Classes In Jerusalem

So today wasn't the most exciting when thinking about the tourism things to do, but today was the first real doy of classes. I can tell that the classes here are going to be a great learning tool, a great opportunity to learn the culture of the scriptrues. We had a quiz today and 10 questions later we learned that this is not going to be our normal religion class. We have one term to go through the entire OT, and not only do we need to learn the scripture text, but also have to know the geography of the whole story. I really do like the idea of taking advantage of the resource as we are here, and I look forward to when I get home being able to visualize the actual site as i read about it. All of our classes are based around the place in which I am going to live in the next few months, and the field trips are a large part of the curriculum as well.

We did venture into the Old City on our own today for the first time today and while a little intinidating at first to be on our own in the city, the group I was with has a lot of fun. The top picture is me on top of the Austrian hospice looking over the Old City. We really just went into the Old City to the Church of the Holy Sepulchure and spent almost two hours there looking at all of the amazing icons and Byzentine style mosaics and adorned the whole place. It was really crowded of course, I have yet to actually go into the tomb site, but I got to walk up Cavalry (stairs at right) and see the altar that was built up there for the site of Christ's death (right and bottom). It was sortof fun to look at the mosaics on the ceiling and play the 'which prophet is this' game while trying to look for clues in the picture. Jonah was quite the site! But it was very humbling to see all of the people that treat all of those sites with great reverence. So many different divisions in the Church itself, and so many different types of belief, and yet they are able to keep a tense peace because of the sacred ground that they all want to share. It is actually odd how the feelings there in the small chruch mirror the larger feelings of the city as a whole.

On the way back there was these really annoying Palestinean boys who were trying to sell us these little things of gum or candy or something, but they would just stand in front of one of us in the group, yelling something over and over again wanting us i'm sure to buy what he had, and he just woudln't go away! I need to learn the Arabic for 'no' and 'get out of here' becuase we really were not communicating very well! Lucky for us this Arab behind us told the boy off for us and we went away, but then he had this friend that he called to and he started to do the same thing, except he had a rock that we would pretend to throw at as when we said no. I don't know if you will belive it, but I didn't flinch at all when he pretened to throw the rock, and so I think that is why he left, but man I just wanted to drop-kick the kid! One of them did actually throw a rock that almost hit one of the girls I was with, that was irking if nothing else, but yeah. I think that we are going to get to know how to deal with things like that pretty fast if we are going to be walking that way often!

Well, church is tomorrow. We have sabbath with the Jews here, and then we get Sunday as our day off, so this will be interesting, but I think that i'm going to like this idea in the long run.

The Old City

So today I did wake up to the 430am call to prayer. It wasn't quite as loud as everyone said it was, at least it didn't seem that way to me, but yeah. I woke up enough to think 'oh, the call to prayer. That's nice.' before falling back to sleep! This jet lag thing hasn't been too bad, but enough that I enjoy my sleep at night. Not to mention the fact that breakfast was at 630 this morning, and orentation was for the first hour... that was boring. The exciting stuff happened at 830am when we finally got to get out of the Center for the first time and take our journey into the Old City.

This first trip was guided by a member of the staff here and our guide was Bro. Emmet who knew the city pretty well becuase he had done some grad work here back in the day. But we walked down from the center (which is on Mt. Scopus according to the Jews, and on the Mt. of Olives according to the Arabs, so there ya go Ellen!) and went through the Arab section of town with it's shops and street vendors, met the money changer that we will be using for getting our $ changed to NIS, and went on into the Old city through Damascas Gate. Now I don't think that i'm going to go into many specifics, because i'm going to be going there alot, and i think that I would just make a fool out of myself trying to remeber everything that I went to today, but i'll try to give you some general impressions that I had, and well as a crazy experince that happened today. This is a picture of the shops right as you enter Damascus Gate.

First of all, the Jerusalem that you see in your minds eye as you read the scriptures is nothing compared to what is there today. Even the walls around the Old City are so much bigger and misplaced from where they were in Christs time, not to mention that the whole city is about 30 feet higher than it used to be in places, although you still can walk on some stones that Jesus walked in certain parts of the city. It is a very crowded town, filled with merchants, pilgrims from all sorts of denominations, and a small military presence that you see from time to time. We actually saw two Palestinian soldiers with M-16 type guns standing in the street as we came out of the Austrian Hospice. That was neat.

We also got to go into the Church of the Holy Sepulchure (in pic to right) and see one of the sites for the tomb and crusifixion of Christ. It was such a busy place, so many christians from all over the world, so many languages, and yet so much respect there. The line was really long just to go into the place where they have built a shrine over the tomb that it was amazing. I think that is one of the things that caught me off guard, just how loud all these places are with all of the people. You think about all of these sacred places, and you see them in church movies, but you never think about how many other people see them as sacred as well, and so how busy the places really are during a normal day. Even the Garden Tome site is riddled with tourists throughout the whole day, and so you have to go early in the morning, or later in the evening to get the place more to yourself. I am glad though to be here for a while. Geting to know the people here is going to make this experince so much better than just coming to see all of the sites for a week or two, and i'm really lookking forward to all of the things that I can learn from the natives.

