The Girl with the Son in Her Eyes

Regarding the future of this blog....

2011-12-12T19:39:00.000-08:00

~

To Sister Madeleine Ary’s friends and readers:

A new mission rule was announced which deals with posting letters from current missionaries on the internet. I will no longer publish Madeleine’s weekly letters on this blog, BUT Madeleine said it is fine for me to distribute her letters via e-mail. She has asked me to collect e-mail addresses from those who would like to continue reading her weekly missive.

If you would like to me to send you her “Letters from Slovenia” each week, please e-mail me [coleenary@gmail.com] with your name and e-mail address and I will forward her letter each week. I look forward to completing this small task for her and will send you today’s letter, 12/12/11, as soon as I receive your response.

Warmly,

Sister Madeleine Ary’s MOM!
coleenary@gmail.com

My first week in Slovenia

2011-12-05T10:41:00.000-08:00

~
My friends,

Wow, this has been an amazing week. Sometimes I still can't really believe that I am here.

I live in a small city (the second largest in Slovenia) named Maribor up near the boarder of Austria. It is a beautiful place with red tiled houses and onion-domed church towers and a large lazy river [Drava River] flowing through the center. Bridges span the river to keep the city together, and swans and coots swim placidly along its shoreline. We live on the fourth floor of a Communist-era apartment building right near the center of the old town. From the windows we can see one of the mountains and much of the city.

I can understand the language all right and can communicate what I need to say most of the time. When someone is talking to me, I understand the gist of his or her meaning and can generally respond correctly, though my grammar is atrocious. We teach English classes as a way of finding investigators and as a service to the people of Maribor. It has worked pretty well so far because we have about 9 investigators and four of them are progressing. This is about what is the norm in a place like Virginia where the work is generally much easier.

But it is easy to know why we are successful-- I have the world's most wonderful companion, Sister Oakley. She is a really kind, genuine, and caring person who is strong in her testimony, intelligent in the way she conducts the work, and good with the language. She loves the investigators and they can feel that, and she is able to keep the focus on the Gospel. She is a convert of just over three years now and will be going home in only about a month. I am really sad about that because I feel there is much I can and want to learn from her.

There are only 12 missionaries in Slovenia, 6 Sisters and 6 Elders. 5 of us are brand new, and in a couple of weeks, there will be 3 more new missionaries and 3 who are here will go home. So, in just a few weeks 8 out of the 12 Slovene missionaries will be almost entirely new. With the way the schedule with the Slovene Sister missionaries has evolved, there is a possibility that I will be training a new sister when Sister Oakley leaves (although that is unlikely) so I really want to make certain I understand it all now. So I feel some pressure to really learn the language though I know that God has been helping me out a ton because I understand far more than is expected of a new missionary of only five days. I've never really been that great at languages before so this is an incredible blessing. If I will be the senior or co-senior missionary in only 5 weeks, I had better be able to understand what is going on around me or we will be completely lost.

Our investigators are truly incredible. However, in Slovenia one of the biggest problems is retention as very few people who have been baptized still come to church. After 20 years of missionary work in Maribor, only 8 of the 55 members attend church regularly. But this is something that we are going to work on and I know that the Lord has a plan for this beautiful country. Elder Nelson just recently [Sept 6, 2010] [ http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/59902/Elder-Nelson-pronounces-blessings-on-six-Balkan-nations.html ] rededicated Slovenia as a place for the work and in that prayer he said that it would begin to blossom. I truly believe that. The people we are working with are ready. We just recently found a new investigator who is completely accepting of literally everything we teach. She is incredible. And some of the investigators we have, two in particular, are just so ready to be baptized but for a couple of unusual reasons can't be baptized just yet.

I am so excited to be here. I feel like I am really consumed in the work and that I am facing a great challenge that it excites me to try and, with the Lord's help, overcome. It’s like a giant puzzle: why are things this way or that way? What is the root of this problem? How can it be solved? I have always loved being faced with a nearly impossible task and trying to surmount it. But this time is different because I cannot succeed if I do not rely wholly on God. It would simply be impossible. There are too many pieces, to many variables, and too many things I simply do not understand. I am in a different land with a different people of a different culture and the only way someone like me can know what to do is through inspiration from the Lord. So I must rely on Him. And, any prayers which you, my friends, can offer for the people of Maribor, would be wonderful.

Well, I love you all. I love speaking Slovene-- it is really quite fun. God is awesome. I already know I will be sad when I have to leave some day.

Thank you all for your love and support. God be with you!

Z ljubeznijo,

Sestra Ary

I arrived in Zagreb, Croatia -- BRRRR!

2011-11-30T09:44:00.000-08:00

~
Everyone,

I made it safely on the flight and landed in a foggy Zagreb, Croatia this afternoon. The air was so cold that we form little clouds around our faces as we breathe. The Mission President and his wife, President and Sister Rowe, are wonderful and very welcoming.

I am currently sitting in the mission home in the center of downtown Zagreb amongst all of their famous buildings and statues. I've already seen one Elder I knew from the MTC and am looking forward to the drive up to Slovenia tonight. My first area will be in a city named Maribor, which is the second largest city in Slovenia and right up [next to] the Alps just below Austria and Hungary. I've been told they have a heavy Austrian accent there. My first companion will be Sister Oakley about whom others rave so I am terribly excited to meet her.

I am exhausted, naturally, but that comes with the territory and all the excitement of being here is keeping me awake. I already had my first interview with the mission president and am leaving just about . . . now! I love you all! I will write again soon.

z moj ljubezen,

Sestra Ary

Sestra Ary's mailing address & postal rates

2011-11-30T09:40:00.000-08:00

~
[yes, her address is 7 lines long...!]

MAILING ADDRESS:
Sestra Madeleine Ary
Adriatic Mission
Crkva Isusa Krista Svetaca Posljednjih
Dana
Svacicev Trg 3/1
HR-10000 Zagreb
Croatia

POSTAL RATES TO CROATIA:
Post cards
$ .98
First class letters
1 oz $ .98
2-3 oz $ 1.82

A NOTE FROM MADELEINE’s MOM:

2011-11-30T08:39:00.000-08:00

~
Before missionaries leave the U.S. for foreign countries, they are often permitted to phone home and so yesterday, (11/29) Sister Ary called collect from the airport in Washington, D.C. just a few minutes before she boarded the plane which would fly her to Zagreb, Croatia (the Slovenia/Croatia Mission Home is located in Zagreb). She was thrilled to finally be Slovenia bound and grateful her visa (and the visas of the other Elders and Sisters in her group) was issued. She told me they learned the Slovenian Embassy in D.C. is set to shut down for the month of December and had they not been issued their visas in now, everyone would have had to wait until January to finally get permission to relocate to Slovenia. Blessings are abundant for those who cry unto the Lord!

I leave for Slovenia TOMORROW!

2011-11-28T18:04:00.000-08:00

~
Everyone,

Well, the day is finally here. I don't really know what to do with myself because I thought that I would remain in Washington, D.C. for another four weeks at least.

Today is my P-Day and I was having a meal after a day of sports with other missionaries when I got the news my visa had come through and will therefore depart for Zagreb, Croatia tomorrow!!! Zagreb, Croatia is where the Mission Home is located.

I have mixed emotions about leaving here. We currently have 14 investigators and I love them all and will miss them. I don't think they will take the Sister missionaries out of the Annandale Ward, which is good, since I don't believe some of our investigators would want to meet with Elders (they are single women and such). We have experienced so many miracles with the people whom we have been blessed to meet. Every time we go tracting we find at least one person who wants to learn about the gospel and seems ready to hear about it. Of our investigators, four are progressing, which is an unusually high number (people have a hard time deciding to do the things asked of them. It takes a while for them to catch the vision of what we are trying to teach.) I am really going to miss them as well as Brother and Sister Evans who have been so kind as to house Sister Holt and I, and the general atmosphere of Northern Virginia.

What a blessing it has been to be here when the leaves were red and yellow and orange and were falling like rain! Now the trees are bare, but the days have been warm like California, and the sky full of the strangest looking clouds I have ever seen. I am so glad that I was able to go to tour some of the monuments in D.C., and I wish I had a way to send the photos that I’ve taken of my time here to you all before I leave for Slovenia but I can’t for lack of time. I will be sending photos home as soon as I can by email, so it shouldn't be too long.

This week for Thanksgiving we had THREE Thanksgiving dinners. It was awesome. The first was with a member family and their member and part-member friends. They had spent a lot of time preparing for their Thanksgiving dinner so the food and the decor and the general atmosphere was incredible. I ate way too much even though I knew I would soon go to another dinner. The second feast was at the house of our Pakistani investigator (who came to church this week! It was wonderful. She really felt the Spirit and even cried during Sacrament meeting). I didn't eat very much there because I was so full, but I did have some of the pie. Of course… She really wanted us to meet her son with whom she is trying to set an appointment. We were careful to explain about the rules for missionaries and how we don't flirt or anything. She is so sweet.

The third Thanksgiving dinner was somewhat unexpected. We were going over to a former investigator's house to show her a movie about Christ just as was done for her last year but with the elders. But when we got to her place, she had not yet had her Thanksgiving meal and had only really cooked the turkey. Her husband's car broke down, so she had no one to share her Thanksgiving with. So we stayed and taught her the first lesson while she cooked the rest of the dinner and then stayed to eat dinner with her. She is really a sweet woman and we were glad to be with her in her apartment. We have another appointment with her soon.

Since Thanksgiving was last week, I am going to list some things that I am grateful for:

~My beautiful, wonderful family who is so supportive of me in all the things that I do, and all the crazy places I go. I could not have asked for a more wonderful Mother and Father and siblings. The Lord has truly blessed me in this life with them as my foundation.

~The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Because of this faith I know who I am and why I am here. I have the answers to the major questions of life, and not simply because it is what I have been taught, but because the Father of the Universe has testified it to me through the Holy Spirit so that I could know within my own heart that it is true.

~My incredible friends that I have made throughout my life. These people have been here for me throughout the times that I have been slightly (or really) crazy, and have been people who have built me up and pushed me to be a better person. They are examples to me of how I can live, and how I can be closer to God. My friends are hardworking and noble souls, and I am honored to know them.

~The opportunity that I had to go to Brigham Young University, Cambridge University, the Jerusalem Center in Israel, and now to go on a mission. These things are by no means cheap, and my family has always been willing to support me in them. I know how richly these opportunities have blessed my life, and I know that the Lord has allowed me them so that I might learn the things that will lead me to be a better person who can help more people come unto Him.

~The direction God gives to me, even when I don't realize it. I have noticed throughout my life that things just tend to happen for me and they always happen for the best. I know it is not because I am particularly anything, but because the Father of us all is watching out for me. I am so thankful for that. I never have to wonder if I am doing what God wants me to do because He directs me in everything.

~The beauty and wonder of this earth. I will never get over how fabulous it is to be alive. Everything around me is beautiful, interesting--- a testament to God who made it. I am so grateful that though the Lord wanted to test us and to help us find our way back to Him, He still created beautiful things that we can see and feel edified by.

~The atonement of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I know that the Savior of the world died for me and because of Him and what He did, I can become perfectly spotless again. I know that it is only through His mercy and grace that I am saved, and I will be eternally grateful and eternally indebted to Him for it. He is the reason for life, the light that infuses all things and which fills my soul with life. Because of Him, I not only am but can continue and can find perfect joy. I can never express my thanks enough for what He did for me, and I will serve Him eternally because of it.

I love you all, and I will write next from the great country of Slovenia. I pray for you every day and every night, and know that God knows you and loves you and will care for you all in my absence.

With all my love,

Sestra Ary

Knocking on doors, teaching about Christ and actually READING the scriptures

2011-11-21T14:33:00.001-08:00

~
Everyone,

I had just written most of this email when mysteriously it disappeared. I don't know what happened to it. I can't seem to retrieve it anywhere and the trash folder doesn't have it at all. Unfortunately, because of that little glitch, now I don't have as much time to write, but I will endeavor to do my best.

We were able to find five new investigators this week. Four of them are a family which we met by knocking on doors my first day here and we were finally able to have a meeting with them. The 13-year-old daughter knows several of the girls in the Young Women's group at church because they are on her soccer team. It is really exciting to be teaching them and things seemed to go very well. We taught them about the nature of God, and told them that they should pray every night as a family. We also invited them to church but they weren't able to come.

In fact, no one was able to come to church this week, even though one of the families we teach had been assuring us for 2 weeks that they were going to come this Sunday. It was really disappointing to have no investigators show up again. I don't know exactly why it is so hard for people to come to church, but to help remedy this we are taking two of our investigator sets (one is a man and his wife, and the other is a family of five) on tours of the church building over the next couple of days. We want them to feel the spirit that is there, to know how to get there, and to understand how everything works so it is not so intimidating to come. We had the opportunity to have a really good meeting with the family who was going to come to church but then didn't. We stopped by their apartment to see what had happened, and it turned out that they had gone to a race for their 10-year-old daughter and it had been such a big ordeal that it took a lot longer than they had anticipated for it to finish. But we were then able to watch The Testaments with them and it went beautifully.

I really think they felt the spirit. Toward the end the mother was crying and she said she felt sad but she felt happy at the same time--she couldn't really explain it. Even the younger children became quiet when Christ descended. It was so cool. The Mother is going to watch it with her husband in Spanish soon so he can share in the spirit. We are hoping this will be a good set-up for tomorrow when we have our next appointment with them. We will take them on a church tour and will show them that this is what the restored gospel of Jesus Christ looks like.

We also have a new investigator who has investigated the church in the past. She is from Pakistan and is the only Christian in her Muslim family. She fell and damaged her hip, shoulder, and knee yesterday when we were going over to help her with her 95-year-old mother. We are praying she will get better soon and that she will have the willing heart necessary to read the Book of Mormon. We also pray she will make it a priority to know if the things in the book are true.

