and celebrate Palm Sunday! Which was AMAZING! We walked up to Bethany where the path of the savior was to be reenacted of the Triumphant Entry. There were so many people there, a lot of them bearing palm tree branches. The Palestinian families were on their roofs watching the passerbys. The walk was very, very slow with so many people. I actually ended up bailing early because I felt like I got the gist of what was going on and wanted to go home and actually read and ponder the story rather than walk the route to Jerusalem. On my way back to the center I came upon some police officers on some very large horses that I enjoyed very much.




My favorite part of the day, however, came at night after dinner. A group of us went downtown to West Jerusalem for my friend's birthday. I don't know how this idea came about, but we decided that since we didn't want to pay money to buy ice cream we would just earn it in the city. And we did. We had various musical instruments and we sang and dance and ended up making about 125 sheckles, which is equivalent to about 33 American dollars. We did good! At the end of the night we ended up buying two tubs of ice cream, sitting in a huge circle in the street, and passing around the tubs until everything was gone. So much fun. I ended up learning that the universal equalizer songs are "Leaving on a Jet Plane", "Ain't no Mountain High Enough", and "The Piano Man". While we sang these songs we got a huge crowd of people singing with us. Turns out that Jewish people also really enjoy "Popcorn Popping". Funny Mormon culture.

I met a lot of interesting people in between acts that I was in. I met one man that loves the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. He requested that we sang "Come, Come ye Saints" and we did for him. He also asked if he could do his own musical number, and we let him. We also met a fellow musician who plays her harp every night to earn a living. She also plays her ukulele and we sang "I've Been Working on the Railroad" while she played for us. I think it made her night. We met a guy named Alex from South Africa who jumped up and started singing with us. We met another guy who was dressed in drag and claimed that he was going to a drag queen show but when he showed up it hadn't started yet so then he was "stuck in public" looking how he did. So funny. One man we were talking to was asking about our religion (I think, he was really hard to understand) and got very upset when we said that we couldn't talk about it. He was asking for a Book of Mormon and just wouldn't take no for an answer. I'm pretty sure he was rather drunk though.



After we reaped the rewards of our efforts we came back to the center. And now I'm done writing this blog. Time for bed.