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!