Christmas is coming...Happy Hanukkah!

Christmas is fast approaching, which means that my stay in Jerusalem will be quickly coming to an end. We had our Christmas choir concert last night which went really well, but I have always looked at the concert as a far off thing that marks the beginning of the end of this wonderful experience. I am really excited to come home and experience all of the Christmas tastes, sights, sounds, and smells-Israel is slightly lacking in that category as the vast majority of people here are Muslim and Jewish. Hanukkah is going on right now and it is fun to observe what goes on for that, and luckily the center has Christmas decorations set up on the top floor which is wonderful. I was really excited when we passed by this store in the Old City with a blown up Santa!

Last Friday we went to the open air market in West Jerusalem which is pretty much a ginormous farmer's market with other stores as well. We got fresh made challah bread which they have every Shabbat (Saturday) and it looked and tasted AMAZING! I think we are going to go back next Friday to get the bread again...

Today we toured around Jerusalem and visited the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, tought to host the tomb of Jesus, and went on a tour of the church/hostel where Orson Hyde, a Mormon missionary, stayed. For a long time it was unknown where he lived while he was here, but they found an old door with his name carved on it, apparently it served as the hostel's guest registry. It was pretty neat to see.

A week by the Sea of Galilee

I got the fabulous opportunity to spend over a week in Galilee at a kibbutz (an Israeli collective community) that was right by the Sea of Galilee. Our rooms were right by the shore and we often read and played out on the beach. I had a fabulous time but they kept us busy-some days I had three hours of New Testament class! We got to go on a hike through the Golan Heights which was a lot of fun with a natural waterfall along the way that we went swimming in-it was freezing though! One of my favorite activities was crossing the Sea on a wooden boat, somewhat similar to one from Jesus' day, where we talked about different events from the bible that had taken place there, such as Peter walking a water, Christ calling Peter, Andrew, James, and John (fishermen) to be apostles, and many other things. It was so neat to be in the same place where these events took place!

We got to attend church in the newly renovated church building in Tiberias which was really neat. We had a fast and testimony meeting there and it was really neat to be in "Christ's Branch" as the branch president pointed out. The building is a renovated villa with a beautiful view of the sea.

At one of our rest stops along the way, we stopped at a place where they had a camel sitting by itself that looked really cute. Most of the time when we see camels they have their saddle things on and are with their owners who want to charge you to take a picture with it, so it was neat to see this one without anything on it and just sitting there. I went up and pet it and wanted to get a good picture with it just for fun. I got pretty close to it but was worried that it was going to spit or something, little did I know I should have been worried about something else. This picture was taken approximately half a second before this cute little animal reached out and bit my thigh! I was so suprised I jumped quickly away screaming! It's all fun and games until someone gets bitten by a camel, but luckily he doesn't have sharp teeth and I was fine...at least it is a fun story to tell and now you guys know not to get too close to camels!

We saw a lot of villages and towns that Jesus visited and where specific New Testament events took place, such as the miraculous feeding of the congregations of 5,000 and 4,000 people, the Sermon on the Mount, and many miracles. We also visited Capernum where Peter lived and much of Christ's time was spent. This is Caesarea Philippi where Peter bears his testimony and the sealing keys of the kingdom are promised-I know that you can't see very much of it, but I thought the picture was cute...

This picture is with a nun at the Mount of Beattitudes Church. She has a sister at a convent in New Jersey and was excited to give me a message for her sister. We got to ring the bells at the church which was neat and it was a beautiful area.

We went to a Fish Restaurant where we ordered whole fish! They called it St. Peter's fish (tilapia is a less touristy name...) and because the restaurant was practically sitting on the sea we assumed it was fresh fish from the Sea of Galilee. However, later on a worker at the Kibbutz dashed my hopes and told me that they import the fish from China because it is cheaper! Interesting how shipping stuff from China is going to be cheaper than pulling it out right by your restaurant, but whatever. It was actually pretty good and I even tried the eyeball-yummy!

The days pass so quickly...

I have been neglecting my blog and the neglect must continue for a little longer as I will be in Galilee for the next 9 days. The days pass so quickly and we do so many fun things that I just don't get enough time to blog and show you guys all of my fabulous pictures. I will definitely try my hardest to update you when I return from Galilee.

Thanksgiving was fabulous and I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving as well. I am so thankful for all of you and for the experiences I have been able to have in Jerusalem. This picture shows some of the decorations and stuff at Thanksgiving and our Israeli cooks did a fabulous job making an American Thanksgiving. They had normal stuff like turkey and stuffing (both of which were amazing) and then mashed potatoes and gravy, various salads, and to my delight-pumpkin soup! For dessert they had pumpkin pie, peanut butter pie, cookies, brownies, cheesecake, and then some various ethnic desserts. It was way yummy and fun.