There is nothing at all we can say or do which will convince people that the things we are telling them are the truth until they undertake the necessary action of reading and praying. But when someone does do this with real intent, willing to act on the things they have heard and been taught, they will receive a confirmation and everything changes. SO it sort of just comes down to getting people to read. That is probably the most difficult thing we do. I am not quite certain why that is.

We went to into the Washington, D.C. for our P-day today. It was awesome. I got a lot of pictures but now I just have to figure out how the send them.

I love you all!
Sister Ary

Week 10: In our nation's capitol and AMAZING things are happening!

2011-11-14T17:44:00.000-08:00

~
Everyone,

The week has been incredible. It was hard to begin with and is still hard sometimes, but something happens when you ask for the Lord's help...

When I am tracting up a street at 8:30 at night and all the stars are out and the moon is bright, and everyone who answers their door is in their pajamas and annoyed that we are there, if I say a prayer, then something amazing happens. It is as if all the rejection, all the rolled eyes and closed doors don't matter as much anymore. The night suddenly becomes beautiful and even though I am cold, I feel at peace and feel warmth radiating inside. I am happy to see the people at every door and even happy when they tell us to leave. I love the people I meet from the moment I learn their names and I wonder about them and pray for them. It is incredible how the Lord is able to show His love for me by making something as hard as tracting late at night into something I can enjoy.

A lot of astounding things have happened this last week. We found SIX new investigators! We are "white washing" the area (which apparently means starting fresh without any investigators or former knowledge of the area). Therefore, every person we’ve found is someone whom we’ve met by ourselves through tracting. But we already have SIX investigators, and one of them is even progressing! It is so cool.

Four of the investigators are a little Bolivian family whose mother wants the children to learn about how to pray and be closer to God. We have our next appointment with her on Tuesday night. She allowed us inside after I offered to help her carry in her groceries. She didn't want the help, but did say we could come back later to tell her about the church. Her three children speak English very well and sometimes she needs her oldest daughter, who is ten, to translate for her. But she is so kind. She said that she and her family would definitely come to church next week (they were planning to come last Sunday but it turns out that she didn't want to go when she didn't have what she considered “proper” clothing for her children to wear to church). We are so excited to see them again and try to keep in contact with them as much as possible in the intervening days. Generally, you're supposed to have daily contact with your investigators. We brought them cookies one day and they were really grateful for them.

Another of our investigators is also a man from Bolivia. He lives in the same complex and has a sweet little family: a wife and two little girls. He really wants to know God and to become closer to Him. He has been taught by the missionaries before but he said that they all ran away because he “had too many questions.” We were fortunate to have an exchange person (someone who comes with us to a lesson who is not a missionary) who is fluent in Spanish. She returned from her own mission to Texas in April. It was really helpful she was with us because she was able to explain all of the things that he couldn't understand in English. He asked us his first questions, so we have been studying them to answer him when we meet with him on Tuesday just before with meet with the other Bolivian family.

The other investigator we found is a wonderful young man who was kind enough to let us in to talk with him. He is probably in his mid twenties and he works for a moving company. We are relatively certain that he is in a gang, but he sincerely wants to change his life around. He said that he feels a great emptiness when he wakes up in the morning and guilt for the things he has done. We told him that the Lord can forgive all things if he is willing to repent, and that with the Lord he can have peace in his heart when he wakes up in the morning and peace with him always. He says that he isn't ready to change yet, though he knows that he needs to and he knows that he will eventually. He committed to pray every day until we see him again on Wednesday. He said that he definitely would, too, and even though he was embarrassed, he let us say a prayer at the end of the lesson. He deeply admires people who turn their lives around and are able to get out of situations like he has found himself in, but I don't know if he truly believes that he can actually do the same thing. We want to give him that hope. He doesn't read very well, so I don't know how we are going to assign him things to read from the Book of Mormon, but we will figure it out somehow.

We also have a family who wants to meet with us but who hasn't found the time yet. We met the father the other day while we were going to an appointment which fell through. It was good though because before that time, we had only associated with the mother and their little boy. There are four in that family and they live in a pretty small apartment. They are very family oriented, and the mother wants to make certain that her teenage daughter does not get in with the wrong crowd. We told her about the Young Women's program and are going to drop by a couple “For the Strength of Youth” pamphlets tonight.

There is yet another person we are very excited to teach. She is a friend of one of the ward’s MIA Maids [teen girls who are 14-15 years old] and she’s been reading the Book of Mormon on her own already. She really wants to find the right church because she says she has been feeling quite sad lately knowing she doesn't have God in her life. A minister from another church once offended her parents and they didn't want to have anything to do with religion since…but she still does. We are hoping to stop by her house a few times a week to help her with reading the Book of Mormon. We are going to have a dinner at her friend’s home along with her parents hopefully sometime next week. I am really looking forward to it. The girl is incredibly sweet and thoughtful.

We also had a lesson with a Muslim family. The son knew a lot about the church and has great respect for it because he said that he noticed that Mormons live what they preach. He wanted to know what it was we believe exactly and so we gave him a Book of Mormon accompanied by specific places to read.

We found a man who loves to read and is interested to hear more from us. He is a dog walker, so we walked with him as he walked someone's dog and we explained about the Book of Mormon and the restoration. We gave him a Book of Mormon and he assured us that he would read it. I pray that he does.

Another woman we met said she would come to church but then didn't show. We hope that she will let us talk with her again soon so we can get to know her better. Every appointment we have had with her she’s cancelled. I would love some prayers for help on this.

I made some cookies where I accidentally added 3 times the amount of salt it’s supposed to have (those darn abbreviations of Tablespoon and teaspoon!). So my companion and I made another double batch of cookies and gave many of them to our investigators and prospectives.

Our first investigator whom I mentioned last week, Dolly from Egypt, is having her birthday on Friday. I tried to make a cake to give her but it sort of epic-ly failed. It was a spectacular mess. So I think now we are going to give her a card.

I have to go now but it has really been a great week. The Lord blessed us immensely. It is hard much of the time, especially when people cancel appointments (which happens almost constantly) but the Lord is with us. If anyone wants to send me a letter while I am here in Washington, D.C., you can go ahead and send it, as I am fairly certain I will receive it before I depart for Slovenia. So please do! I would love to get something in the mail!

Z Ljubezen,

Sestra Ary

Sister Madeleine Ary
Washington D.C. South Mission
5242 Lyngate Ct.
Burke, Virginia 22015

Week 9: I'm almost to Slovenia, w/ a detour to Washington, D.C. AGAIN!

2011-11-07T15:30:00.000-08:00

~
[NOTE: The missionaries from the MTC assigned to Slovenia are now patiently waiting for the Slovene Embassy to issue their visas. While they wait, they are preaching the gospel to the good folks of our nation's capitol and environs in Virginia.]

Everyone,

Finding myself assigned to the Washington, D.C. South mission was certainly a surprise. It is beautiful here with all the leaves changing colors and falling in carpets of yellow and orange.

My new companion and I live with the Stake Patriarch and his wife. They are so welcoming and helpful. They have had sister missionaries living with them for a while, but there was a short time between July and now when they did not have sisters living with them so they are glad to get us. No one knew that any of us Slovene's were coming until the day before we arrived, last Friday (the same for us) so it was amazing how well things were coordinated when we got here. The Mission President and others arranged places to stay, companions, area assignments, and everything else in under 24 hours.

My companion, Sister Holt, and I are opening a new area so we have no previous investigators but plenty of people who were once investigators whom we are checking on again. We spend most of our time tracting. I think because we are female, people are generally gracious to us but there is still a lot of rejection. The hardest times for me are when I know there are people inside but they don't even open the door or give us any sort of a chance. Fortunately, we have met some pretty amazing people. First there is Dolly who is from Egypt and is a solid Christian. She runs a homeless shelter and works to build up people and get them back on her feet. Although she is probably in her eighties, she is still really active, very vivacious, and very open. She invited us in to give us some bread with we were able to donate to the Annandale Christian Charities (Annandale is the city we are in in Northern Virginia). There she spoke with us for about a half hour about a variety of things and wanted us to wait hoping we could meet her friend Samira and taste her stuffed cabbage, and so we could try to convert her to Mormonism. When we meet with Dolly again I hope that we will meet Samira too.

While Dolly is our only real investigator right now, we do have an appointment with a mother of two who lives in an apartment complex we were kicked out of yesterday (we live with the Evans family and his father knows someone who manages that complex who can get us back in). We are meeting with her on Thursday – hopefully -- because that is when her husband will be home. If we can just get them to understand about praying, church attendance, the restoration and/or the Holy Ghost, and then have the father pray, it will be amazing. They have two children: a daughter and a son, and the daughter is old enough to go to Young Women. This is the primary reason the mother wants us to meet with them because she wants the daughter to get involved with good people who will keep her moral and clean. There are about thirty Young Women in this ward, so it should work well, right? I am really praying a lot that this new family will be willing and able to meet with us and that our lesson/discussion will go well. I pray for this with all my heart. We are hoping to have one of the ward members come along with us. She got off her mission three years ago and loves missionaries, and she has a little baby girl. Please pray that we will be able to have the appointment with them. I don't know how long I will be here in Washington, D.C., but I want them to know their way to God and their way into the church before I leave.

The ward here is so wonderful and receptive to us. They were really excited to have sister missionaries again since they have not had sisters for a long time. There were two different testimonies shared during yesterday’s testimony meeting which talked about this. The ward sisters are eager to volunteer to help us with appointments and we are glad to have them. We also got some brethren who are interested in going with us to appointments should we need them.

My next goal is to get the ward involved in suggesting people for us to teach. We are meeting with the Ward Mission Leader tonight and he will help us to know how things are going in the ward.

Today is our Preparation Day. We met up with the Elders for study, then played a little soccer and washed the cars. I had a lot of fun. Then we all had lunch together (pizza!) and came here to the library.

I find that I need the encouragement of positive stories and the scripture’s to keep my spirits up when the tracting is hard. Anything anyone can send me like that would be most welcome. Please just send it to the Washington D.C. South Mission Home:

Sister Madeleine Ary
Washington D.C. South Mission
5242 Lyngate Ct.
Burke, Virginia 22015

I love you all, and hope things are going wonderfully for you!

Sister Ary

BIG NEWS: Departing 6 A.M. on Fri 11/4 for.....D.C.... again

2011-11-03T20:22:00.000-07:00

~
NOTE: Madeleine phoned home at 8:30 P.M. tonight, Thurs., Nov. 3rd for a full 5 minutes to announce that all the missionaries bound for Slovenia will leave the MTC tomorrow morning at 6:00 A.M. bound for Washington, D.C. once again. Remember, all who apply for a resident visa to Slovenia have to appear in person at the Slovenian Embassy in D.C. twice before they are granted one.

Sister Ary said that the news about their travel and visa plans was announced just this morning to the Sisters and Elders who have been in the MTC since the beginning of September. However, since no one knows how long it will take for the Embassy to actually issue their visas, the missionaries will stay at the Mission Home for the Washington, D.C., South mission until their red tape is cleared. Her best guess was, "We have no idea how long it will take!" so that answers all of your questions as to how long they will be waiting in the nation's capitol, right? RIGHT!

As soon as we hear from her about a new mailing address, we will let everyone know. Thank you all for supporting Sister Ary as she embarks in the service of the Lord, helping to share the Gospel to a world thirsty to know the truth.

Week 8: My last week at the MTC (sort of...maybe) & quick jaunt to D.C.

2011-11-01T22:27:00.000-07:00

~
Everyone,

What an amazingly crazy and awesome week! Before I write about my time in Washington, D.C., I have to tell you about the talk that Elder Richard G. Scott (a member of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles) delivered just after the last time I sent out an email.

He came and spoke here at the MTC, mostly about how we can be closer to the Lord through scripture study and prayer and so forth. But the amazing thing was that the entire talk was pretty much him asking questions to the people who lined up at the two microphones. I eventually got up, realizing that the entire talk was going to be people answering his questions with him commenting on their answers. So when I got up to the microphone, it was just me, Elder Scott, and the 2,500 missionaries in the MTC. My face was projected on the big screen so everyone could see it and was broadcast throughout the campus to the overflow rooms. Needless to say it was a little nerve-racking. But I had to get up there because I didn't know if I would ever get a chance again to speak face to face with Elder Scott, one of the Apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He asked me to comment on a verse in the Doctrine and Covenants which says that you should not seek to preach the Lord's word, but first seek to obtain His word and then you can open your mouth to speak and the words will be given you what to say. I pretty much said that I believe that means that we must apply ourselves heavily to the studies that we do so that we might obtain the word of God, and thereby be able to speak it. Without study, we cannot have an abundance of the Holy Spirit and it is not us which teaches (or if it is, it usually goes really badly) but the Holy Spirit which speaks to the person whom we are teaching. So I said that with study, we can have the spirit and the spirit can then communicate to the person being taught the truthfulness of the message. He asked me a clarification question, and then I moved on. It was amazing though. I really felt like I was just talking to him, and like everything else was blurred out. When I sat down, I spent about the next half hour asking my companion over and over again if I was clear and if I answered the right question and so forth. I am so grateful to have had that opportunity.

And I went to D.C...

...to visit the Slovenian Embassy.

You know, them's the Slovenian rules in order to get a visa.

There is so much to say about it but I only have 15 minutes left to write.

