Kapparot and Ramadan

Yesterday morning a bunch of us woke up early to go to a Jewish Orthodox neighborhood to see the Jewish ritual of Kapparot. Before Yom Kippur which started last night, the long time tradition of Kapparot has been done in which people circle a live chicken around their heads three times, and then their sins are transferred to the chicken. The chicken is then killed and eaten or given to the poor to eat. We walked around Jewish neighborhoods looking for people doing this which was very interesting, and then we found a place that was selling live chickens for the practice. It was defintely an experience that I won't see again!

Ramadan is going on this month for the Muslim religion. Ramadan is a month of fasting in which they do not eat or drink during daylight hours. Because the neighborhood we live in is mostly Muslim, we are not supposed to eat or drink out in public as a courtesy to them and also because they might find it offensive. During this time, Muslims are also supposed to focus on following the teachings of Islam and not lying, fighting, etc. and are also supposed to read the Qur'an.

It is really neat to live in this very religious area and to see how all of the religions interact with each other. I am glad that I get to be here during a time when there are so many holidays and such going on in a lot of different religions.

St. Anne and the Valley of Bethesda

On Tuesday I went with some friends to St. Anne's Basilica and the Pools of Bethesda. The church is beautiful and a bunch of people from my group sang together in it and it had a wonderful echo. St. Anne is Mary's mother and the site is known as the birthplace of Mary. The pools were once healing pools and crowds of invalids in Jesus' day would wait by them to be cured. This is the place where Jesus healed a sick man in John 5. It was a really beautiful area and we got some good pictures here.

After St. Anne's we went to the Western Wall. The Western Wall, or Wailing Wall, is revered for its proximity to the sacred Holy of Holies on the Temple Mount, which is the Most Holy Place in Judaism. This means that for Jews the Western Wall is the holiest location that is currently generally accessible to the Jewish people for prayer. Every Friday night at sunset Jews come here to dance, sing, and pray to welcome in Shabbat. We went as a class to see it a few weeks ago, and then we went back during the day to see it. People go up to the wall and pray, and often leave prayer notes that they stick in the crevices of the wall.

Pomegranates!

So we have pomegranate and olive trees all around the center which is way fun. I am eating a pomegranate right now that got picked off the tree two minutes ago. My friends have tried pomegranate juice in the city and I am really excited to try that. Hurray for pomegranates!

Condensed Update

I am sorry that I havn't posted anything in a while, they keep us really busy here, but I am going to try to be better, and will at least post some pictures. We are leaving for Egypt tomorrow morning which should be awesome, so I won't be able to post anything for a week and a half until we get back!

I have gotten to see a lot of neat sites over the past two weeks, and know that the fun has just begun. We went on a class field trip last week and went to different sites and learned more about the geography around Jerusalem. We went and saw Nabi Samwil which hosts the tomb of the Prophet Samuel. We also went to the Augusta Victoria church and the 7 Arches Overlook. This is us at the 7 Arches Overlook which looks out at Jerusalem.


Two weeks ago I went to the Garden Tomb where people believe Jesus was buried and resurrected. We went on a tour and it was really neat place to see.

I go to church...on Saturday!

So while I am at the Jerusalem Center I have church on Saturday. I have gone to church on Sunday for my entire life, so it is definitely different to have church on Saturday and then class on Sunday. I think that the main reason we have it on Saturday is because it is the more commonly practiced Sabbath day in the Holy Land. The Jews believe that Saturday is the Sabbath, or Shabbat as we call it here, because it is the seventh day of the week. Muslims have their Sabbath on Friday, and Christains believe it is on Sunday because it is the day Christ was resurrected and is a holy day. As we talked about in church though, it is not the day of worship that is important, it is the way it is observed.

We have sacrament meeting first in the beautiful auditorium overlooking Jerusalem. It is neat to overlook a city where so many religious things have happened and I especially thought it was neat when we sang "There is a Green Hill Far Away" because it really isn't far away at all. There is just a tiny branch here that is mostly made up of people working at the US consulate. With 80 students, we seriously quadruple the branch! We meet early for choir, which has probably 65 students and is conducted by the organist here.

