Jerusalem

I went to this most holy site to Judaism, and my petition joined hundreds of others filling the crevasses between each sacred rock.

The Western Wall is sacred to Jews because it is the only part left from the second temple, which was destroyed in 70 AD. The Western Wall was part of the retaining wall of the temple platform and it was the wall closest to the Holy of Holies. Inside the Holy of Holies, was the Ark of the Covenant. The Western Wall is where Jews come to pray, read scriptures, and praise God.

All 80 of us students and a couple professors walked there to welcome in the Shabbat with the Jewish community. There are many regulations and customs at the Western Wall since it is so sacred. One that we heard and one that was on a sign was that women had to have their heads covered. Men had to have on kippas. Smoking was also not allowed and cameras weren’t either (at least on Shabbat, so that picture above isn’t mine. Compliments to wikipedia.) We also weren’t supposed to write petitions there; they were supposed to be written before, but I forgot and just had a blank little piece of paper. Nonetheless, my little grubby piece of paper fit its way into a little crack.

My petition was a petition of gratitude. Before we went to the wall, one of our professors was telling us a story about how the one priest who cleans the papers at the Wall or something, gets to read them. He said they were all asking God for something, and rarely were there ones of gratitude and ones thanking God for the many ways he blesses our lives. Therefore, I decided to make my petition solely one of gratitude. Even though I forgot to write on it, I held it in my little hands and filled it full of gratitude and good thoughts. It was so good. I loved the Wall. It was really just so good.

After standing in front of the Wall for a while, and marveling that I am actually here in Jerusalem experiencing the most holy places to so many people, I walked away from the wall backwards, not turning my back on it. That’s what you’re supposed to do and that’s what all the Jews were doing.

But funny story… one thing that we heard we were supposed to do, but we actually didn’t have to do, was cover our heads. So all of us students had our heads covered with our beautiful, new, colorful pashminas. All of us women had scarves all over our heads. Did anyone else? Did the Jewish women? NOPE. So we just looked like crazy weirdos and that what everyone thought we were. Also, everyone else was more dressed up and we show up in jeans and with our heads covered. We were trying to not stand out; it didn’t work… at all. They thought we were Muslim women at first, then they thought we were married women, but we were neither. We were just very misinformed Mormon girls.

There was also a lot of singing and dancing that went along. A lot of us students were dancing it up with the Jewish women and singing singing singing. It was sooooo fun. We were singing these fun Hebrew songs, just trying to make similar sounds. And this lady was in the middle of our circle, trying to teach us, and she had a lisp, and a cool hat, and she seemed like an amazing woman. I liked her. But she was teaching us these songs and it was fabulous. Sometimes I wish we had people would bust out into song and dance during Sacrament meeting. :) Ok, not Sacrament Meeting, but we could use some more lively people in Sunday School quite often.

My welcoming in of Shabbat at the Western Wall was fabulous. It was a really good experience. I need to go back on a non Sabbath day so I can take some sweet pictures. The Wall is amazing. I love being here.

Our first group field trip! Hooray! We just went around Jerusalem area in two big, nice buses for the day. We went to five different sites and a couple of our professors guided this Geography Field Trip and told us more than I can fit in my brain right now. But it was soooooo interesting and fabulous field tripping it up. And as interesting as the Pratt Museum is year after year throughout elementary, this field trip was still pretty cool to the max.

Site #1: Seven Arches Hotel Overlook

The View. Wow.

Site #2: St. Augusta Victoria Tower

This is a very beautiful church that is kind of a refuge for many Palestinian Christians. There is such beautiful artwork in there. And there is this huge bell tower that you had to climb up 500 million stairs to get to. And when we got to the top… preeettttyyy beautiful, and also pretty windy. I was a bit chilly willy up there. But it was beautiful and fun taking pictures. Then before we left, I bought one of my new

most favorite possessions: a little camel pin, handmade out of olive wood in Bethlehem. I love it.

Site #3: Deir Elyas Monestary

This place was a windy little hill in the middle of more hills and surrounded by city and also….SHEEP!

There actually arent that many sheep there, but while we were there

learning all the Bro. Skinner was telling us, this herd of sheep comes along. So

fun! And we all tried to take pictures, but the woman shepherd had her little son and daughter with her and they were telling us not to take pictures unless we pay. I had to shekels, so I don’t really have any pictures. But one of my friends paid the little boy and girl a shekel each and they posed with this little lambie and my friend. Cute cute. I also had a sweet photoshoot with my new olive wood Bethlehem camel pin at this site, but I’m having trouble putting all these pictures on here, so you can just see the one picture with my camel.

Site #4: Haas Promenade Overlook

We ate lunch here! Yay! We picked up sack lunches that the kitchen put together for us. The significance of this place is that this is the same hill where Abraham was probably standing when he looked out, a far off, and saw the hill on which he was to sacrifice his son. It’s either in Genesis or Abraham of both where he says how he looked out and saw Mt. Moriah. It’s so interesting with this program because what we learn in our classes, and our Bible classes, and on our field trips all goes together. It’s soo good.