I fasted the day before I departed so I would have the courage to open my mouth and would know what to say. When I got to the airport early in the morning, it was just me alone having to find my way around. I was able to speak with a couple of people, help a woman find her car, help a man who had fallen off the escalator, and speak with a woman from the Philippines who works in Saudi Arabia. I wish I could have given her a pass-along card, but for some dumb reason I had stowed my cards in my backpack. She disappeared before I was able to get them out. I sure got them out for the rest of the trip.

I ended up sitting next to two Mormons on my flight to Chicago, so I wasn't really able to preach the gospel to them! But when I was in Chicago, I felt strongly there were a few people I should give cards to. I wrote a note to them on the back of the cards and gave each of them a card with a note written just for them. Usually the note said something like, "God is your Heavenly Father and He notices you and appreciates everything you do." I spoke with one flight attendant on the plane about the Ankh earrings she was wearing. She said that she loved the symbol of the Ankh because it represents eternal life and eternal happiness, which is everything that she wants. I was really excited about this, and so I wrote on the back of another card that the doctrine of eternal life and happiness is central to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and that in this at least the Egyptians had it right. I asked another attendant give it to her because I wasn't able to get to the back of the plane again.

Then when I was on another plane, a plane from Chicago to D.C., I sat next to an agnostic astronomer with whom I spoke about the logic of the Gospel. I don’t think I did as well as I could have, but I did tell him that if he becomes interested in religion again, he should pick up the Book of Mormon to read. Then the same man whom I had sat by on my flight to Chicago, who happened to be a Bishop from Salt Lake City, helped me find my way to the Washington, D.C. North Mission President and his wife who were waiting to pick me up. They are such wonderful people, President and Sister Matsumori (I don't know if it that is spelled correctly)! First they took me to dinner. When we finished eating, we needed the check so the President Matsumori went to find our waitress. He couldn't find her, so he spoke with a different one. When he told this other waitress that he is a missionary, she said that she used to be an investigator of our church and she had wanted to join but her father had not let her. But now she was looking for that same feeling of truth and peace again and she was out of under her father’s control so now she could make her own decisions. She said that she would take the presence of the Mission President as a sign from God and wanted to be taught by the missionaries again. How cool is that!?! President Matsumori told me he was only there because of me and therefore said this is pretty much my first convert! Whoa. I actually did nothing, but he was really gracious about it. He is going to e-mail me to tell me how it goes with her. That was so awesome!!! The way it sounded, she is probably going to want to get baptized soon. : ) : ) : )

The Matsumoris took me to the Mission Home. The next day, after I slept wonderfully under their hospitality, the President had a fabulous senior missionary couple (who were on the first day of their own mission) take me to the Slovenian Embassy. All I really had to do was give my papers, my fingerprints, and then leave. Then this lovely missionary couple drove me to all the most important memorials, so I was able to see them at least. I was able to take pictures in front of the our nation's Capital and the Washington Memorial. They were so wonderful to me and so obliging. I really owe them a lot. It was a terrific experience.

President Matsumori asked them to take me to the D.C. Temple afterwards so I could attend one session and then he would pick me up. The Washington, D.C. Temple is just incredible! I was stunned by how beautiful it is on the outside and the inside. The stained glass, waterfalls, the walkway with windows overlooking the forest, the Celestial Room--it was, really was magnificent. I was so blessed to be there. I had lunch in the downstairs cafeteria and then went to the Visitors Center where the President called to see if I was ready to be picked up. While there, I spoke with the Sister missionaries who are assigned to the D.C. Visitors Center. They were wonderfully sweet and also obliging.

President and Sister Matsumori weren't able to pick me up, so he sent his three Assistants to the President to fetch me. They told me some fascinating stories about their work and really seemed excited to teach. They were also incredibly gracious. When we arrived at the airport, they took me to my gate and gave me some more pass-along cards because I had run out of the ones I had purchased from the MTC bookstore. On the tram to my terminal I met a woman whose mother is about to die. I spoke to her briefly about how we believe there are eternal families, and asked about her religious background. I gave her a pass-along card too. I really hope things go well for her and that she turns to God.

Then on the plane I think I really messed up because I had to opportunity to speak with someone but I didn't use it to talk about the gospel. Instead I just asked about his life for two hours. He was great though, and I gave him some pass-along cards too. I should have done better though… I hope he has another opportunity to hear about the Lord’s church.

Then when I finally arrived back in Salt Lake City, I was waiting for my car to take me back to the MTC. I spoke with a woman who doesn’t know much about our church but says she always notices something different about people in Utah--how they are somehow more thoughtful and considerate. I told her about how we believe that everyone is a child of God and is precious in His sight and how service is important in our faith. I gave her a card too, but I wish I had given her my Book of Mormon instead. I should have talked about Joseph Smith, but I fooled myself with the excused that I was too tired. I could have, should have done better. I ended up leaving my Book of Mormon with the driver of the car who drove me. I left a note in it for him about what parts he should read and how the Lord loves him.

It was an awesome time, but I could have done better if I had spoken more about the Savior and about the Restoration of the gospel. I will do better next time.

I love you all!

Sestra Ary

Week 7: A sudden trip to D.C. and Slovenian visas

2011-10-22T19:16:00.000-07:00

~
[NOTE: The application for a resident visa for Slovenia is long, complicated, and fraught with hidden pitfalls. Slovenia requires two physical appearances to their embassy in Washington D.C. as part of the visa application. Missionaries bound for that country have to fly to D.C. once while they are in the MTC, and a second time by making a stop in our nation’s capitol on their way to Slovenia. Because California lost Madeleine’s criminal background check, which had to be re-issued, the Apostille from the California Secretary of State was very late in coming. Hence, Madeliene’s companion’s visa application was sent to Slovenia weeks before Madeleine’s paperwork was even completed. Now it’s Madeleine’s turn to head to the District of Columbia.]

Zdravo!

I am heading off to Washington D.C. on Monday [10/24] and will be there until Tuesday evening [10/25]. Therefore I won't be able to write my usual Tuesday e-mail. As I have a little bit of time now I received permission from my District President's First Councilor to send an e-mail today even though it is not my Preparation Day (a.k.a. “P-day” in missionary-speak).

I will be flying there alone via Chicago and arrive Monday evening. Someone from the North Washington D.C. Mission will pick me up from the airport. I’ll be staying the night at the mission home with the mission president and his wife. Then I will be driven to the embassy in the morning where I will make my appearance. My flight back is not until about 5:45 P.M. so I have been told I will be able to see a few sites (hopefully!). That would be awesome. A couple of weeks ago when my companion, Sister Tanner, was in D.C., she saw the Lincoln Memorial and the White House. I will be back to the MTC by 11:30 P.M. or so on Tuesday evening. An adventure! No Slovene, but that's okay because I'll be talking to some real Slovenian people.

I pray that the Lord gives me courage to open my mouth and speak about the gospel to the people I meet. I am so excited!

I love you all & I'll write again next week.

Vedno,

Sestra Ary

Week 6 -- Fasting & trying to learn the language...learning the language...

2011-10-18T16:41:00.000-07:00

~
Moji Prejatelji,

Kaj je to! I can't believe I’m beginning my 7th week here. I can't believe I will be expected to communicate with people in Slovenian not too long from now.

My Slovene is improving, but I am still rather wretched with the complicated grammar. If you want to learn about something strange and confusing, look up “Slavic Cases.” They are one of the most peculiar things I have ever seen, and they are pretty much the backbone of any Slavic language. However it IS rather awesome to be speaking a Slavic language because I can understand about 90 percent of what the Croatian Elders say, about 40 percent of what the Czech sisters say, about 40 percent of what the Russians say, and Bulgarians and Poles and so forth. It is amazing to realize how similar these languages are. With English, we don't really get a good concept of what it is like to have a sister language. English's closest relative is German and that isn't even very close. But this Slovenian is way cool. It is almost like the difference between speaking English like Californians do and those speaking with a heavy accent from some more remote part of the English speaking world. But anyway…

This has been a wonderful week. I had a "sugar fast" last week because I felt that I needed to understand the Word of Wisdom better (we were teaching it to our investigators). It was intense, let me tell you. Then, when I started eating sugar again, which was last night, I felt sick for about half the time. The candy was great though (Thank you Mom!) That Halloween candy really did make me feel loved. I made sure to share the majority of it with others. I have realized there is a high correlation between how healthy you eat and how close to the Lord you feel. I want to have a clean mind, body and spirit, and this partly entails good control of what I consume.

Now Sister Tanner and I are on an “English fast.” This means that we aren't speaking English at all for an entire week. This is our third day of doing it and it has been pretty good. Sometimes it’s a little hard because there are times when we need to communicate with people who don't know any Slovenian or Croatian, and they can get a little frustrated when we try to pantomime the things we're saying in incomprehensible tongues. A woman behind the counter where I was trying to ask for green beans eventually just turned away from me and loaded a plate with them, handing it to me without a word. I still don't think she understood what I was saying, but I was lucky that she was pretty much right…though I really didn't need that many green beans…

I still haven't heard when I’m going to travel to Washington, D.C. to get my visa. The assumption is that it will be sometime late next week because then it will have been about a month since we finally got all the documents turned in (thank you so much Mom!!!!)

So here is some big news: the church has changed the name of our mission. Before it was the "Slovenia/Croatia Mission” and now it is the "Adriatic Mission.” I think that is a pretty wonderful name, but the major downside is that no one knows where Slovenia is already and this won't help much. But the Adriatic is beautiful. There is some speculation the reason this happened is because they are planning on opening BOSNIA! How sweet that would be! I heard (on the wind) that there was one entire Bosnian family who were baptized into the church, and so this is might be some of their reasoning for opening it. If Bosnia is opened to missionaries, it is highly unlikely I would be sent there. The church generally doesn’t send sisters into an area at first because the priority is having enough people who can fulfill Priesthood ordinances. Also, Bosnia isn't the safest place in the entire world. Sisters still don't go into Serbia at all because things are still really crazy there. Also, Bosnian is almost exactly the same as Croatian, but Slovenian is a lot different from both of them. So it is unlikely. Nonetheless, if they did open it, it would be awesome!

Going to the temple today was just so wonderful. I read Isaiah 26, which talks about trusting in God. I also read Ether 3, where the Brother of Jared is asking God to make the rocks shine with light for his people to have light in their boats. I realized something cool there: because the Brother of Jared says that it is because of the fall that we are all continually wicked. But then, when he sees the hand of the Lord, and the Lord is about to reveal Himself to him, the Lord says that because the Brother of Jared knows that the Lord is the King, and knows that the Lord cannot lie--because of his faith, he is redeemed from the fall and can return to God. If you get the opportunity, it is a wonderful chapter of the Book of Mormon to study.

I have found something amazing. I discovered when I study during my personal study time with diligence--we have one hour a day for this--the things I study have a direct affect on the things that happen soon after. In other words, it always seems that when I study diligently, the things I study are the things I need within a few hours of that study. The Lord leads me as I take the time to come to know His word. I love that He has promised that as we come to know His word and treasure it up in our hearts, we will have the ability to open our mouths and say the things we need to say in the moment we need to say them. This is exactly what I need right now as a missionary. I know that the times I try to do anything without preparation or without the Spirit, I fall flat on my face. The Lord has chosen the weak and simple of this world to proclaim His gospel. I think I've said that before, but it runs through my head every day, reminding me that it is OK that I am so bad at so many things here at the MTC because choosing people like me to serve here was intentional. The Lord wanted to use these things to demonstrate His power, and to prevent the "greatness" of man from getting in the way of what really matters: the eternal Holy Spirit communicating with the eternal souls of God's children.

It is amazing to see my investigators, even though they aren't real investigators (though soon there will be!) turning their hearts to God. It is also amazing to see my own heart turning to God. I echo what Elder Payne has said--I am amazed at how little I understood of my own religion prior to these few months. Everything we do has a purpose, and everything we are asked to do is for a good reason. It all makes a whole lot of sense, but we can't necessarily understand it without the Lord. With the Lord though, we can come to see how everything is related, and remember that the purpose of it all is to lead us back to God so we can live with him in Eternity.

I am so happy to be on a mission. I woke up this morning just feeling giddy about the opportunity to go to the Temple and fell asleep last night thinking about the people I am going to have the opportunity to teach. I am so incredibly blessed. If you are in the church, I ask you to not be hesitant to share. The gospel can change people's eternity. It is the single most important thing they can even learn. And if you are hesitant, then study the words of God, and He will give you the portion which shall be meted unto every man in the very hour that it is necessary. Trust God, learn His words, and be happy. I love you all!

Vedno,

Sestra Ary

Week 5 -- Living in the world of the MTC

2011-10-11T17:45:00.000-07:00

~
Hello friends and family!

I can't believe that I'm in week five. Living at the Missionary Training Center is really just so strange.

Life here is sort of like you are living on an entirely different planet. Nothing is the way that it used to be. People aren't made as individuals on this planet—no, they're made in pairs. Seeing someone walking alone is sort of like seeing someone without an arm.

The day begins at 6:30 a.m. for 2,500 19-year-old missionaries and now, after having become so accustomed to it, we all spend our free time sitting at our desks in our classrooms when the weather isn't nice outside.

The intrigue dominating this culture surrounds desk stealing, flag hiding, and treasure map making.

Meals are a series of long lines and stratagems to make sure you're not in the longest line but you're still getting the food you want.

The world ends at 10:30 p.m., and everything goes dark, only to start again with a series of blaring alarm clocks at 6:30 a.m. the next morning.

The game to play in gym is “four square,” where the intensity supersedes even that of the basketball or volleyball games all around.

People stand in line at 5:00 a.m. in the morning to get sack lunches for their Preparation days.

And the most important thing that you're preparing for all week is talking to people (who are really your instructors but pretend to be investigators) thus helping you become a better teacher.

All of it is absolutely FABULOUS.

