I call Jerusalem home...

We're back now from the our trip to Galilee! We were able to spend 10 days there at a kibbutz on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. We went on some amazing field trips and were able to have our New Testament classes on the beach! There is no better way to study the New Testament. We're all looking a little more sun kissed. We also went down to Eilat yesterday and went snorkeling in the Red Sea. I thought the coral would be brighter, but there were beautiful fish and worth the 8hour round trip bus ride. Everyone pretty much went from sun kissed to burned though after yesterday, even those who continued to apply sunscreen.
We're watching the Saturday morning session of General Conference live tonight and I'm so excited. Next week on Shabbat we're watching all of the other sessions.
I'll get some more pics up of Galilee and write more soon!

Bible Land Field Trip

Before I get into our field trip from today there is something going on in this blessed month of March. . .March Madness! Now at the Shekel Shaq we set up the "shekel shaq shoot out" bracket group. Of course I had to do it though I have no idea about college basketball and even more so since I've been in Israel! Though we all knew BYU had no chance of winning we still had to show some cougar pride and we got the BYU vs. Texas A&M game playing from online! This was the crowd that showed up to watch the game. Sad loss, but at least they had a chance! Still gotta love BYU sports! And I have to add that I totally guessed on my bracket and I'm tied in 7th place in our group! I was in fourth for a little :)
Anway, on our way to Neot Kedumim, the Biblical Landscape Reserve, Priscille pointed out this scene to me on the side of the road and was like "Look it's Mary and Joseph!". I had to whip out my camera to document it because I thought it was so great! Joseph is even sportin' some hot pink crocs!
Our first station at the bible land was sheep/goat herding. We were divided into groups and had to herd the herd into 3 different circles and have them stay for 30 seconds in each one. We did pretty well. It kind of made me miss our goats Alma and Andy who are both buried under the big tree on the farm. Bless their hearts!
These yellow flowers were beautiful and everywhere! Of course I have like a billion photos of/in/with them. This was the first one... It's beautiful weather here these days and everything is getting so green!
The birthday girl! It was Moon's birthday today and she turned 21! I'm so jealous, how often do you get to celebrate your birthday in Israel and going around bible land?! :) I was just playing around with the color accent thing on my camera and Moon happened to be the perfect subject.
I mentioned something in an earlier blog about self timer pics and how awesome they are. Here is our best one from today! I love it so much! Emma and I are the queens of self timer.
We made this delicious blend of spices with the hyssop plant. We had to crush the dry plant first though.
Chelsea was my partner and was really into crushing it. Maybe releasing some anger issues from living with me? :) Our whole mixture didn't turn out as good as it is in the Old City. I think we were missing some ingredients or our ratios were off. We also made some pita! It wasn't as good as when I've made it in Provo though, but it was still fun.
We watched a scribe as he was copying down the Book of Esther. He also chanted to us too.
While we were sitting there I looked down and realized that I had bird poo on the back of my pants! Seriously, what?! How did that get there?! Gross! Dang birds!The scribe also showed us the Torah! How cool is that?!
Finally, we went on a train ride. This is my favorite shot. Rachael and Emma are just so classy! Check it out!

Christmas on St. Patrick's Day!

Once upon a time we went to Bethlehem on a field trip....

Bethlehem University visit with Dr. Musallam. Dr. Musallam teaches our Modern Near Eastern Studies class from the Palestinian perspective and he also teaches at Bethlehem University. Here are some of the boys after our lecture playing b-ball with some of the students. Sadly not one of our boys made a basket.
I really liked the visit to the University because we were able to see a documentary film by one of the faculty that won first place at the Dubai Film Festival recently called Memory of the Cactus (I think). We also had a panel of students that we were able to ask questions too and that was fun talking with them.

A scene of Bethlehem
We ate lunch in this tent type restaurant. It was a cool experience, though not the best pita and kabobs I've had so far. The highlight though was watching a nun in another group there, who looked like she was straight out of The Sound of Music, smoke the hookah, not once but TWICE as they passed it around! Here is our table:

I'm telling you they like hands over here. I see awkward hands on things everywhere! Why not just write "stop"?
A quaint falafel stand by Manger Square.
The Church of the Nativity. Where Jesus was actually born with 97% surety. This actually wasn't as amazing as I thought it would be. The church is beautiful inside and out, but there were a ton of people there. We got pushed through the manger area really fast, so I got a dumb blurry picture of the manger area.
The inside hall of the church.
The mural of the angel telling Joseph of Mary's divine pregnancy. Miriam and I got a picture in front of it and did you notice the angel's head is cut off? Thanks Jacob, thanks :)The place of the manger - why does it look so much like a fireplace? This is my dumb, blurry picture of it that I got before I was hustled out.
The separation wall at the Bethlehem border crossing. There is a ton of graffiti on it. This was on the Bethlehem side.
I thought this was one of the coolest.
This was the best attempt to get a pic of this part of the wall where it had posted huge pics of what looked like crazy Jewish people.
The scene as we arrived at Shepherd's hill.
During our little program we sang hymns, mainly Christmas ones. It was pretty cold, but an amazing experience! I thought coming to Jerusalem I would have all of these amazing experiences as we visited the churches and the sites, but they all have so many people at them and are so commercialized I guess I never grasp or realize the full effect of where I am. As we sat on Shepherd's Hill though and sang Silent Night, in the quiet darkness, looking up at the stars tears came to my eyes as I did realize where I was. Sitting on a hill in between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and thinking of the shepherds and the joy they must have felt as they looked up and saw that beautiful star and realized that the Christ child was born and the prophecies were being fulfilled! What JOY!
This was at the end. Looking out at the scene with the lights of the Jewish settlements in the back. The stars were beautiful that night too! That night is one of my favorite memories so far!

p.s. I need a hair cut badly! 1st item of business upon returning home!

Update

So we took our Arabic final! I actually was studying for it and thought Ayman had said it was going to be 40 questions. We get to class and he gives us his final and by the second page I was like what?! that's all? I guess I should've realized that it's only pass/fail and one credit and it couldn't have been that intense anyway. Oh well, I finished it in like 5 minutes. That had to be one of my favorite classes and we didn't even have it very often. This is a pick of our class! Those were some good times!

The family we met that one Shabbat actually invited us back for lunch. We went back and had the most delicious lunch with them! We were teaching the girls hand games. Here they are in the middle of "double double this this". They loved learning it!
Here is the group of us who were all there again for lunch! I love all of them! It has been so fun being able to go back and get to know them! The other day when we stopped by to say hi the 12 year old girl showed us all the pictures she'd saved on her computer of Miley Cyrus and all this stuff about Nick Jonas, who she thinks is the cutest of the J-Bros! We just thought that was really funny. When we go next we told them we were going to help prepare food and they said they would teach us! That and Arabic dancing! 

The Post of Lasts!

Tomorrow I will turn in my last paper for Old Testament (just turned in my final tonight)!

Today was our last Arabic class and tomorrow I'll take the final!

On Thursday we have our final for Ophir's class!

On Friday we have our final for Musallam's class!

One Friday we took our Old Testament field trip final and turned in our field trip books!

I never thought this time would come! After Friday my load will be so much lighter! Lovely!

I'm a ninja!

For Friday the 13th (last night) we played capture the flag. We were divided into the ninjas and the pirates. We played all around the grounds of the center. Carly and I got ready in like 2 min so we don't really look much like ninjas. The two of us mainly just ran around and pretended like people were after us, but we didn't see a pirate once though we were on their side and we didn't even have any idea where our flag was even hidden. We had fun though and we took some awesome pictures while hiding in the bushes!

This is my favorite of Carly! That's one of MY roommates! She rocks! :)
Finally we got word that the pirates had actually like gotten our flag like a half hour earlier and the game was over. No one really wanted to play again, so we just watched a movie. Here were some of the best dressed pirates though plus me and Carly!

jordan the 2nd

Let me fill you in on the other things we did in Jordan. We had to the opportunity to stop by the Jordanian branch building and have a fireside. It's not actually recognized as a church there so that's why it says the "center for cultural and educational affairs" on the sign. It was a really interesting fireside. If you didn't know, in Israel the only reason we are able have a center here is on the condition that we don't do any missionary work or talk about the church at all. In Jordan though, you can talk about the church and share doctrine, but only with people that are already Christian. I thought that was interesting though. Funny thing, when we first walked in it totally smelled like every other church building I've been in :)
During our free time in Amman we first went to Rainbow Street, which we heard was a fun place, but it's probably more fun when it's actually warm weather because no one was really outside. After a little while of exploring and getting so sahalab (the really good rice pudding type drink) we decided to head to Mecca Mall, which we were told we had to experience. It's a huge mall! While we were there we saw this frozen yogurt place that wasn't actually open yet, but people were in setting up, so we had to go in! We went in and the guy was really nice and gave us a little sample. I had the honeydew flavor and it was just like Spoon Me back in Provo! Delicious! Emma, Priscilla, and I were so excited! After walking around for a little and letting Jeff and Priscilla ride the mechanical bull we decided we had to go back and get an actual cup of it. We went back and got a cup. I had honeydew with granola and dark chocolate chips on top! We kind of got ripped off paying $5, but it was worth it and the guy was really nice. We found out that he'd just gotten here 3 weeks ago from the states and was actually from Rancho Cucamonga, CA! That's where my brother and his family used to live! Here is one of the most awkward pictures ever when we used self timer :)
In the mall there were all the normal stores along with some different ones. But I had to get a pic in front of F21! Yeah! We didn't go into any shops though. Did you know that the Jordanian Dinar is actually worth more than the US dollar? Amman is actually a clean, organized, more modern city and seems prosperous. 