Site #5: Nebi Samwill

Our last stop for the day was more like a Jewish sanctuary. They think it is where the prophet Samuel was buried, though it’s probably not. And that spot is also as far as King Richard made

it during the Crusades. But after that Crusader church was there, and Byzantine church was built over it. This history here is so old and crazy. This building was cool though. And we went to the top, where it was very windy, and we learned about the prophet Samuel some. And…. we also took some cooool pictures on the domed roof. I love all the domed roofs around here, although, I’m really loving everything.

So field trip day was cool beans of course! And good news… I didn’t even get motion sick on the bus. Woo hoo! To sum it up, I love field trips.

JC Security did’t let us out of the Center for a couple of days because of protests and riots and things, since we live in the Palestinian section, but today, Sunday, we got to go out! Hooray!! But we could only go in groups of five or more and only to the places we went on our little orientation walk in the city.

     In J Town/Jerusalem, the Sabbath is on Saturday, not Sunday. And in Hebrew the word for Sabbath is Shabbat. Oh how I’m loving this Shabbat-ness.            The Jerusalem branch starts at 10 and is in the auditorium here in the the center. We definitely have the most amazing view of any chapel ever. Instead of there being a brick wall behind the pulpit, there are a bunch of beautiful windows with an even more beautiful view. We sit in church and look out over the beautiful city of Jerusalem, everything. It’s so amazing. I love love love it.      So this little Jerusalem branch has a few permanent members of people that work at the embassy or consulate and stuff. There’s a couple little families and a few other peeps. There’s also this one wonderful Palestinian woman who lives in Bethlehem, and she sure has a difficult time getting through the check points to come into Jerusalem. She wasn’t able to come to church for quite a long time actually, but now she works for the UN so she can get through with a bit more ease.     

     After church was over, my three fabulous roomies and I were sitting in the sunshine on our little deck working on our Old Testament reading and doing so good ol’ journaling, and of course, having a bit of a photo shoot here and there. It was fun fun fun! Hooray for fun Shabbat pictures in the Holy Land. Hooray for Shabbat in general peeps; it’s the best.

         Shalom! I’m here studying at the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies for a semester. Eighty students get to come every semester and I am one of those lucky few! Hooray! I’m so so so glad and so excited to be here.

My Jerusalem story begins with traveling, airports, sleep deprivation. After being in Utah with the fam for a few marvelous days and after an exceptional Christmas Break, I headed to the SLC airport at 4 am on January 6th. From Salt Lake, half the students for the BYU Jerusalem program, about 40 of us, flew to Denver, then to Washington DC. Woo hoo, my first time on the East Coast. Although I don’t think the airport is a very good representation of it. In DC, I enjoyed my last few moments in America and in my own country, then… 

On to Vienna we went. We flew with Austrian Air and it was soooo different not having everything in English. The flight attendents weren’t American, all the little caution stickers and stuff weren’t in English, and the movies came in four different languages. And the airplane was so bright and colorful too, which I loved. The seats were bright green and the pillows were red or yellow and it was happy happy. After that 8 hour flight, where we got two meals and we all had a personal tv screen, we arrived in Vienna!

Whoa… my first time out of the US. When I went to the bathroom, I definitely knew I wasn’t in America anymore because first of all, I wasn’t in the bathroom, I was in the WC, water closet. So that was fun. Then I went in, and I was wondering where all the stalls were. But toilets there are like all in their own separate room, with a real door, and with no cracks or open spaces for weirdo people to see through. :) 

And then when I was going to flush after I had finally discovered where the toilets were, I couldn’t find the flusher. There was no button anywhere, but there was this big silver panel thing above the toilet. I thought it might be under that, but nope; the big silver thing was the button. So the toilet flushed and I left my little private toilet room and washed my hands with green paper towels. Fun times in the Vienna airport bathroom. Then… three hour flight to Tel Aviv, Israel, where we got another meal! Man those US airlines are cheapo.

Tel Aviv. Israel. My first time in a different country. I am a foreigner. It’s different. It’s good. I love it.

When all 80 students had arrived at the airport, we rode these two big, nice buses to the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies. It was probably a 45 minute bus ride maybe, and my coooool friend from Hawaii, Kara, and I rode together. The bus ride was crazy because this is a totally different place, totally different. I’m in the Middle East. All of the buildings and houses and geography are nothing like I’ve been around. It’s so good to experience other parts of the world.

We finally arrived at the center at 5 pm on Wednesday night, after 28 hours of traveling. The staff was telling us, “Welcome home!” and hooray, I’m home for now! My goodness it is so exciting being here. I absolutely love it! So I was quite exhausted, as was everyone else, but we had a little orientation meeting, which I partly slept through, and we had to meet a couple teachers. When I finally got to go to sleep, it was happy happy.

                       I love being here in this Holy Land.