I cannot even tell you how much fun it is to be around these elders all the time. I have so much respect for them and everything they're doing with their lives when most of them haven't even lived away from home before. They're all so kind, spiritual, and goofy, it makes the days go a lot faster.

For example, one of our elders might get into an intense discussion with another surrounding whether bananas grow on trees or shrubs. It goes something like this:

"My grandmother had a banana tree"

"Bananas don't grow on trees they grow on shrubs."

"No they don't."

"Yes they do, and they're all clones of each other,"

"They grow on trees--they have wood. Sister Ary said that a tree has to have wood. Wait, what did you say about clones?"

"They might be like palm trees, they’re actually just overgrown shrubs who pretend to be trees. They're lying."

"Do you mean clones like the attack of the clones? I can speak mandalorean."

"Say something."

"weoikrwoenwe. That means a mandalorean never forgets."

"Yes, they're all clones, so if they get a disease, they all die."

"Did you know that mandalorean is spoken as a series of short words put together with dashes? For example..."

"Bananas don't grow on trees."

"I lit my socks on fire once because I swear one of them was possessed. I was wearing them on my feet."

"Why are we talking about this now?"

"I wore like 6 pairs of socks, and so when I lit them on fire I could dance around for a while. But I had a bucket of water there to put them out. So when it got too hot, I just put it out."

"You jumped in a bucket?"

"Yes."

"What if it was a chemical fire? Then it wouldn't have gone out. What would you have done then?"

"What if an alien came down and ate your face?"

And so it goes. That is sort of a smushing together of conversations I’ve heard over the past few days. We have been trying to keep it down so that we can at least try to concentrate. It is difficult to concentrate when dialogue like that is going on. Sister Tanner will be reading the scriptures and then start to smile and laugh silently, so we're both just sitting there with our faces buried in our work shaking in our chairs with laughter.

I took a little too long on that conversation, so I haven't much time to write. It has been a really good week though, and the best part of it has been that we've been teaching our investigators about how to keep the commandments and what they are. It turns out, though, that one of our investigators likes to drink occasionally, and smokes, and drinks coffee every morning. We were a little concerned about that until we found out that our other fake investigator is into more hardcore word of wisdom violations (remember these are personas that the teachers invent, they're not real people). We didn't believe him for so long when he was telling us about his addiction, that it took about 10 minutes longer than it should have just because we had him repeating the same thing over and over again until he was practically punctuating every single word. Suddenly we gasped in unison then having to figure out some way to tell him about how the Church and God can help him get through these addictions no matter how hard they are to quit. Now, I am not exactly certain what we're going to do, but he is really trying to change his life for the better, and sometime soon he is going to be clean.

We attended a session at the temple today which was wonderful. I LOVE THE TEMPLE! I am so sad that I won't be able to go to one in Slovenia since there isn't one within my mission boundaries.

I have been sick with a cold for the past few days. It has settled in my lungs and is making me cough all the time making me sound like a heavy smoker. Brilliant timing for the Word of Wisdom and forgoing tobacco discussion, I know.

All told things are great. I am probably going to fly to Washington, D.C. in the next 2 weeks to make my first required appearance at the Slovenian Embassy. That will mean I’m one step closer to getting my visa in order to live there.

I love you all!

Sestra Ary

Week 4: What a WONDERFUL conference!

2011-10-04T16:53:00.000-07:00

~
Greetings my friends!

This has been an amazing week. Hearing conference was just everything I needed. When I went to bed on Sunday night, I felt the Spirit burning in me so strongly that I didn't want to fall asleep and lose it.

On Sunday afternoon, following the conference and before an evening devotional meeting (which was amazing: The speaker was Chad Lewis who played with the Philadelphia Eagles, won the Super Bowl in 1999 with the Saint Louis Rams, and was a former BYU football player), Sister Tanner and I walked up to the temple grounds where we memorized a scripture in Slovenian.

Then after the incredible devotional--where this tough, famous football player spoke of how much he loves his wife and how his wife is the best thing he has ever had, and his children the most important thing to him--we watched the movie, “The Testaments of One Fold and One Shepherd” in the large auditorium. The last five minutes, as those who have seen this film know, are probably the best and most powerful moments of any movie I have ever seen. When Jesus touches Helam's face, I couldn’t help but feel the Spirit so strongly, and want more than anything to be with my Savior. I will do anything for Him. He is my light and my life, my Redeemer, my All.

When I was about to fall asleep, the words of the conference talks played through my head and the image of Jesus descending to Bountiful Temple, as well as the words of the scripture I had memorized. Every time I thought about those words, my heart wanted to sing. I repeated them so many times, feeling the comfort and peace and love of the Spirit of God. I know this is true. And what JOY it brings me! What absolute happiness and peace! Oh, I want nothing more than to be clean, a pure vessel of light from God to the people of this world, helping them to see that they are not alone, they are loved with a deep and pure love which transcends understanding and which can fill their lives so that all that is dark is cast away and they can hardly stand the joy that fills them. I feel this joy, I bask in it here, and I am just so continually grateful for everything my great God, my Father, has allowed me.

“Ja, Resnicno, Povem Vam, ce boste prisli k meni, boste imeli vecno zivljenje, glejte, ponujena vam je moja roka vzmilosjenje, in kdor koli bo prisel ga bom sprejel, in blagor tem predejo k meni.” 3 Nefi 9:14

“Oh, truth, I share with you, if you come to me, you will have eternal life, extended is my arm of mercy, and whosoever will come, him will I receive, and blessed are those who come unto me.” 3 Nephi 9:14

(FYI: There are a lot more commas in Slovenian than English!)

I am so grateful that I am allowed to go to the temple here in Provo. It is such a blessing. We're going to attend a session there in a few minutes and I am so excited! I wish so much that everyone I knew believed and felt this for themselves, and could enter the temple of God. If they would come unto Christ, be forgiven, and follow His path of faith, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end, they could receive every blessing that God has to offer. They could feel the immense and indescribable joy that comes with the Gospel and the constant companion of the Holy Ghost.

Conference was wonderful. It was amazing to sit there in a room with 2,000 other missionaries and to hear the words from the prophets and general authorities. All of the sessions’ talks are online now, so anyone can see them. I would suggest to every girl I know to see the talk by Elder Uchtdorf. It was perfect for women; just what we need to hear and remember.

I know that I should talk about what has happened this week other than this all, but since I don't have much time, I wanted to focus this letter on what is truly important.

My companion, Sister Tanner, is currently in Washington, D.C. for visa stuff, and I will probably be flying out there as soon as Jaime at the Church’s Travel Service office receives all my visa documents and has sent it to the Slovenian Embassy in D.C. We have to make two physical appearances at that D.C. embassy in order to be issued a Slovenian visa. It is sort of ridiculous. Slovenia is the only country that requires this.

Did you know that Slovenia has the word love in it? SWEET!

I love all of you! Thank you to everyone who has sent me letters, every one of them makes me so happy!

z ljubezen,
Sister Ary

Week 3: Still in the MTC but an adventure today!

2011-09-27T17:19:00.000-07:00

~
NOTE FROM MADELEINE'S MOM:
We learned that Madeleine's request for a Criminal Background Check from California never arrived. Therefore, Madeleine's Slovenian visa application is seriously stalled. The Church's Travel Office instructed her to phone me to figure out which forms are still missing and how we could reconstruct the whatever items are necessary for her visa application to be completed.

Hi!

Today has been an adventure, the biggest adventure of my week. I had to phone my home plus I left the Missionary Training Center campus for about an hour. Speaking to Mom on the phone today was great, though stressful because of the stuff we're trying to figure out. Then going off campus.... that was something!

We took a shuttle to the Provo Police Station and I had accidentally left my name-tag at the front desk so I was wandering around the police station without one. Sister Tanner had hers though, so things were good. It took the woman at the front window of the police station about 5 minutes to do my police background check. Compare that to the two week wait that they have in California. And the fee was 10 dollars, not $60 like it is in California. Good grief! But it was nice to drive around Provo a bit and see the place where I resided the majority of the last three years. It’s hard to believe all my friends are just down the street but I never see them even though I’m in Provo too. The MTC seems like a different city, actually a different world. And when we go to the Provo Temple it seems like I couldn’t possibly be in Provo—my life is so different from when I lived here as a student going to BYU.

Our meetings with the investigators have been off and on. Some of the time we are really able to invite the Spirit and have a wonderful meeting with them. I love those times; they're definitely the best parts of the week. But there never seems to be enough time in a day to plan for our meetings and still learn Slovenian. Even as our language becomes better, we're constantly reminded of how little we can actually say. We probably know a couple of hundred vocabulary words and now we're learning how to apply them. Cases are the primary structure of Slovenian and most Eastern European grammar, and that's something that doesn't even exist in any form in English. It makes things considerably more complicated until we really get the graphs down and learn how to use them well.

There are SO MANY graphs to memorize! We sit in the classroom for most of our waking hours, with the little seats and these slanted desks off which everything falls. I sit by the window and have a view of Mount Timpanogas as the sun rises and strikes the southeastern side and throughout the day until the last pink rays vanish. It is a strange thing to know that I've seen the entire progression of the light on the mountains throughout a day from sunrise to sunset--from the same position. But we learn so much here so fast and we have such dedicated teachers. Sister Kelly, one of our teachers, has been just wonderful with Sister Tanner and I and comforting us when we're feeling like we're not doing as well as we should be. Sister Okoren, who used to play the part of our first investigator, is really intense about wanting us to just say what we're doing and mean it, and to not be afraid. Brother Johnson is probably the best Slovene speaker that the mission has produced in at least 6 years (so says sister Okoren) and so he is a great asset to us when we're confused about anything with the language. Besides, he is always really excited about what he teaches when he teaches about the language, and so it is pretty great to have him as a teacher. We don't feel like we're getting through to him with the gospel yet, so we're hoping to fixing that. (He is playing our shy Slovene investigator, Milan).

You know, having multiple investigators throughout the week role-playing the part of real Slovenes is a new addition to the MTC. It only changed as recently as August. It means that we have a lot less time on our hands to mess around because we have to be planning all the time for the two lessons we have to teach per day. And if we don't do well by making the gospel relevant to the investigator or by helping them to see the benefit of it in their life and how they can make a connection with God themselves, then the investigator will ask us to stop coming. Which means there are real consequences for not doing well. This already happened to the Slovene Elders and Sister Tanner and I are terrified that it will happen to us. We hope so much that the Lord will be with us. I know that these aren't real investigators, but we know this is much what it will be like in the mission field of Slovenia so it is important to us that we learn how to teach well and help people find their way to God.

I don't think I've ever said this, but the sister who sleeps on the bunk bed above me is the same sister that I met at IHOP when I was having breakfast there with my Mother and friends the morning I entered the MTC. She is going to go to the Czech Republic for her mission and she is awesome. All the other sisters in our residence hall are awesome. They’re all going to the Czech Prague Mission and they're all friendly and focused. Everyone desires to be obedient so we start quiet time and go to bed on time practically every night. We also always get up before 6.30 A.M., which is wake up time. It feels great. Every night we have a group prayer together and then we each say something about the person who said the prayer aloud. This week was “colors,” and I was shocked by the colors people assigned me: I got maroon, magenta, red, bright purple, and pink. I did not anticipate that at all.

Remember how last week I wrote that Elder M. Russell Ballard spoke to us? Well this week Elder Russell M. Nelson was our guest speaker. It was so cool! He spoke of the Book of Mormon and about how it is relevant and necessary in our work. Specifically he talked about the new special issue of the Ensign magazine that focuses on the Book of Mormon this month (Ensign, October 2011). He told us it's an incredible resource for us and that it must be a keepsake for every missionary. We were all given one issue of next month’s Ensign. AND there is an article specifically about the Book of Mormon being translated into Slovenian! How cool is that? It was so awesome to read – an entire article about Slovenia! :) Everyone should read it.

I am not worried about the fact that I’m going to be here for another 6 weeks. Like I said, time is weird here so I don't think it will feel like 6 more weeks. It hasn't even felt like three weeks so far. I don't know what it has felt like… Just time outside of time, I guess.

But I am learning so much. This is awesome.

Vse moj ljubezen,

Sestra Ary

WEEK 2: From the Missionary Training Center in Provo, UT

2011-09-20T12:44:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

I am so happy to be here. The first few days were as hard as everyone said they would be, what with the language being the only thing spoken and the immediate teaching opportunities in Slovenian and all new people and having a companion with you constantly and everything. But my goodness, I have never been so close to the Spirit in my life. I feel like it is all around me all the time and that in particular when I am going to the teaching opportunities the Spirit speaks through us so even with our dreadful Slovenian, the investigators can understand that they have a Heavenly Father who loves them, and that they are important, and that their life can change if they want it to. They can over come everything they have been facing, and they can go forth with the light and knowledge of truth, their hearts and minds turned to a loving creator and the Savior of the world. It is so beautiful to see them become interested in the lessons as we speak truth and the Spirit speaks to their hearts, explaining what we don't have the capacity to say. I know so much more Slovenian, but there were two days last week that we didn't have an investigator so my learning stalled because I didn't have the pressure of needing to speak for a half hour straight.

I am working with two of the Elders in my district on a song that we are planning an audition to perform in the MTC devotional. We are singing, "Abide With Me, Tis Eventide." One of the elders is fabulous on the piano, and the Elder I am singing with Starsina (Elder) Mills, has a beautiful tenor voice. I sing the first voice as a solo, then he joins in the chorus, then he sings the second verse and I join him in the chorus, then we sing in unison and a capella the third verse, and then sing a rousing last chorus together and a capella on the last phrase "tis eventide…." It is a wonderful song to sing and I really hope we are chosen from the audition. I would love to have this opportunity to perform.