So there was a little disterbance in one of the streets today. A truck was in the middle of the very narrow streets in the city, and so only like 1 1/2 people could fit on either side of it. The group that I was with got separated because three of us couldn't find a way through the growing crowd. It didn't help at all that we were on the Via Dolorosa, the Way of Suffering that is the traditional way that Christ carried the cross, and so there was this christiam group that was carrying a cross also trying to get through while singing thier traditional songs that they have for the points of the Way. Then this crazy lady starts pulling things out of the truck, looking at them, (leaves and herbs it looked like), passing them off, throwing them back in, and yelling at people the whole time. She was quite talented though because she was not a small lady and she could really weave through the crowd, I dont know how she did it! Anyway, some Israeli guards came over, the woman started yelling at them, they yelled back, and then they got in the truck and drove off, parting the crowd as they went! It was a little nuts, but we got back to our group OK.

We ended our little tour in West Jerusalem, and went to Ben Gurion st. which is the main shopping thoroughfare for the Jews. Lots of cool stuff, and pretty cheap too, at least that is what the girls I was with told me! So yeah, such ended our day in the Old City. I am going to have fun getting lost in there in the next few months! That's what they told us to do so that we could learn it, and learn it I will. Classes start tomorrow, so I better get going, but I hope that you guys are learning something from me! Feel free to ask me questions if you want and I will do my best to answer them. Tomorrow we get our first free time that we can use out of the Center. We can't go into the Old City till 3pm though, but that is still enough time to get some stuff done! Wish me luck!

A Long Day with Great Expectations

I made it to Jerusalem!!! After quite the grueling flight over here, I was actually part of the first group to get to the Jerusalem Center this afternoon. It was a little crazy, thinking that we had left at 7pm from JFK, and then ended up in Jerusalem 11 hours later at 230pm... time does not do good things to your body at times. The flight itself was not that bad, it was actaully interesting when we got to JFK because there were quite a few Orthodox Jews on board as well, and from time to time they would gather in the back of the plane and say thier prayers together. It was funny because no matter what the stewardesses said about the 'stay bucked' lights, they would just get thier robes and hats and go to the back and do thier prayer thing! The captin himself came on the PA and thold them himself that they needed to sit down (not by name of course) and they even ignored him! So while mostly uneventful, the flight was nevertheless amusing.

The Jerusalem Center itself is amazing! The archetecture that is here along with the view from my back porch help to make this a beautiful place. The teachers, thier families, and the service couples that are here also make this a wonderful place. We got a quick tour around the center today, got to check out things like the library, the laundry, and different classrooms, and of course what building in Jerusalem would be complete unless it had a bomb shelter! And there are actually 2 here, you get to choose between playing ping-pong or foozball depending on what shelter you are in! But the spirit of the building just hits you as you walk in. Truly this is a place that God put here to help His children appritiate the things that he has done for them, and place to make testimonies grow.

The food here was really good for dinner, i'll talk more about that later as I get a few more meals, but for the most part, all of the new spices are doing wonders for me. The best sweet potatoes ever here... yeah, so anyway... We got to have a little orienation thing tonight as well, and at the end my OT teacher showed us a slideshow from last semesters group that went. It is simply amazing all of the things that are going to be crammed into the next 3 1/2 months. All of the things to see and do just seemed amazing to me, and at the same time, a great feeling of expectation came upon me. I know that I am here to accomplish something, because I was told to come here, and I just really hope that I am able to take full advantage of the opportunities that the Lord has made available for me here. Tomorrow we begin with our first field trip, a tour of the Old City, which is the view that I get to wake up to every morning by the way!

This is a picture from my bedroom by the way... yeah, I know, way cool!

Begining to a Great Summer

So I just got back from my final orientation meeting for the Jerusalem Center about two hours ago. A lot of it is stuff to scare you so that you follow a lot of the rules, but also it gave me a little insight into just how cool this summer is going to be. The only downside for all of you is that this is going to be the only picture that you see of me in Jerusalem until I return in 4 months. Because of the slow progress of technology over in Israel, they are about a whole generation behind the US in internet technology, and so it it like having dial-up speeds out there and so no pictures are allowed to be downloaded or uploaded or else the system will crash. So i'm sorry to all of you that were looking forward to seeing the pics from all of my adventures, but you are just going to have to exercise some patience until I am able to get home :) Facebook is also banned, but this is because of the stupidity of students last semester, and not the bandwidth issue!
Tomorrow I leave at 1015am from SLC and will get to Tel Aviv at 145pm on Wednesday, then the adventures will begin! So many things to look forward to, and i'm sure that I don't even know all the possibilities that will be open to me while I am there. I look forward to sharing my experiences with you as I travel through the land that Jesus called Home. I am grateful that I get to have this wonderful opportunity to live the Bible stories that I hear so much, put places with names and feel the spirit that still may live in some of the places.
Right now though I just need to get over the spirit of the stomach flu which had this great desire to ruin the moment for right now :( Say a prayer for me that I will get better soon! I would hate for the first few days to be overshadowed by me throwing up, especially on the plane tomorrow! Love you all, and I'll talk to you all soon!