Some revisions to church songs a lady told me about:
"Friday is a special day it's the day we get ready for Shabbat..."
"Close Close by on Judea's Plain..."
"The Date Nut Tree" (instead of Popcorn Popping)
"There is a green hill nearby..."

Shawarma Shawarma Shawarma

Yesterday I got to try my first meal outside the center. I went into East Jerusalem with some friends and we found a place with a lot of people so we felt safe trying it (I have heard plenty of stories about sketchy places...). Shawarma is pretty much like a doner or kebab, for those who have tried them, and this one was quite yummy. They have huge piles of meat (I think lamb) and then put pieces of fat on top of them and cook, letting the fat drip down over the meat. They shave the meat off and then put it in a pit/wrap type thing along with some salad and a sauce. Delicious. I loved the guy's beard in the picture, cool huh?

I also tried pop rock chocolate which is amazing! It is really good milk chocolate with pop rocks mixed in, I thought it sounded weird but tried it and it was really good!

Who do I live with?

There are three BYU professors that live here with their wives-Brother Huntington, Draper, and Ludlow. I have Brother Huntington as my cultural teacher and Brother Draper as my Old and New Testament teacher, and both of them will be my tour guides on our buses or "mobile classrooms" as Brother Draper likes to call them. All of them are really neat and very intelligent scholars. I am really excited for all of my classes , but they are going to work us mega hard. I think that it will be good though, because the more I study and learn in the classroom, the more I will understand and the more meaningful the sites we visit will be. There are also a few other service couples that live here with us as well who serve as the doctor, nurse, housing people, tour guides, and organist. They are all really nice and it is way fun to have them here.

The staff is made up of around 25 Jewish, Muslim, and Christian natives of the Holy Land that work as cooks, cleaners, security, and administration. The director of the Center is a Jewish man and the assistant director is a Muslim man-they are both extremely helpful and funny. All of the staff are really nice, and they are not allowed to discuss politics at work to helps prevent any diversity problems. They don't live here, but a lot of them are here working a lot. While I am mentioning the security people, I figured I would let you know about our security. We all have cell phones and can call the center if we ever get lost of left behind or have any problems. We also have cards that we use to scan in and out of the center so security knows where we are in case there was ever a problem. We have a midnight curfew.

I am here with a total of 80 students-60 girls and 20 guys. The girl to guy ratio kinda stinks for obvious reasons, but actually the main reason is because whenever we leave the center after dark we have to have a male with us, so at night they are in high demand. We have a lot of fun together though and got to be fast friends after our long trip to get over here. We have a bunch of people from Utah and Idaho, and then people from lots of different states and suprisingly there are three or four people from New Jersey.

It is fun to live in the same building as everyone and to go to school in the same building as well. It is easy to find groups of people that are doing fun things, and another thing I appreciate is seeing everyone studying. We are all taking the same classes and have the same workload, so when I see other people studying, it helps me realize I need to study. I am pretty good at putting off studying until the last minute, but it is definitely easier to study when I see everyone else doing it and I can do it with friends. We have toured around the city together and have played volleyball in our gym lately which has been a lot of fun.

It is kind of funny, but two of my roommates are from Idaho and the other one goes to BYU-Idaho, so I am the only one without an Idaho connection. They are all way fun though and we have already had some really good laughs. This picture is moi, Kendra, Carlee, and Amy.

Centering in on the Center

So for the next four months I will be living in the beautiful BYU Jerusalem Center. I saw some pictures of it before I left but the center is so much more amazing in real life. I got the grand tour late on Wednesday night right when we arrived at the center. The building has eight floors on it, and the bottom five floors are living apartments. Each apartment has four beds and a bathroom, nothing terribly amazing, but the most fantastic part is each apartment has a terrace with an incredible view of the Old City. I wish I could take a panoramic picture of it, but trust me, we have an amazing view. Every morning there is a Muslim prayer call around 5:00 am and yesterday it woke me up. They have them five times a day, but for some ironic reason that is usually the only one that I hear. The showers hear are amazing, they have a mega strong pressure that almost hurts! We also have pomegranate and olive trees all around the center which is really neat.