Did I tell you last time that Elder Russell M. Ballard came to our Tuesday evening devotional? I don't think I did because the devotional was the evening after I wrote to you. He was awesome. We are never told who will be speaking beforehand and if it is going to be an Apostle, we can only guess because they don't show who it is up on the giant screens until only seconds before the speaker begins. I was sitting in the choir (which was huge! 400 missionaries, 4/5ths of which were Elders) and suddenly, when the doors opened, everyone in the front stood. Then it was Elder Ballard who entered! It was awesome. He spoke about how we need to be our first converts and what we are learning from being on a Mission. I wrote a lot of notes. It was fabulous. Everyone was so excited that he was there.

Yesterday we had the first new investigator. It was one of our Slovenian teachers, Brat (Brother) Johnson, but he was playing the part of a Slovene named Milan. It is amazing how little he seemed like himself when he was doing the part because I really felt like I was teaching Milan and not my teacher. We knew nothing about him when we knocked on the door, so we were expected, through asking questions and trying to figure out through what he answered in Slovenian, what part of the Gospel he most needed to hear at that time. It was intense, but the Spirit really was there to help us. I felt strongly that he knew that what we were saying was true, and that he could feel the Spirit as we spoke. It was a beautiful experience. I floated on a cloud the whole rest of the evening and even dreamed about teaching investigators last night. It is such a joy to teach, I cannot even believe it. And the best part is that it doesn't even really matter how good I am at Slovenian or anything else. What matters is how much the Spirit is there and what he communicates to the investigator. As long as the Spirit is present, the investigator will learn, and I don't have to panic about failing. Only when the Spirit is not there is there a problem.

The food is getting a little intense here, meaning, I am getting tired of it already. They try to have a lot of variety, but when you eat from the same cafeteria every day for every meal, it can get repetitive. Fortunately, we have been making friends with the wonderful Elders in our district and so it makes the meal seem not as bad. I am still hungry all the time of course, but I am trying very hard to eat healthy food and not overeat. Our cafeteria is like Jerusalem at rush hour, meaning I always feel like I’m about to get into a head on collision with one of the various heavy-laden tray carrying Elders. Seems I always suffer at least a couple of fender benders. It is ridiculous. We only get a half hour to eat every meal, which is not enough time when you are me and you (apparently,) eat quite slowly. An Elder sitting across from me can finish two hamburgers, a plate of French fries, a bowl of ice cream, a banana, and four cups of Gatorade in the time it takes me to finish a salad! I'm even slower than my companion, and it's not like she has abnormally fast eating skills or anything.

Relief Society this week was wonderful again and so was a workshop we had on Friday. Once again, the things I am praying about are the things I am taught. This week I prayed about developing a stronger testimony of the Joseph Smith story and then we had a workshop only on that and I really felt a peace and joy about it, the Spirit testifying to me of its truth. It was just fabulous.

One of the Elders said that my Sacrament meeting talk last week about olives, olive oil and the symbolism with Christ and the Atonement was the answer to one of his prayers. It was amazing, he said, because he had spent a lot of time wondering why it is that we use oil when giving a blessing to heal the sick. He said that was a question that had bothered him for a while and that it was answered during my talk when he realized that it is a symbol of Christ and His atonement, and the healing power of the Atonement. It made me so happy to be part of the answer to someone's prayer.

I am so glad that I am here. I am learning SO MUCH!!!!! !! It is the COOLEST THING EVER!!!!!!!!! Thank you to everyone who supports me. I want nothing more than to keep learning and serving.

Z moj ljubezen,

Sestra Ary

1st week of my mission

2011-09-13T22:44:00.000-07:00

Hi!

I have been here in the Missionary Training Center (MTC) for less than a week so far but things are already so different from how they were before and I have learned so much. I can now pray, speak, and bear testimony in Slovenian, as well as teach a lesson (which I've done three times now to varying degrees of success). I have a wonderful companion. Her name is Sister Tanner and she is from North Hollywood. I know, what are the chances? She is a BYU-Idaho student and is planning to be an English teacher when she graduates from college. She is a really determined person with a wonderful, bright face and vibrant green eyes. It is fabulous to be a companion with someone who wants to learn the language as much as I do and who is as determined to succeed. She and I have been through a lot already together, several ups and downs, and I am learning a lot from her. It is “Preparation Day” today, and I am writing this in the laundry room (the biggest laundry room I have ever seen). But, let me start at the beginning…

The first day was extremely intense. Actually, everything about the first few days was intense. It felt like an absolute eternity from Wednesday to Saturday. When we arrived immediately our Slovenian teachers (who only spoke in Slovenian from the first moment onward) greeted us. It was more than a little discombobulating. First up was a meeting with the Mission Presidency and all the new Elders and Sisters. There are several hundred of us. Following the meeting, we were sent to dinner and then to unpack before our first real Slovenian class.

Every class is three hours long and we have two classes a day, five days a week. After classes we have personal and companion study, then language study. All of it has to be done in the classroom, which means we spend about 10.5 hours every day in the same room. The rest of the time we are either in the gym, eating, sleeping, or getting ready for any of the above. Time to write in my journal is even limited. Ten and one half hours in class in a single day is enough to start to drive one crazy, and it certainly did that for the first few days I was here.

On the third day, at about noon, we had to teach our first lesson in Slovenian to a native Slovene. Maya was an "investigator" but even though she really wasn’t, it was an incredibly nerve-wracking and stressful thing to teach her. Unsurprisingly, we knew how to speak very little that first lesson and we understood even less. The investigator didn't respond very well to our testimonies, but we had her pray which went well.

The next day we had our second meeting with her, but she hadn't done the tasks we had asked her to do so our planned lesson sort of flew out the window. We realized that a big mistake we made was in not giving her a sheet that explained exactly how to pray. Even though we had taught her how to pray, apparently she had forgotten so we didn't make any progress, though our Slovenian had already improved. I could understand more what our teachers, Brat ("Brother) Johnson and Sestra (“Sister”) Kelly said and we began to better understand how to teach.

Being in a language immersion program, we are sort of clueless half of the time, which can be really frustrating. Sestra Tanner and I realized that we were being too focused, that we weren't having any sort of fun and thus weren't happy. We have been working on lightening up. Our Elders in the Slovenian part of our district (there are three of them, they're a triple companionship) are wonderfully fun so I’ve been trying to be more upbeat like them. I think that could really help.

Our saving grace was on Sunday when we didn't have any classes or language study and instead we had wonderful things such as a huge joint Relief Society meeting, MTC choir (which consisted of about 500 people of whom only 100 were Sisters) and Sacrament Meeting. Every Sunday we are supposed to write a talk on a topic assigned to us. The talk has to be exactly five minutes long, and you only get about 30 seconds warning if you are called upon to present yours. The President of the MTC, President Brown, attended our Sacrament Meeting, which apparently doesn't happen very often. He reorganized our Branch Presidency and then stayed through the rest of the meeting. Surprise! It turned out that I was the first person asked to speak (about a 1 in 60 chance that it would be me). It turned out well though.

My topic was the Atonement, and while that is about one of the largest topics under the sun, it was still wonderful to speak about. I had planned on talking about Jerusalem and what Gethsemane and the Garden Tomb are like and how, when I lived in Jerusalem, we turned olives into olive oil as a symbol of the Atonement. I had about 15 seconds to get my stuff together and walk up to the stand before I spoke. Fortunately I had my talk planned, and I was grateful that I had not chosen to read from “Preach my Gospel” because I only realized afterwards that I only had the Slovenian version with me. I spoke for the five allotted minutes, describing in detail the symbolism of olives and the process of making oil, and how the oil has been used to heal, to light the way, and is still used to consecrate. I also bore my testimony of the Atonement and my gratitude to Christ for doing something so extraordinary for me. I used a few verses in Alma to talk about how the Atonement was necessary (a great and last sacrifice) and then ended. President Brown said, “Thank you,” as I walked down and afterwards told me the talk was fabulous and that I have a wonderful understanding of the Atonement. That meant a lot to me. I really felt God was directing me on what to say and how to say it. I never felt nervous or alone, even though I was speaking in front of the MTC President and all these Elders and Sister whom I have never met before.

Yesterday (Monday) we had another lesson with Maya. Sister Tanner and I were planning it when I suddenly felt we ought to explain the concept of eternal families. We did this, and I hope that helped Maya recognize the necessity of the Gospel in her life. When we were meeting with her, I suddenly felt that we should not have her read the section we had been intending her to read, but instead we should have her read something in 3 Nephi about Christ. I was looking for the chapter on Christ blessing the children but could not tell which one it was because it was all in Slovenian. So I just picked one, hoping it was good, and asked her to read it. It turned out that it was 3 Nephi chapter 11 which is the section where Christ descends and the people feel the nail marks on his hands and feet and get to meet him face to face. I was astonished that it was such a good section to have her read and really felt like we had the Spirit with us. But it was not all good, she still hadn't prayed, and we missed something critical she said in her long Slovenian speeches. Sister Tanner and I were pretty discouraged, so we had to pray for help that we could have the Spirit with us in all things and that the Lord will be our constant companion. We felt better after that and were able to cheerfully prepare for today, which is “Preparation Day” and has so far been really relaxing.

Well, I have only 3 minutes left. Let me say that I am so grateful that I am on this mission. Though it is hard and discouraging at times, I have already learned so much -- not only about the language but about sincere prayer, about the Spirit, about humility, and sincere love. I am so excited to learn and grow more because I want to be better than I am and spend the rest of my life serving the Lord in any way I can.

Thank you to everyone who has helped me to prepare for and pay for this mission. It has meant so much to me. I am so glad I am here!

I love you all! Thank you Mom and Dad!

Z ljiubezen,

Sestra Ary

Week 6 -- My birthday and riots

2011-08-28T17:24:00.000-07:00

Monday—I had class at 2 so I spent the morning preparing for it. I think I had to so some reading of the people in the class, and such and so forth.

Tuesday—My birthday! It was a really fun day, mostly thanks to Amelia. She was kind enough to take me and Cherry down to Grandchester, which is this little village down south of Cambridge. You would not believe how beautiful it is. It is really the perfect little place—thatched roofs of white walled cottages, overgrown with climbing roses all in full bloom, beautiful little country lanes which lead off to fallow fields full of seagulls, an old church with a tall spire and a gray-stone graveyard, and, finally, the little place called “The Orchards” which was our destination. It is a small tea-house which is quite famous throughout England as the place that Rupert Brooke, the author, liked to spend his time and take his tea every day for several years. He even wrote a rather long and ambling poem about the orchards of Granchester. Virginia Woolf, Alfred Keynes, Tennyson, and other such people also spent a good deal of time there.
This is a special place because you don’t eat inside, mostly, though you can when it rains, but rather you eat under the shade of the apple trees at little reclined cloth chairs around old wooden tables. The Cam river runs behind it, and there are various little nooks and sheltered places you can sit where you’re largely out of sight of everyone else and can have just that little bit of peace to yourself. We bought scones. I got a salad, and Amelia and Cherry a BLT. I also had a ginger beer which was quite good. We sat outside for a minute until the bees realized we were there, and Cherry and Amelia had lemonade. Cherry has a fear of bees, so it wasn’t long until she was screaming and waving her arms, and we were moving inside behind glass doors. We were there for less time than I would have liked, particularly considering how incredibly delicious the scones were, but I had to get to a class. So we took a taxi so we wouldn’t have to repeat the long 2-mile walk there although I wouldn’t have minded. Though the walk was along a hedged road and had no real sidewalk to speak of, making us have to strain to hear cars and become quite adept at leaping back into bushes, it was a beautiful day and quite a perfect time for a walk through the countryside. It is amazing how quickly the buildings of Cambridge disappear, replaced by acres and acres of farmland and fields. There were the occasional large home and cottage, but not much else except vivid blue sky and us singing hymns in terrible harmony until we got to Granchester.
I spoke with the taxi man as he drove us back. He told us that he guessed we were American because American’s are always nice, unlike English people. This happened again yesterday, same scenario, but different driver.
When we returned to Cambridge I rushed to class only to find I had an hour before it began and had simply misread our ridiculously confusing color coded schedule. I really get paranoid about that schedule and check it multiple times a day just to make sure I haven’t missed anything because things are so easy to miss. I didn’t have any homework with me, so I simply chose to walk around Cambridge for about an hour. I went to places I hadn’t been before, like a park next to the Cam. I stood for about ten minutes within 3 feet of a swan who really didn’t seem to care that I was there, and I watched it preen. Its long, phenomenally flexible neck was fascinating to watch as it stretched and turned every imaginable direction as the bird rearranged its feathers. It would lean its head all the way back, stretching out its long neck, until it could reach its tail feathers with its beak and move them this way and that. It would lift its head like a snake from a basket, then coil up again and reach all the way around its side to its feet. Sometimes it would look at me, and make a little head bob, saying, almost, that I see you and if you get any closer I will bite. I stayed where I was, even as a woman came and stood right next to it, and it did start to bite her hand. She didn’t seem to mind terribly because she wanted a picture with it, though it didn’t want a picture with her. It refused to move even when people tried to touch it. I was impressed.
I ambled along further and sat by a little canal and watched as hundreds of half-foot, mud colored fish hung lazily in the water and flicked their tails now and again, putting along in a slow trancelike way. Some had lost a few scales, so when they turned, their sides flashed in the sunlight. The wind picked up, soon rippling the water and the trees until I could see little more than amoeba brown shapes. I left, and watched a man play with his dog. He teased the dog for a while, pretending to throw the ball, but then not actually throwing it. The dog would spin as soon as he saw his masters arm fling, but then would turn right around when no ball fell and start barking at his master’s hand. The master did this five or six times, the poor dog barking and spinning in circles. Finally, when the master did let the ball go, flying in a high, lazy arc, the dog didn’t notice and kept sniffling his master’s hand for the ball.
Class finally happened and things went well. After class, I didn’t want to do a single thing having to do with school because it was my 21st birthday after all and I insisted on wasting it. I must have managed that quite well, because I have no idea what I did do until the guest lecture that evening. It was in the Society Chamber, as is typical, and was a new author and her literary agent speaking about how to publish a book. Right up my alley, I know. I took plenty of notes, and really enjoyed the precious information. Right after, Amelia had planned a little party for me up in her room. Most of the BYU people had decided to go to a pizza party at first, so for the first hour and a half there were 5 or 6 girls there and Amelia and I. Amelia had bought a stunning little cake, topped by glazed, colorful fruit, and edged with a wall of chocolate. The inside of the cake was a fluffy white mix, whipped cream and more fruit. It was delicious and everyone gasped when she brought it out. She had also bought some plastic wine cups and some fruit juice for us all to share. When Mohammed came, he brought a cake, which was fortunate because it wasn’t long until the rest of the crew thundered in, all 20 or so of them, and there wouldn’t have been anything left for them with just the one cake. Amelia had bought me a beautiful little notebook I picked out in Scriptorum in Oxford, as well as a book called “Al Qaeda in its Own Words” and some very peculiarly flavored chocolates from a nearby chocolatier (violet, rose, and chili flavored among others). People hung around for almost three hours, and I felt really happy that it was such a good party. Amelia was really happy about it too because it was the first party she has ever put on, and she wanted it to be good.
I went to bed quite satisfied that evening.