FLOATING in the Dead Sea

How many people get to swim in the Dead Sea on their 21st birthday? This week was crazy busy because we had two finals at the beginning of the week adn then we went on a bunch of field trips. On my birthday we went to Masada, the Dead Sea, and Qumran. It was really neat to see Masada which is a fortified palace on top of a rock plateau and overlooks the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea was amazing and you seriously float in it, not swim. We all just sat and floated and it was fabulous as long as you didn't taste it or get it in your eyes. It was mega salty and it left your skin feeling oily, but apparently it is really good for your skin. I don't know what else to say about it, but hopefully the pictures will help you visualize it.





Notice the salt "crust" on our faces-pretty sweet stuff.

My week in pictures

Don't worry my friends, I did more than is represented in these pictures. I got a little sleep, studied for some finals, partied, etc.

Last week a bunch of us made it on the Temple Mount which was way exciting. It has religious importance for Jews, Christians, and Muslims and is one of the most crowded religious sites in the world, so it is hard to get on to. This is a picture of all of us with the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic prayer house and one of the most popular landmarks in Jerusalem.



Being flamingos with the flamingos at the zoo.


Isn't the zoo beautiful?


At the Garden of Gethsemane.

Ketchup-it's like Christmas!

My title is a direct quote from some girls in the cafeteria upon discovery of a new ketchup dispenser we got which uses American ketchup (ketchup here is really sweet and kind of different). Anyway, I thought it was a little extreme to compare ketchup with Christmas, but it just goes to show the random things you miss while living in a foreign country. I love living here but am still really excited to go home for Christmas and see all of my family and experience all of the wonderful sights, sounds, and smells of the Christmas season. The weather has gotten cooler over the last little while which is amazing! I love walking around in this weather and it definitely feels a little more like fall now than it did when it was way hot-though we don't have changing trees with crunchy leaves or squash and pumpkins sitting around. Anyway, I am putting up a bunch more pictures from my trip to Jordan and then will probably talk about what I was up to this week (but I'll put up pictures from this week later).

After leaving Petra we stopped and shopped at a bunch of little shops and they had these ice cream bars called "Mini Giant Diet" bars. I thought it was really funny so we took a picture with them (I didn't try it) plus I love the guy in the background! While in Petra we hiked up to a stone monastery there and this is a picture of one of the views. It was a wonderful hike with over 900 steps that had been carved out of the mountain by a bunch of monks.

We got to visit ancient Jerash which is a Greco-Roman city that is said to be one of the best preserved and most important Roman cities in the Middle East. There are a lot number of striking monuments located in Jerash such as the Corinthium column, Hadrian's Arch, a circus/hippodrome, temples to Zeus and Artemis, the nearly unique oval Forum which is surrounded by a fine colonnade, a long colonnaded street or cardo, two theatres (the Large South Theatre and smaller North Theatre), two baths, a scatter of small temples and an almost complete circuit of city walls (just for the record Wikipedia supplied this list). In the theatre the native men in the picture played the bagpipes for us which was neat and a bunch of us danced around the stage. There are amazing ruins with such intricate detail and was fabulous.


We visited the Jabbok River where Jacob wrestled with the angel and then got the title Israel. This Lauran and I wrestling.
While in Jordan we got to visit the branch in Amman and had a fireside about the church in the Middle East which was interesting. It was fun to see a church building in Jordan and this is us at a stop sign by the church.

As for this week-let's just say it has not been one filled with sleep. I had my Old Testament final which was kind of a killer to study for (it was on the entire Old Testament!). Once that was out of the way though I had time to do fun stuff like visit the Temple Mount, Dormition Abbey, and the Biblical Zoo. They were all really fun and I really liked the zoo. It was just a normal zoo but the exhibits were set up so that you could get really close to the animals and it was beautifully landscaped-plus the weather was perfect. On Thursday night I had a sleepover with some friends which was really fun and we camped out on bean bags in one of the study rooms.

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

I recently got back from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan where we spent four days touring around. It was so neat to see, and I especially enjoyed Petra which is one of the new 7 wonders of the world. We went to Mount Nebo where Moses had a view of the Holy Land and there is a Byzantine Church there to mark the site. We went to St. George's Orthodox Church in Madaba where there is a beautiful mosaic map of the Holy Land dated back to the 6th century AD on the floor of the church. This map shows what is left of the mosaic. I really love mosaics and think that they are beautiful-I plan to have a mosaic floor in my house one day... That night we stayed in Petra at the Petra Palace which was fun. They had two pools and I was going to go swimming but we didn't have much time and they were pretty cold so most people decided not to go, that didn't keep people from pushing others in though...The next day we got to tour around Petra which was amazing. People said that Petra reminded them of Zions in Utah if that helps anyone picture it. There were parts of the road that date to Roman times-look for the chariot marks in the picture. We saw the treasury building which was amazing and where Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was filmed. Petra was wonderful and it was amazing to see magnificent things like the treasury and a monastery and caves that were used as homes. I can not really think of a good way to describe it, so I will just keep posting pictures as I get them and just think of wonderful things. Don't worry-there are more fun pictures to come!