The sixth floor has the Oasis which is our cafeteria. Generally they have a few different types of meat, a small salad bar, some sides, and then always have peanut butter and pitas and bread. The food is pretty good and lots of the dishes use unique spices and stuff, but they still have normal things like french fries and such. They have really good yogurt for breakfast. They also have these cubed chunks of tan something that is slightly sweet and tastes pretty good. I tried to ask one of the cooks what it was, but I didn't really understand what he was saying (I don't think he understood what I was saying). All of the classrooms are on the sixth floor, along with a large forum where we have lectures and concerts. There is also a computer lab and a few study rooms with nice flat screen tvs and games that you can check out.

There is also a secret bomb shelter on the sixth floor that has bathrooms and stuff, so don't worry I will be safe if anything happens. The laundry room on the second floor can also work as a bomb shelter. I think there is a whole tunnel system underground that we could escape through anyways, but I doubt we will ever have to use any of these things...

On the seventh floor there are administrative offices and then the eighth floor has a library with royal purple carpeting and a pretty good stash of books. There is also a learning resource center which they use for receptions and such, and a few other large rooms where they can show people a DVD about the center and show movies and such. The best room in the entire center is the auditorium on the eighth floor. It houses a huge and beautiful organ and three of the walls are pretty much made up entirely of windows. It has mega high ceilings, and the view with all of these windows is magnificent. We have church in there, and it is amazing to be able to look out over the entire city that hosts so many religious sites. This is an amazing building and has marble and limestone throughout it. I am so lucky to be able to live in this incredible place for a few months!

Cabin Fever

So it was pretty funny because on the way to the airport a guy going to Jerusalem with me asked if I thought we would all get cabin fever from being on an airplane so long. I started singing the song from Muppet Treasure Island and then thought it was a funny thing to say and brushed it off. I don't know if the cabin fever thought was lingering in the back of my mind or whatever, but after like five hours of our 12 hour flight I was starting to feel the effects. Fun times.

I flew from Newark to Salt Lake with my Dad last weekend and rode first class for the first time ever! He was able to upgrade himself and a companion and it was an awesome way to start off my trip to the Holy Land. I can never sleep on airplanes or buses, but I was able to sleep quite comfortably on the way there, and there was a ton of leg room!

Traveling with 80 Jerusalem Center students was quite fun, and a lot of people asked us about our trip. My flight from Salt Lake to Atlanta was a normal four hour flight and went fairly quickly, and then we had a three or four hour layover until our flight to Tel Aviv. My seat from Atlanta to Tel Aviv was in the middle of the row and I knew I was in for a fun time. I think I lasted like two hours and then had to get out of my seat and walk around. It was actually really nice because they let us walk around the cabin and stand around talking in this middle section of the plane. We met some pretty cool Israelis on plane that were telling us about what it is like to live there and one of them got out his guitar and played for us on the airplane until the flight attendants shut him down.

I just switched back and forth between standing and walking around and sitting and watching a movie or something, but my friend next to me was sleeping practically the whole flight, so I had to figure out ways get in and out of the row. He said that I could wake him up anytime to get out, but I felt bad waking him up constantly just because I couldn't sleep. So, to the amusement of the girls across the row from me, I managed to jump/step over him and back. I only woke him up once doing this and was quite proud of my manuevering skills. I think it is my favorite memory of the trip so far.

Anyway, we finally made it to Jerusalem and today we are going on a tour of the Old City!

Jerusalem here I come!

Tomorrow I am flying out of the country and going to Israel! I can't believe that I am really leaving so soon. I went to an orientation meeting today that got me even more excited for the trip and now I know a little better what to expect. I know that they are going to work us hard though, I already got assigned to read Genesis chapters 1-20 before I get to the center! Luckily I will have a ton of time on the plane. I fly out of Salt Lake tomorrow at 1:30 pm to Atlanta and then after a three hour layover we will head to Tel Aviv. I will probably get to the center around 5:00 pm on Wednesday. We can only take one 50 pound suitcase to check which, as anyone who has traveled with me can vouch for, presented quite the challenge for me. Packing my life for four months into one suitcase? I thought it wasn't possible but in the end I succeeded, after slightly bending the rules and adding a duffel bag and back pack. Don't worry, they have let me on the plane carrying on much more than that...Everything I wanted to fit did, even though I will be finding all of my socks in random pockets throughout my luggage as I unpack. I was so proud of myself for being able to pack so lightly I had to take a picture to show everyone!