Wednesday—Having done absolutely nothing on Tuesday referring to school, I really had to pick it up Wednesday so I could have something to show my supervisor. I spent the afternoon and evening writing the first 10 pages of my paper. It was a long haul, and hard to get motivated to do it because I already knew what I needed to write, having already done the interviewing necessary, but I just had to do it. I was able to go to the Mosque that evening so I could get another interview, which went quite well. The woman I found turned out to be someone of some use to the police in Cambridge and the UK in general in reference to interactions with the ethnic minority populations.

Thursday—On Thursday it turned out that I was supposed to have submitted my second 3000 words for the review of my classmates, but I didn’t realize it due to some of my own idiocies. Fortunately, it wasn’t bad as I had written it all already and had it online. I was able to read it to the class, therefore, and they all simply sent me copies of it with line by line annotation that afternoon. I was ridiculously fortunate in that regard. I had to spend the rest of the afternoon writing my paper, so I went to a coffee shop on Mill Road just out of the off chance that I would see someone I knew or could begin a conversation with who may be someone I could interview. By this point, I had 10 interviews from the whole 2 months, and ten had always been my goal (though in the fairyland where I am a superwoman, I had hoped for 30 interviews.) I sat in the shop for several hours, sipping on chamomile and apple cider tea right across from the Mosque, and wrote another ten pages of the paper. It was good to finish that. When I was done, I had everything finished that I could based on the interviews and previous work I had done. Now, it is a matter of doing the work from the Police’s perspective on the situation, and that has been really hard to get established. I have spent, on and off for the past 3 or 4 weeks, quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to get permission to interview the Police officers who are relevant to my work. With the beginning of the riots, however, the chances that I would get an interview were pretty much snuffed out (except that I might now that things seem to have settled down). The riots sort of took us all by surprise and had some really peculiar effects in the parts of Cambridge, near the Mosques, where I spend my time. First of all, the first three people killed in the riots were three Muslims who were leaving the Mosque and tried to defend the shops of their neighborhood when they were run over by a rampaging group of looters. That was tragic and on the minds of many of the people I spoke with. Also, the riots spread throughout England and tried to find a foothold here in Cambridge. There was a mini riot attempted at the local mall, Primark, but the police put it out almost immediately. The next day Mohammed went to Primark to shop and saw people being stopped and asked for their ID at random throughout the mall. There were police everywhere. Then the next day, I think this must have been Wednesday, there was an attempted riot on Mill Road where they tried to get into at least one store. They were also stopped by the Police, but it turns out that they had been there only moments after I had left the Mosque that evening. The next day I saw police everywhere, just walking up and down the street, as I sat in the café and did my writing. It has been a fascinating thing considering the topic of my paper.
That evening my class had a guest lecture by Brian Keeney who is the author of one of the books we read for the course. He was a witty sort of fellow, self-deprecating in a superbly British way, and full of excellent tidbits of advice for aspiring writers like us. After the meeting I rushed down to the Devonshire Mosque, which is a mosque a bit farther away than the Mawson mosque and much smaller. There I was able to get another two interviews with some very kind women who told me all about their understanding of the police.
I think I’m getting my evenings mixed up. O well.
I didn’t get home until late again, and had my meeting with Caroline early the next day

Friday—Supervision meeting. We pushed back the deadline for my rough draft because of the lack of interviews with the police. It meant that I am going to have to work really hard on reading theories about the police instead of hearing from them directly. Fortunately, Caroline has given me some sources I can use, so you can guess how I’m going to spend the next two days. After the supervision meeting, I had my writing class. It was once again in the room that Virginia Woolf had based her lunch in the beginning of “A Room of One’s Own.” Afterwards I went out with a girl named Samia who is from Punjab (a north-western province of India) and Mohammed to dinner. It was a fascinating conversation because Samia is a Hindu, Mohammed is a Muslim, and I a Mormon. So I spent most of the time asking Samia about her beliefs and how they relate to Islam and what I believe. We ate at a place called “The Bedouin” which is a Moroccan restaurant on Mill Road and is awesomely decorated on the interior to look like a Bedouin tent. The food was pretty good, and the conversation really quite interesting. Samia belongs to the highest caste of Indian society, the people who have historically been warriors and rulers. She, therefore, even though she is a practicing Hindu, can eat meat (though she can’t eat beef of course). She can also drink, though Brahmans, which are the priests and either the equal or the next lowest cast to the warrior caste, can’t. She went to a boarding school for four years and got a great education, and now she is going to UC Davis for economics. She explained that Hinduism is a polytheistic religion and they believe in the trinity of Gods, those being Brama, Vishnu, and Shiva. Of course, there are numerous other Gods, but these are the greatest. After dinner, we went to a Turkish shop for some sort of sweet of grains soaked in honey and rose water. We talked there until 12.30. When we finally walked back, there were hoards of drunk people on the street. It was really a striking thing to see. One man walking behind us managed to stagger the full width of the 5 foot wide sidewalk every time he tried to walk in a straight line, groups of women in skirts so short they’re pretty much shirts walked with long, thin arms slung over each other, giggling, and wobbly in their platforms, a man stood screaming profanities at a woman who screamed right back, it was insanity. The only place open other than the overflowing clubs and the taxi stands was a kebab shop glowing white in the empty market square.
It was a strange evening.

Saturday—I should have and would have gone to London but I had already planned not to because my full paper was supposed to be due on Monday. Therefore, I had made plans with people to take them to Iftar at the mosque and had already ditched them on two occasions so wouldn’t do it again. They weren’t able to come to the mosque though, so the whole day was pretty much a waste. I did go to iftar anyway, after a long day of riding my bike around and eating at tea shops. But I had already had dinner by the time iftar started and the talk on hope (also at the Mosque and given by a friend) had ended. So I left the mosque and tried to find a church I could look through. Unfortunately, the one I had intended on going to wasn’t open. So I walked by another church and saw people entering and got really excited. Then as I got nearer, I realized that there was a green seal in Arabic on the wall, and that this was actually a Mosque. It turns out the church rents out to some Muslims their equivalent of the cultural hall during Ramadan so these Muslims will have a place to go. I decided I would go in there, since I hadn’t realized there was another place like that. Naturally, having gotten into the habit of blending in, I pulled on my scarf like a hijab (it is just respectful to go into a mosque with a scarf over your head). I walked across the road and looked for the ladies entrance. When I couldn’t find one, I asked someone where it was. They said there isn’t one, but the men and women pray in the same room. This is something I’d not come across before, so I was hesitant to open the door and enter. I noticed immediately that this was different. The woman prayed behind the men, which is completely acceptable in Islam, just not typical, and the walls were lined with women who weren’t praying because there wasn’t room. Most of them appeared to be wearing their hijabs as a sort of respectful but not permanent thing, with the scarves only sort of covering their hair. I sat next to some of them and said Salaamu Aleekum, which is a fairly typical greeting. Later, when another women came over to talk to the women I was sitting next to, she only said Salaamu. Everyone replied the same. I realized I must really stand out here. Then I noticed that the women who were praying would wear a sheet over their shoulders and up over their heads like a hood as they prayed. Also, everyone had a small pale disk they would place their foreheads on when they prostrated. I was beginning to really wonder why this was different and had my question at least partly confirmed when I realized that they were standing with their arms at their sides instead of across their chests. This is something I had heard that Shi’ites did. I then saw a bucket in the corner which said “children in Iran fund” and had my theory confirmed. This was an Iranian Shi’ite mosque. This also explained why they were still praying when the Sunni’s I knew had already begun Iftar (broken their fasts). The prayer was the longest I have ever been to, continuing for more than 20 minutes. Typically a Sunni prayer lasts only 4 minutes. They had parts I had never heard, like the repetition of some phrase that said something or other about Mohammed before they started over again. By the time I left, they had only just finished the prayer and were about to begin their iftar. Mohammed who was at the other mosque I had left texted me to tell me he had finished iftar and I could come out when I was done. He was supposed to walk me home. I sort of ran back, hoping the way would work, and had to stop for a bathroom break in a bar. It was a strange sort of juxtaposition, this very English bar and the Church converted into a Shi’ite mosque that I had just been in.

Sunday—I went to church, naturally, on Sunday and only remembered after I had sat down for Sacrament Meeting that I was supposed to be teaching the CTR 5 class that day. I was lucky though, and was able to get the lesson manual after the Sacrament had been passed and the first speaker had finished. The lesson was not too hard to prepare on the fly, as most of the materials were crayons and so forth. They are pretty helpful in giving you a lesson plan. I sat through Primary with my class and really enjoyed it. It was on the Word of Wisdom. Then the class was on obeying the law. The kid’s didn’t know what law was, so I had to explain that. The lesson had them draw pictures of farm animals. Then I asked them what people do to keep farm animal’s safe. They immediately replied that you have to put a fence around them so they don’t get out. I did that with a little fence I had made during primary and explained how the law protects us and our family and we should follow it even when no one is looking.
Afterward there was practice for two songs that a group of us were doing that evening for the musical young adult fireside. Someone was kind enough to pick up me and my friend was we walked back to Kings. Amelia and I then went back in a taxi a few hours later so we could practice for our part of the performance that evening. We were singing “If You Could Hie To Kolob.” We got an amazing pianist last minute who was able to even make it into a little arrangement. Both Amelia and I had solo parts. She was really nervous, but it turned out great. It was her first time doing a solo, she said.
I went with Amelia and Cherry to Amelia’s room after the fireside and we played with the camera on her computer for a while before I finally went to bed.
And now it is today! Yay!
11.30 Friday is my meeting with the chief of police!!!!!!! WOOOOT!!!!!

Week 5 - Ramadan and novel writing

2011-08-28T17:21:00.000-07:00

Monday: I had just returned from France late the night before, so getting up in time for my 9 o’clock class in the rafters of the Union Society was a real treat. I basically rolled from my bed 20 minutes before the class began, and rode my bike to the Union Society after doing only minimal work to make myself look somewhat reasonable. The class was all the way at the top of the building in the attic, and so the room is pointed and sloped on both sides, with tall gothic windows showing a view of Cambridge to the north. The teacher, Emma Sweeny, was much younger than I had anticipated. She is petite, brown haired, and bright. She has published one novel and is working on her second. Her first novel won all sorts of awards in England and abroad. She sat at the head of the table and I to her right. When the class began, we had a naming game to help her remember our names. The game entailed us saying our name and then the name of the people proceeding us in order. I was the first, so everyone in the class had to repeat my name. It was fortunate for me though because I had to repeat no ones. After the class ended, I went back to my room and slept for four hours. I was that exhausted. I have been taking longer naps than I ever have in the rest of my life here at Cambridge because I do so much and don’t get quite enough sleep. Not to mention, my double sized, white comforter bed with a view of the garden through its gothic windows is quite appealing. It is always perfectly comfortable. Well, that is as long as I actually take the time to do the sheets right. They haven’t quite gotten the memo about fitted sheets here in Europe, as far as I’ve found at least. I had nothing else going on the rest of the day, so I spent it in work on my novel and my supervision. I also wrote my letter home, naturally. I went to bed around 11.00 like usual, and was just as exhausted as ever. This seemed to vindicate my nap, suggesting that I really did need it.

