Midterms Week and More Old Churches

This week was midterms week, which means lots of studying and not a lot of city time.  But we did have a lot of fun during study breaks.   (Most notably watching the super old Disney cartoon short “Sun shine Makers”.  If you ever get the chance, watch it.  Just search it on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQGN0UwuJxw

  It is absolutely hilarious, and the songs will get stuck in your head for hours).

But the highlights of this week are probably . . . . 

ARAB CULTURE NIGHT . . .  

There is a man named Chibon in the Old City who LOVES BYU kids, and he let us borrow a bunch of his Arab clothes from his store for the night, so we went and borrowed those, and then we came back, got all ready, and went to Arab culture night.  The night started out with two sheiks from the Al-Aqusa mosque (Dome of the Rock) doing a call to prayer.  Then, we went to dinner.  And by dinner I mean an absolute feast!  There was everything you could imagine and it was all divine.  I think  the best thing I had was this watermelon juice for dessert.  It is like liquid watermelon with vanilla in it, and it is soooooo good.  I can’t wait to come home and make some for you all.  After dinner we went to dancing.  We leaned the Durka, a traditional Arabic dance from some cute preteen Palestinian girls.  I think we stressed our little girl out because she started out teaching us moves and saying “This one is super easy, you will learn soo fast.” and by the last move she was saying “This is easy move for me, but it is hard for you.  I know that you can learn it.”  She was adorable though.  Then we took pictures in all our Arabic garb.  I had a blast.  

Me and Sister Woods, one of the professor's wives.

 Me and some of my friends.  (and sister Wood in the back.  Gosh she is such a hoot.)

We also got to go on a field trip to the Shephelah or the valleys of Israel. . . We went to the valley where Samson lived, where David slew Goliath, and other biblical places.

It's kind of a long story of why we had a mirror . . . but we did.  Well basically we had it so we could reflect the sun off of it and flash it to the other class that was 12 miles away on another peak.  And it worked by the way.  Anyway, this is a "ghost tree" in one of the valleys.  Nobody knows why it is called a ghost tree.  It just is.  So we made up a ghost story for it.

In the Valley of Elah, where David slew Goliath and after a brief lesson there . . . we got to sling stones!!!!  So I have now slung stones in the valley where David slung stones!!  Although I don’t think that any of my throws could have taken anyone out.  Slinging stones is harder than you think, but I am proud to say that I did not hit anyone in the head with a rock accidentally, so it looks like I have more of a future in stone slinging than stone skipping, because i have accidentally hit someone in the head with a rock doing that (sorry Jenna Goode).  Or maybe it is the other way around, because if the point is to throw a rock at their head . . . . 

Me and my handy dandy sling

Me and fluffy.  Jk, his name is really Cerberus.

Anyway, next we went to these caves.  During the hellenistic period (where the Romans were around) the people learned that if they could dig through the 7 feet of limestone, they would get to chalk that was super easy to carve out.  So they would dig these massive caves underneath their little mud brick houses.  We got to go into a bunch of these caves.  

This cave is a dovecote.  It is where they kept all the birds to raise them for fertilizer (apparently their poop really makes crops grow) and also to eat them.  There were not too many pigeons when we went there, but there were a couple still living in this ancient bird house.  

 Me and JHart at the dovecote.

Another cave we went to, called Bell Cave, had amazing acoustics.  Like they have concerts there in the summer because the acoustics are so good.  It was super cool to walk in and hear the other Jeru group singing deeper in the cave.  The entire cave was echoing their harmonies (have I mentioned that literally everyone in my group sang in choir . . . like seriously sometimes I feel like I am on a never ending choir tour.  Or in the middle of high school musical.  I am not kidding.  I am in the real life Jerusalem the Musicial.  One person in the group starts humming, and then all the sudden there are twenty people singing, and all sorts of harmonies going on . . . . all while we are in the line for the bathroom in some rest stop grocery store in Jericho.  And I am like “Does anyone else feel like this is not normal?!?)  Haha, I really love it because me and my roommates just crack up every time this happens.  I don’t know if I have told you about my roommates yet.  I don’t know who picked roommates, but they were spot on.  My roommates are 

Carley---- 6’4’, accounting major, pretty laid back, soo funny once you get to know her

Jenna—super spunky and determined, has an adorable smile, got her mission call to Korea the same day I got my mission call

Valarie——just finished getting her social studies teaching degree from BYU-I, a total hoot, always laughing—well we are all always laughing, especially when we are all together.

And we all go running together a couple mornings a week.  Which is a whole other story.  Basically, I love running.  But I really love running when we pass my gorgeous views and ancient sites in a country half way around the world from where I grew up, and this is what I get to do every morning.  I love it!  Although it does create problems when you have four sweaty girls and one shower and class in an hour.  

Another highlight of the week was going to the church that commemorates where the Lord taught the people the Lord’s prayer.  It has the Lord’s prayer in every language imaginable.  Like half of the languages I have never even heard of.  

See.  Kudos to anyone who knows where they speak Samaritan, and a million bucks to the person that can actually read that.

So of course I found the spanish one, and took a picture next to it, because that is my new favorite language (next to English of course), but then I was walking around and found the Lord’s prayer in Guarani!!!!  Guarani is the second official language of Paraguay and 98% of the people speak it (they are all bilingual there in Spanish and Guarani).  Apparently missionaries that go there end up picking some of it up, so it is my 3rd favorite language (next to English and Spanish) because that is the second language of my new people.   And it was there!!!!  So I got a picture by it too.

Then we went exploring and found a random church (this is actually a fairly often occurrence—there are 500 year old churches everywhere here, so going super old church hopping is actually pretty easy).  This church is the church were Mary the mother of Christ was buried.  It was really old, and really dark, so I am guessing it was from the time of Constantine/the era of the crusaders.  But don’t quote me on that.  Sometimes the coolest things in these churches are the ceilings.  They show how old the church is and looking at them, I just feel like I am in the middle of hundreds of years of history.

A shrine to Mary . . . you see how baroque the architecture is?!?!

 The cieiling . . . you can see all the smoke stains from hundred of years of candle prayers.

The outside of the building.

This is the Jewish cemetery that we passed.  It is HHHUUUUGGGGEEEE!! If you can see the hill past this hill is just as covered in tombstones.

We missed dinner going church hopping so we went into the city and grabbed some schwarma . . . . soo good!!  Then we raced back in time for sunset (we can't be in the old city after sunset).

That night me, my roommate Jenna, and one of the other girls Grace, went online mission clothes shopping.  The visiting member of the Quorum of the Seventy (he lives in Saudi Arabia right now) came up stairs in the center and stuck up a conversation.  He asked us what we are doing, and finding out that we we looking at stuff for our missions, he asked us where we were going.  

"Busan, Korea"  Jenna piped.

"Asuncion, Paraguay" I added.

"Berlin, Germany" Grace finished.

He laughed and was pretty impressed.  Then he talked to us about how cool it is that so many sisters are going now, and when they are so young.  We were asking about him (this is then we found out we were actually talking to an area 70, and he was telling us how he worked for the FBI his entire life, and he lived in Maryland for awhile, and flew around a lot (ya know, like breaking up drug cartels and capturing terrorists and stuff, no big deal) and then he moved to the United Arab Emirates to do investigations for the US Embassy there.)  He was so cool!!!