Priscilla actually realized she left her shirt and camera at the yogurt place once we'd gotten back to the hotel and so we ran back to the mall to find it. We found it and everything, but our taxi ride back was eventful. The taxi was nasty! We get in and the seats are wet! NASTY! The windows were fully wet and dripping on the inside. I couldn't stop laughing because we were trying to adjust so that we had as little of us touching the seat as possible. The cab driver kept looking back and he was taking us some way that none of us recognized back to the hotel and we were ready to just have him drop us out. Then we heard this noise and our cab had a flat tire! We hopped out of there fast and got in another, just to find out that our hotel was like 50 feet up the street behind this building and the other taxi driver still charged us! haha. We made it back though emma, priscilla, and I were soaked through from that seat to our underwear and felt really gross! One taxi ride I'll never forget!

We also went to Jerash, which was actually one of the cities of the Decapolis. It was inhabited in the Bronze Age, but then the Romans came in and took over. These are some of the most amazing ruins! There was a whole theater, plenty of columns everywhere, and a central court area, etc. 
This is the central area. How amazing is that?
The site of Jerash is huge and this is one of the old roads we walked down. I love the unevenness of the road! My favorite part of the whole thing was the details carved into the tops of the columns. They were so beautiful. 
The old mosaics are also amazing. It's amazing that they're still in such good shape. This was one of the floors of church ruins. 
I can't remember what lookout this was, but I'll get back to it....
This is the view over part of Jordan!
One of the last things we did was go to the King Abdullah Mosque, which was completed in 1990. It was beautiful! We had to wear these black robes to ensure our modesty as girls before we entered. We all felt like we were in Harry Potter, which was awesome. Someone pulled out a stick as we were all putting them on and pretended it was a wand. This was us inside the mosque in our robes. Our tour guide talked to us a lot about the religion of Islam and it's amazing the parallels there are between religions! I love learning about other religions!
Here is the minaret of the mosque where the call of prayer rings out from 5 times a day over loud speakers. 
Jayne and I found out we were twins, so we had to take a picture! We didn't plan it, but coordinated in the picture so we would look more the same with our camera bags across the same way. 
This is the Jordan River! This was and interesting dock kind of thing that we sat by. The water was pretty dirty I think because it had just rained or something and they said that usually it is not really even high at all, which I thought was surprising!
This is a picture of us around the spot where some church built a baptismal font type area where they believe that Christ was actually baptized by John the Baptist. The river doesn't actually flow through this area anymore because like every other river in the world it has changed its course slowly but surely over time!

YAY for Jordan!

PURIM

Last night was the Jewish holiday of Purim that started at sundown and ended at sundown today. During Purim they celebrate the story of Esther from the Bible, but then there is a whole part of it where everyone dresses up (kind of like halloween, but with more of a carnival feel) and goes crazy partying. We heard from our Jewish Modern Near Eastern Studies teacher that it's a fun holiday and would be fun to go out and experience. So we all decided to dress up and go. So we decided to go out and take West Jerusalem by storm. Here is some of the group:

We got down there pretty early and nothing was really going on since most people were in synagogue. We did see these two guys who were juggling with flames, which was cool. 
Since nothing was happening we all just wandered around, got some gelato (mmm...dark chocolate and pistachio were such good choices!), and stopped in shops to stay warm. During the night the groups continually changed, so here is another group shot. Check out all the face paint on the girls! Thanks to Moon for doing all of it for us!
Finally, it started getting crazier. There were people lighting and throwing this firecracker, really loud popper things all over the place. They were really loud. Then they were selling all these cans of like spray suds that someone kept spraying all over us while we were dancing. It just stayed on our hair and clothes like in the pic below.  
All in all it was really fun! We did get in trouble once by the Jewish men who were playing what sounded like Jewish folk tunes because I guess girls aren't supposed to dance...oops! Thinking about the crowd of us it was funny. A whole group of Mormon kids, totally sober, dressed up and celebrating a Jewish holiday with everyone else :)