Tuesday: I did not have class until 4.50 on Tuesday so I had the time to work on my supervision more. I initially thought that it would be at the Union Society again, so I went and sat in the coffee shop to work on my writing and my supervision. There, I ran into several people I know who were having a conversation on all sorts of things. I sat near them, and therefore pretty much just eavesdropped for a while instead of working. After a while, I joined the conversation when the topic of the philosophical importance of eating organic foods came up. The question mainly revolved around whether eating inorganic food was removing us from our natural state, and what our natural state is. One person posited that our natural state is more obvious when we only eat foods which have not been sprayed with pesticides or what have you, and we don’t consume any sort of drug. Another maintained that it is impossible to find a natural state because we have been genetically altering our bodies since the day humans arrived on this earth, invented fire, and began to cook food. Even organic food, by this strain of thought, is not natural because it was all modified from its original form by people some time ago. I tended to side with the second argument, which may be obvious from this paragraph as I have not really given the first a convincing strain. One of the guys had to go off eventually, so I spent a while speaking with Bret, another guy from BYU, about how to write in a way that is honest and faces real problems without being gruesome or titillating. He offered some really useful suggestions on the topic. I then realized that my class was not in fact where I had thought it was but was back at Kings, so I headed off that way. I rode my bike like the wind itself to Kings. Our class was in this out-of-the way room up in the administration portion of Kings. This room, it turned out, was the site that Virginia Woolf, who spent much time at King’s, had in mind when she wrote the lunch scene at the beginning of “A Room of One’s Own,” which was based largely on Cambridge, in particular Kings (Oxford she did not know as well).
This was our first seminar where we got to know each other and received our first assignment, which was to write a pitch for our novels. I had a hard time doing it well because I have so much going into the novel that it is hard to extract the main points and explain them accurately. That failure was evident when I received a critique on my work the next day. Tuesday night was also Family Home Evening, I think, though it could have been Wednesday--I’m not sure. It had been hot all day, but by the evening it was raining off and on. We went to a park to play games, but by the time we got there it was pouring rain. It was a beautiful scene though. We all huddled under a weeping willow right next to the Cam where the punts are docked and little café’s with boxes of bright flowers hang over the water. We ended up going to someone’s apartment in Pembroke for the rest of FHE. I got to meet some people who are from BYU who I have never really come to know that well, and was glad about that. It has turned out that Pembroke, largely because of the high number of married people who were given rooms there, has been the place to be this year. I feel like at Kings I’m a little out of the way and I don’t get to know the BYU students that well. I am really bummed about that.
I had to run off from FHE to meet with Mohamed to go to Iftar, which is the breaking of the fast for Ramadan. Ramadan had begun a couple of days before, though I had not paid it much attention unfortunately. I went to the feast in hopes of interviewing some people, and I did manage to get at least one interview while there. As usual, the women sat upstairs and the men below. I went up with my hijab on and sat between some very nice young Muslim girls, native to Cambridge. I had forgotten, for a moment, that I was going to the feast so I had eaten a lot of food at dinner that evening. But it was alright in the end because I was able to talk to one kind girl about her experiences with the police. Unsurprisingly, she had not really had any, and was therefore able to provide me with the perspective of someone who doesn’t really get involved in these things.
After Iftar I had treats with Mohamad for a while at the communal kitchen in the Fitzwilliam street house. Like a good Arab, he had brought treats from Lebanon to share with people and was glad to share them with someone. Another guy from BYU joined us and we spoke about the Middle East, Indonesia (where he went on his mission) and morality in general. I didn’t get home until late that night, unfortunately, and went straight to bed.

Wednesday: I had to turn in the pitch for my novel to my group the day before, and had to critique the other pitches as well. I didn’t have class until 2 though, so I went to the University Library for the first time to go through a book that could help me with my research. I had to ride my bike, and I locked it to a fence which was decorated with laminated fliers for different musical concerts going on throughout Cambridge, things like “Medieval choral music,” and “the four recorders,” and “Music of Henry the V, Baroque.” The same man who designed the famed red British telephone box, and looks just like one built the University Library (UL). It isn’t red, it’s brick, but similar nonetheless. I had to get special permission from the PKP office, and a letter from them assuring the necessity of me going to the UL for me to enter. Then, I had to go to the admissions office, which is just to the side of the exhibit on Books and Babies that I had gone to before. The man there had me sit for a while while he mussed with some papers, then took a picture of me to put on a card, then gave me a new little ID freshly rolled off the press. With that, I was able to pass security and enter into the actual library. It is strangely arranged, with long and narrow rooms that recede off into alcoves where people can sit studying. If you need a particular book, as I learned through the help of a willowy woman in a flower dress, you look up the number and title and submit a request. Within a half hour, they will have had it sent to the front desk from the deep vaults of the library. The UL is a patent library or something like that, meaning that every book published in the UK is supposed to have one copy there. Obviously it is overladen with books. My supervisor told me that it is actually sinking under the weight of the books and they’re trying to find a way to keep it buoyed up.
I got the book eventually, though I could not remove it from the room it was in. Therefore, I took meticulous notes about it instead. After finishing, I had to rush back to King’s for class. I was too late to print out everything I needed, unfortunately, and was quite irked by having to tell my teacher that. After class I had to work really hard on my supervision and I went to with Mohamed and a friend of his to Iftar at a local joint called Nandos. They serve only chicken dishes there, but they’re all really good. I thoroughly enjoyed the meal. I had to rush off to meet with Kacem because he had someone he wanted me to interview. It turned out to be four young Muslim men who met with Kacem at the Chicken Cottage, the British version of KFC.
They were really interesting people. They were between the ages of 19 and 25 and were all the sorts of guys who dress in gangster clothing and baseball caps and so forth and who sit slouched in chairs. They were really happy to hear that I was minoring in Arabic and seemed willing to open up immediately to my questions. They all called me “sister” just as they would another Muslim, so in that way at least I felt accepted. I only had 4 questions for each of them, but some of them were considerably more verbose than others. They really did not agree that the police were doing a good job here in Cambridge because they felt like they were looked down on and targeted by the police force. One of the boys said that because he is a youngster, he reacts to them in the same way they behave to him. If they say “hey!” he will say “hey!” in return he said. Another one of them told me of how he was wearing a red Kaifa at the counter-demonstration against the EDL when they came to Cambridge. He said that people started to take pictures of him and there were cameras following him, so he put the scarf around his head and hid his face. He then told me that he had been searched 4 times that evening, and once was strip searched and only saved from arrest by his uncle. Kacem afterwards explained that he had been really silly doing that because he was standing in the front of the march and was attracting attention to himself by hiding his face. I think the guy was sort of proud of himself for doing something so daring. He was only 19.
When I asked all of them what they would change if they could change something about the police, they said that they wished that the police would treat them the way they wanted to be treated. The golden rule, pretty much. I could not be sure of how much they were saying was accurate, and how much was conflated either because they thought that was the way the others wanted them to react or because they wanted to make their actions seem grander for me and for their friends. It wasn’t an ideal interviewing situation by any means, but I think that even with all the extenuating circumstances, they got the basic message across. They know when they’re being profiled and targeted and condescended, and though they would not normally necessarily act up, though it is hard to tell considering their age group and lack of a solidified job or career. They all still live at home, and will until they marry.
After the interviews, I went with Kacem to meet up with Mohamed and his friend to have some tea at a local shop. We sat for a while and discussed the image of Muslims in western media, which, unsurprisingly, isn’t good.
I think, now that I look at this, that I’ve conflated Wednesday with Thursday. Therefore, this is both days. Now on to Friday.

Friday: I had to go to the Friday prayers to meet with someone I was supposed to interview. That was a 1.15, and so I rode my bike there, jumped off, put on the hijab, and climbed upstairs. I was not a pretty site with my face all red and sweaty. The prayer was fairly typical, though there were so many women because it is Ramadan, that I sat on the steps with several other girls. They were really, really nice and they explained to me some of the things that the Imam was talking about in particular Taqwa which is the Arabic word for piety or something of the sort. Afterwards, I found the person I was supposed to be interviewing and discovered that it was actually not the person I had agreed to interview but someone else. I was really embarrassed to have confused her with the other person, and never did find the right person.
In keeping with the rules that there are 3 people with you when you travel, Amelia and I waited at the train station for about 40 minutes for Mohamed to show up so we could take the train together to London. Once there, Mohomad went to visit a friend and Amelia and I had to find our way to the place we were supposed to drop off our things. It was in a small area called Denmark Hill, completely out of the way of central London, and as soon as we got on the train to take us there things started going wrong. It turned out we were on the wrong train, so we got off after about a half hour and spent about an hour and a half trying to find the right one. We were in a place called Lambeth there. I invented a song which went something like, “I’m stuck in Lambeth and I’ll be here forever standing here in the middle of this street waiting for a light to change… let me just die…” Amelia and I also invented a joke. Two knights of the round table, Sir Cumfrance and Sir Cuitous are walking down the street one day when Sir Kel approaches them. Sir Kel asks them, “hey, do you know how to get around?” Hahahaha!
Obviously, we were getting a little punchy in our exhaustion and confusion. We finally figured out how to get to Denmark Hill on the bus. The bus took forever as well, stopping as it did nearly every 200 feet. We had to keep our eyes peeled (what a weird expression) for anything that looked like the King’s College hospital that we were staying near. Finally, we found it and made it to our rooms. Somehow that I haven’t quite figured out, the whole escapade took about 6 hours. At our rooms they gave us only one key. When we opened the door, there was only one bed in the room. Amelia just about died. We went back to the front desk eventually to ask if there was some mistake. IT turned out there was a second room we were supposed to have, thank heavens. We took the train, which we found eventually by taking a bus to the station the long way, back to London to meet up with Mohamed for dinner at an Iraqi restaurant. On the metro, the lights went out. When we began to ascend the escalator it broke. We were still at the bottom. Let me tell you, it was a great relief to be done with the journeying bit. Amelia and I decided we would never travel again. Obviously we didn’t keep that up for more than a couple hours. We went with Mohamed to a restaurant in the Arab part of the city. He had found it after living in London for a year and trying most of the Arab restaurants so we knew this one would be good because he is a bona fide Arab and knows his stuff.
I got a kebab. My heavens, I have never liked kebab before but now I do. It was AMAZING. It just fell apart on my fork and went great with the rice and vegetables. After the dinner, he showed us around one of the main streets of London. They were beautiful in the night, all enlightenment structures and lit brightly and colorfully. I was impressed really with this part of London. I realized that London is beautiful. We finally took the metro back to the hostel and went to sleep.

Saturday: I woke to a marching band outside the window. An American marching band, naturally, as there are no marching bands in England. It was time to wake up obviously; I didn’t really have a choice. This was a much better day than the preceding day in that we actually managed to do things. We first went with Cherry down to Buckingham palace and tried to get inside. Unfortunately, the lines were so long that there was no way we were going to get inside that day unless we waited until 5.30 that evening. So we just took pictures outside of the palace and sat and ate lunch. Then we went to the Tower of London where we had to pay 15 pounds to get in. The price was worth it though because we got to have a tour from one of the beefeaters, a wonderful man who had served in the Army for 26 years and was asked to be a beefeater on his retirement. He told us all sorts of stories and had a whole series of jokes that were fabulously funny and a way of projecting so everyone could hear him. He led us through the castle and into their church where he concluded the tour. He lives there, with the 33 other beefeaters and their wives (or husband in the case of the first female beefeater) and families. After the tour, we waited in the extraordinarily long line to see the crown jewels. It was one of those things I didn’t really feel like I had to do to be happy, but since we were there, I might as well. I took an assortment of pictures of the faces of people in the crowd, then grew bored with the camera and contented myself with watching the sky. Finally, we were allowed to stand on the slow moving conveyer belts that go past the crown jewels. One of the largest diamonds in the world is inset into the scepter. It is huge! There were multiple crowns that we were able to see, including Queen Victoria’s diadem. We saw the Windsor sapphire and a whole bunch of other things that I don’t really know much about. Then I raced through the museum in the white tower, built originally in 1077 and full of the original kings’ armors (all of which are stunning pieces). Finally we left, going to the play we had bought tickets for that evening. It was Lion King, and we had bought tickets for 15 pounds each to stand in the standing room only area in the very back. We were able to lean against the railing to watch the show. It wasn’t too bad standing for that long, particularly considering how good the performance was and how cheap the tickets. It was an absolute riot of color and beautiful costumes, and dancing and drumming. The only bits I didn’t like were a couple of songs added that weren’t in the original movie. They sounded very theater-y and didn’t really fit with the whole feeling of the piece. The older Simba didn’t have a very good voice either, though he really looked the part. After the show, I had to rush back to our rooms (which took 2 hours) and meet with Mohamed so we could go back to Cambridge together. It was really fortunate that he was there because the train back was full of people who were the definition of sketch. I finally got back to my apartment at 2 am.

Sunday: I went to church, which was wonderful though I was exhausted, and slept for 4 hours afterward. I was exhausted, again. When Amelia returned from London, I went to her room and talked to her about my novel writing class for a while before going to sleep at 11.

Week four--Paris!

2011-08-01T12:23:00.000-07:00

Monday--Why can I never remember mondays? I remember two things about this last Monday and that's it. I recall running around to get the biometric photo done, and in the process discovering that there is another office for PKP that I'd never known of before, and I remember going to FHE. I also remember thinking that I had better remember that day so that I could write about it and not say that I had forgotten Monday. Alas. Naturally, I had class as I usually do, and I probably read for it.

Tuesday--Tuesday was a formal hall. I was beginning to panic about my final paper which I wanted to make sure I completed before I had to study for the test portion of the final, and therefore was reluctant to go to the formal hall. But I went anyway because I had signed up. I also had to finish going to the various places that Dr. Kerry assigned that we see and draw. He wanted us to go to 8 different locations throughout the semester and draw a portion of them so that we began to notice the differences between Enlightenment and Romantic architecture. Some of the places that he wanted us to go had nothing to do with either really, but were just interesting and worth going to for that reason alone. I sort of frantically tried to get them all done after class and before dinner so I cycled around the city for a while. I was dreadful at getting from one place to another (Cambridge is a romantic city. In otherwords, it is completely tangled and sporatic in its plan) and had to ask for the help of a man on his bicycle with his young son on a bicycle in front of him how to get from Downing college to Selwyn college. He was going that direction, so he led me part of the way. We stopped at an intersection where there were several other bicyclists waiting. He told me to continue straight and turn here and so on and so forth, and so I intended to do just that. A very collegate looking middle aged gentleman rode a bike in front of me and turned when the man tried to explain how to get to Selwin. As we began to ride, he struck up conversation, and told me he would show me the rest of the way. The ride was short, but he was the inquisitive talkative sort and so we talked for a while outside Selwin college (which is a beautiful little neo-gothic college hidden away behind the major colleges). He was all wit and self-depricating anecdotal stories. After a while, he explained that he worked for the New Yorker as a film critic (we were discussing the horrors of british journalism), and told me that his name was Antony. He left soon thereafter, so it wasn't until that evening at the formal hall that I was speaking with someone else and found out that Antony is Antony Lane and he's apparently quite famous. We were, for some reason, discussing british journalism again (I don't know why that topic came up so many times that day) and I quoted Antony's derision of the whole of British journalism, saying how he would never in a million years work for a british paper in order to prove that British journalism is untrustworthy. The guy across from me asked what this New Yorker journalist's name was, saying that there was only one journalist from that magazine who lived in Cambridge. Turned out to be the same chap. I felt very excited to have met a micro-celebrity.

