The Sabbath is Saturday...exciting!

Hello everyone! I am now having a little time, on our Sabbath here at the BYUJC, to update my blog. I have two days to tell you about, so get ready.

First, yesterday (Friday) was a day of firsts! This picture is right after breakfast, on the balcony on the sixth floor of the center. It goes me, then Kathryn Hawker (roommate and girl I met in Europe), Amanda Yockey (other roommate) and Rebecca. We had our first classes in the morning, starting with Religion -- Old Testament for the first half of the semester. It was wonderful! We're split into two classes with two religion teachers, and then when we switch to the second half of the semester and do New Testament, we switch to the other teacher, and have him. I really like my Old Testament teacher. His name is Brother Manscill, and he has a son that served in New Zealand with Reed. Small Mormon world, right? He talked to us about class expectations, and things like that. We'll have two midterms and a final. The midterms are open note and book, but the final isn't, so I'm going to try to not have to use my book (scriptures) for the first two. We'll see if this excellent memory my wonderful parents gave me still has some juice left...lately I've felt like I'm an old woman in memory years, but maybe that's just related to my attention and interest levels....who knows. Our religion classes are the classes that are directly linked to our field trips, also. On monday we're going to have our first field trip, which actually is more related to geography, and therefore our Near Eastern Studies class, but it is the only one that isn't primarily religious and secondarily geographic.
After our OT (Old Testament) class, we had our NES class (you can figure it out...look above). We got two new books to add to the two we got in Provo on Monday and the field trip book we got in OT, which is also going to be used in our NES class. So, needless to say, we have a lot of reading to do this semester. I think most of it will be enjoyable though, because I just read the first field trip pages in the FTM (Field Trip Manuel) and I really liked it. Plus most of the sites just have a page and then some questions, so it's like a search and find the answer kind of thing, which I think is fun in my nerdy kind of way.

After that, we had some free time, in which I went upstairs to study with Kathryn Hawker, my roommate and the the girl I knew before from the Europe trip. It was fun. I spent most of it looking up Bible Dictionary terms for OT, and writing them down so I would remember them better.

After that we had lunch, which is when we got our cell phones and our Security Cards, which were our hold-ups for letting us out of the building and into the city. The other hold up was that on Friday mornings we aren't allowed into the Old City, or East Jerusalem until 3:00 p.m., which basically means we aren't allowed out of the center. Well actually, I guess we could go to West Jerusalem, which is the more modern part. The reason we aren't allowed in East Jerusalem or The Old City until three is because of prayer in the morning, and the fact that sometimes there can be problems with crowds getting stirred up (either positively or negatively, I think). We also aren't allowed in those areas after sunset on any night, and are only allowed in West Jerusalem after sunset if we have a male present in our group. (And I just had to clarify the rules with the people around me about 20 times to get everything right....so there you go. Rule City.) Anyway, after lunch, at three o'clock, we went into the city!

This gets its own paragraph. We left a little bit after three and had eight people in our group. This is a picture of me, Kathryn, Alyssa, and Amanda, right after we walked down into and up from the Kidron Valley, which is a Valley that separates the Mount of Olives and Mount Scopus (the mountains the center is one), and Mt. Moriah (the temple mount where Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac and where Muslims believe Muhammad ascended into heaven, and also where the Dome of the Roke is today), and we took a picture with the center in the background. We decided to go to the money changer first, Alladin. (the emphasis is on the last syllable, with the "i"). Then I wanted to go to the olive wood carving shops, which turned out to be a waste of time because the were closed. We're right in the middle of Ramadan, which means the people fast from sun-up to sun-down, and then eat when it's dark. So every night there's kind of a big party going on where people eat and visit and etc. So I think the shops were closed because it was the sabbath for them, Friday, and because it's Ramadan. Or maybe something else, who knows. The store hours were all in Arabic, which always complicates things a little bit. After that we decided to go into the Old City, which means you have to enter in through one of the eight gates....but for us it means one of three gates that we're allowed to go through. There's the Damascus Gate, The Lion's Gate, and Dung Gate. (Yes, it's called Dung gate. Apparently that's where the sewage from the city used to run out.) We went for Damascus gate because that's the one they showed us on our walking tour. Well, when we got there it was about ten times as crowded as the day before, and we were a little scared, but had been warned it was a busy gate and figured if we were going to do it at all, there was no time like the present. We got started to approach the crowds and a Muslim man stopped us. I was wary at first, but he said, "Mormons! Mormons...don't go in there now, don't go there." and explained to us that it was very busy because all the Muslims were streaming out to get ready for sun-down, and that it would be dangerous and hard to try to push into the Old City through there, so he told us to find a different route. I'm always super afraid when people try to come up and talk to us, and help us, and I'll never let my guard down, but I've realized that the people recognize us as Mormons and know we're good, pure people, and want to help us and keep us from danger. There are so many stories I've heard just from being here about people helping the students. Some of them, unfortunately, also include people hindering the students (thus making a need for people helping the students), but I really think that Heavenly Father is aware of our presence here and His hand goes before us to help provide safety for us. It's such a blessing to be here, and feel that.

I am very excited for classes and learning more about the Holy Land this semseter! I hope I can just be a little sponge and soak up all the wonderful experiences and knowledge I can gain from being here. Okay, this is long long long, but I'll just quickly finish up yesterday.... after we tried for Damascus gate we went to the Lion's gate, and we entered just fine, without a crowd. This picture is just inside the Lion's Gate, and that's me and Michelle, my other roommate that wasn't in the earlier pictures. We did find the Church where Christ was scourged, which is the first stop on the road, "Via Dolorosa," the road that marks Christ's journey through the city, carrying the cross. The church is just up past us on this road. There are nine stations of Churches, and other event markers of his journey, and then five in the Church of the Holy Seplechre. Kind of interesting. So we found the first one on our own, and then we found a little playground with kids playing inside the Old City and we sat and watched them while we rested. After that we walked back up the hill to the center, and got a treat at this little store right across from the lower enterance from the center. I got little chocolate balls like the ones, Reed, we put in our pocket that melted and got chocolate everywhere. I haven't tried them yes, cause it's fast sunday and we don't eat for another twenty minutes, but I will. If they're good I'll bring you some home, so you can be addicted to these chocolates with me too.
This picture is looking back at the Lion's Gate. You can see it, the blue car just came through. And the little playground is just off to our left. I didn't take any picture of that cause I thought it might be bad to take pictures of someone's kids.....ya think? :)

Okay, I feel like this is too long to add Sunday onto it, but I'm going to anyway...Take a break and come back later if you need one! And I'm sorry, I didn't take any pictures on Sabbath...I should've but I didn't. I will repent!

Today I woke up, and breakfast would normally start at eight, but since we didn't have it because of fast sunday, we woke up at eight and got all showered, primped, and dressed for church. Then I went to choir at nine, which was really fun, and Church starts at eleven. So, for choir we practice for an hour every sabbath (we can't say "every sunday" because church isn't on sunday! It's a little hard to get used to.) before Sacrament, in this big, beautiful room on the top floor of the center. I'm going to try hard to get some pictures on here, I promise. Anyway, we sing the prelude for church every sunday too, so we rehearsed that and then started rehearsing for songs for the Christmas Concert, which we will present to the community and the center on December 6th. Fun, right?! I'm excited.

Church was a little emotional for me today. I'm sure a few people noticed me trying not to cry a lot of times, but I missed my family, and I missed Reed. I was so blessed this summer to be able to go to Chruch with you guys so much, and sing in harmony so much with Reed. (or listen while he sang harmony, and I sang melody.) It was a weird feeling to not have everyone around me, and I really missed all of you. But it was still a great experience, and testimony meeting was wonderful. Gospel Doctrine was really great, because it's all the students and the branch members all in one room. I really liked it. Relief Society was great too. Our President is a Palestine woman who joined the church 13 years ago, but hasn't been able to come to the branch for Sabbaths until December, becausee Palestines aren't allowed to be in Jerusalem. (They control the West Bank). The presidency came around to all the girls' rooms after church to give us a treat and get to know us, which was fun. Our Relief Sociaty president lives in Bethlehem and got us all little ornaments that she tied around a little bag of candy. They were all wooden ornaments of the manger scene. It was really nice of her.

Anyway, now I've just been doing a little preparation for the field trip, and now blogging.

Thank you all for sticking around to the end of this blog! Wow it took forever, and is very long, but I hope all of you enjoy it. I love you all!