That dinner was absolutely lovely. It was in the old-library of Pembroke college, thankfully, as the last one was in the marqee in the courtyard and that is simply not as pleasant as a beautiful old neo-classical library with geese and cherubs flying above you. I sat across from a Physics and Philosophy major from Harvard named Phil, who was next to a Middle Eastern Studies major from somewhere (we spoke in Arabic for a while. He had lived in Egypt some time ago and therefore we had pretty much the same accent) and he sat next to my friend Mohammed, who was next to a professor whose name is escaping me. Then on my side of the table was Aaron from BYU and two other people who I have unfortunately forgotten entirely. Ah! I remember. One of them at least was Rob from BYU also who is a History major. The professor tried to speak to me for a little while about BYU and the middle east and Arabic and so forth, but it was simply too loud to hear him all the way across the table. Therefore, I spent a good chunk of the evening trying to defend the vailidity of the state as a "legitimate" organism from Phil who contended that the work of a philosopher (Wolf or something or other) demonstrated pretty effectively that the state is illegitimate. The discussion revolved around the definitions of authority and legitimacy and was pretty entertaining.

After the dinner concluded, I went home and wrote until probably 2 in the morning. I had only until friday to get this final paper finished and I wanted to submit it to Dr. Kerry before hand so he could look it over and let me know what to fix. I discovered that the canadian geese have jam sessions on the lawn at 2 am, and that on clear nights you can see more stars than I had expected. Sleeping was a joy after everything.

Wednesday--Wednesday was panic in earnest day. I had to finish my paper, submit it to Dr. Kerry, finish going to all the necessary locations, do my class readings, and prepare for my supervision meeting with Caroline. Finishing going to all the necessary places took a good chunk of the day after our lecture because about half of them were closed when I arrived. Things have the most unexpected schedules here. I visited the botanical gardens, clare gardens (spectacular!), St. John's College Chapel (the definition of Chapel here in Cambridge is occasionally, in the case of Kings and St. Johns in particular, stretched as far as most-people-would-say-this-is-a-cathedral-because-it-is-so-ridiculously-large-but-it's-technically-not). Needless to say, St. Johns chapel is wonderful. I was glad to have finished everything though, and I finally escaped into the library where I finished writing the first draft of my fabulous paper and sent it to Dr. Kerry by 1 am. He had told me that if I wanted him to review it, I should do so by Wednesday night. So it wasn't technically wednesday, but ah well.

Thursday--so this was an interesting day. the panic continued, naturally, and would until friday at 2.30 when my test was over and the paper turned in. I spent the majority of the morning accomplishing nothing while trying to accomplish everything, which is the mark of finals week it seems. We had our last lecture, finishing up a discussion of Mozart's Don Giovanni, and then I had only a few hours until I would be taking the test. I knew what I had to do to prepare, so that at least helped. Amelia, bless her heart, convinced me that I had to go to Midsummer Night's Dream which was having its last performance which I would have the opportunity of seeing. She had seen it already, but it was the best version of any shakespeare play that she had ever seen and she wanted to see it again. I decided to go because I knew that it would mean staying up 3 hours later, but that I would remember the play not the studying for much longer. It was shakespeare in the park, properly done. So we sat on the ground with digestives (worst name ever for a delicioius cookie) and soda water and watched this play whose backdrop was an overgrown tree, and whose foreground was grass up to the audience edge. There were only 8 or so cast members, though more characters than that by a lot, so they had to do some interesting things to keep the play going when the right characters weren't on stage. It was a really rough and tumble version of MSND with a lot of movement and silliness. The blocking was absolutely fantastic, and the actors had turned the lines into tune with motion so that every escoteric and old-fashioned sentence made sense to the modern mind. The fairies, dressed in scruffy tudor clothing with feathers and things attached, occassionally ran through the audience and laughed at some child while eating the audience member's food. One of them had a particular affinity for nectarines and he ate two of them throughout the course of the show. They acted, I don't know really how to describe it, but really fairy like. At least not human. There was plenty of music and singing and making fun of people throughout the play. Amelia was right, it was fantastic.

Naturally, this meant though that I had to stay up until 2 again so I could do the studying I should have done earlier. When I sat in the King's library at 1.30 am, trying to write a preliminary version of an answer to a possible essay question, I began to deeply question my judgement. But it wasn't time for introspection or mental head-knocking, and I was able to get done most of what I had wanted to. The test the next day was to be 2 hours long exactly, and we were given an idea of what the questions might be like. We were to pick two to answer out of 8. My best bet was to prepare 3 well, and hope that 2 of them would be among the 8. It wasn't as risky as it sounds because there were some major and some more minor topics, and I was fairly certain that he was going to ask about the major ones. When I went to bed, there was still at least one person from my class still studying in the library.

Friday--Dr. Kerry had told me the night before what i should repair about my paper, and so I did that Friday morning as well as going over the topics I had studied so closely again. I was now in the mindset where it is better that you don't talk to me or interrupt me because I was libel to either answer rudely or answer the entirely wrong question. I printed the paper and finished studying in the Union Society chamber then went in to take the test. To my great delight, the two questions I had studied most carefully were on the sheet and I was able to answer them the way I had hoped. The first took me only 35 minutes, so I had most of the time left for the second question. I wrote on the Enlightenment arguments for tolerance, and on how the Enlightenment thinkers conceived of republican government. Both of these topics were not only things I had studied, but things which interested me beyond the scope of the class. I took until the 15 minutes on the essays, then went over them to make sure there were no glaring idiocies, and turned it in with 5 minutes to spare. Then I went straight down to the coffee shop and bought the caramel, chocolate shortbread square that I had previously foresworn. It was time to go to Paris, so i rode my bike back to Kings and finished packing with Amelia and Cherry so we could leave. Our best intention of taking the train then the ferry and the train fell through because of timing and so we were forced to buy the ridiculously expensive Eurostar tickets to get there. the price was definitely cringeworthy, but we were left without choice. There was no other time or day that would work for this, and no other way to get there. We took a taxi to the station, the National express to King's cross, then walked across the street to the Pancras international train station to the Eurostar. By the way, our train pulled in to platform 10 of King's Cross, right across from platform 9. Just saying.

We had to arrive at the Eurostar 45 minutes early and wait to board, which we did quite well. I bought a BLT with Cherry and Amelia, and finally was able to relax for a little while. When we boarded the train, we discovered that there actually were assigned seats after several people crowded around us settled in car 5 and stared quite indignantly until we moved. We were consigned to car 1, which wasn't bad except that it was far from the food car. The ride was only about 2 hours long or something like that, and much of the beginning of it was in the darkness of the chunnel. I kept telling Amelia and Cherry that there were dolphins and jelly fish swimming about above us, and they kept telling me to go to sleep. The train emerged from the tunnel into the French Norman countryside. It looked more like the US in that the houses were no longer brick and people drove on the normal side of the road, but otherwise it was pretty different. It was late afternoon, and the day was turning from bluish white to golden bars splayed across our compartment. I did fall asleep, or something, because I have little recollection of the majority of the ride. Finally, we slowed. The buildings around us were more urban and packed together, as well as "artistically" decorated with some incredibly large graffiti. It was everywhere, and sometimes in places that looked impossible to reach. When the train stopped in a long squeaking roar, we hopped off and squealed a bit about being in Paris then quickly fell into a state of slack-jawed bewilderment.

Everything, naturally, was in french. None of us speak french. We had expected this, but somewhere in my head I think I had hoped it wouldn't be true. There were occasional english signs which helped direct us to the underground, and after an adventure with a fickle ticket machine and an Indian man, we had figured out how to get onto the correct metro to take us to the neighborhood of the church of the sacred heart where we were staying. The metro was painted a sort of bluish green and it lurched to a stop in front of us, throwing its grafitti scarred glass doors open with a bang. We hopped in, squealing a bit more about being on a Parisian metro, and the train quickly took off. There seemed to be an overpopulation of young men of all ethnicities around us, far outweighing women and older men. The train smelled like rust and musty carpet. I loved watching through the glass doors as a the cars in front or behind us turned on the curves, like a toy snake. Amelia and Cherry figured out where we had to disembark and change metros, but we got off a station too early on my insistance. The station name was "Madeleine". I was ecstatic. Finally, people had figured it out. Amelia took my picture under one of the eight signs, and I bought some food from the vending machine. You will never guess what they had in it... that's right, Madeleine bought Madeleines at Madeleine. I still have the package.

We finally arrived at the right neighborhood and rose from the bowels of the earth into a pretty parisian evening directly in front of the paris city hall. It had the enlightenment/revolution motto "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite" on the front which was exciting enough in itself. We found the hostel after only a bit of back tracking. It looked really hostelish with flags from every nation hung from the ceiling and walls black walls you were supposed to draw on with chalk. We were nervous about talking to the man at the desk, wanting to address him in French but to actually understand what he said. He was completely chill, of course. Our room was on the 4th floor, which he told us with a bit of embarrassment because they have no elevator. So up we climbed four floors of wooden spiral staircase to our little room. I slept by the window and Amelia and Cherry on the bunk bed. We had a spectacular view of some french sycamores and the side of a prison. We dropped off our stuff quickly and went to find food which none of us had really eaten since that afternoon. It was 10 by then, and we took a long while choosing a place to eat. Finally, we stopped at the Cafe de la Place which looked almost exactly like Mimi's cafe in the US. I had a wonderful little mozzerella and tomato salad, Amelia had french onion soup, and Cherry creme brulee. Unfortunately the cute cafe had two large televisions playing a Lady Gaga concert. I tried to switch sides so I didn't have to watch, but Cherry was too fast for me, so I was left with a view of all the disgustingness. It was truly, truly horrible and disturbing to watch. I tried to avoid it, but finally covered my eyes after one particularly wretched moment and demanded that we leave. by then we had finished eating and were only waiting for the check. I was really frustrated to have had to see that and decidedly opposed to anything Lady Gaga. We went to bed that evening around 12.30 though none of us were certain what time it was because we had seen no clocks and we didn't know if our phones had changed hours automatically or not.

Saturday--I showered around 8 and we left around 9 to see the city. Our first destination was the Louvre. We took the metro to get there, the ever diligent Amelia and Cherry figuring out the best way about it. We had to buy 2 day metro tickets at the cost of 15 euro each, which I headed up because it involved talking to French people. Not really sure how I landed that assignment seeing how good I am at French. When we arrived at the gardens in front of the Louvre, I had to buy a bag to put my stuff in so Amelia didn't have to carry it, as I had forgotten to bring one, and then i bought breakfast because I had not eaten while we were at the hostel. I got a crepe with lemon and sugar. Mmmmm. We walked through the french garden toward the Louvre among all the replicas of classical statues. Cherry was our pusher. If it weren't for her, it is possible we wouldn't have actually arrived at the Louvre itself for several hours. At the Louvre, we stood in a long line that siphoned into the glass pyramid and down into the Museum's depths. We didn't have to buy a ticket because we are students in the UK (yes!) so we were able to go right into the exhibits after security. We first went into the statuary, which I had insisted on because I love statues. They seem so much more personal and emotional than paintings. Unfortunately, with our short time, we had to rush from place to place, but finally we were able to see such wonders as Cupid and Psyche (the single most beautiful sculpture in the world in my humble opinion), winged victory, and the like. In the hall of the Italian painters, Amelia gasped at every turn because she was actually seeing dozens of the paintings in all of her textbooks. There was Caracci and da Vinci and so on. She was so excited it kept Cherry and I, the uninitiated, excited as well. It was incredible how much better da Vinci was than his contemporaries who lined the walls around him. Some of his paintings were simply stunning. We spent a while trying to find the Mona Lisa, which is strange considering how central that painting is to the Louvre. Finally we found it in a side chamber. It has an entire free standing wall to itself, and is hung behind several inches of bulletproof glass. Sure enough, her eyes follow you anywhere you go. We were able to get right up close and take pictures with it, or at least as close as you are allowed. How cool is that!

We had lunch in a cafe on the second or third floor balcony overlooking the central courtyard. I had italian salad again because the one from the night before was so good, but this time it wasn't really anything special. The view though was wonderful and worth the price of the cafe. We could see all of the Louvre, most of the gardens, the obelisk in the distance (which we were right next to when we emerged from the metro. When we first saw the obelisk, the golden plating on the pyramid top shone in reflection of the sunlight like the very eye of God it was supposed to signify) and I don't remember if we could see the Arch d'Triumphe or not, but nonetheless, it was beautiful. We could see the other arch which leads into the Louvre and has the chariot with Minerva flanked by golden angels riding across the top. Amelia took many pictures of that arch. We were able to walk under it which I did several times.

After lunch, we saw the French paintings, most of them from the time of the revolution, including the painting on the cover of Viva la Vida by Coldplay. My favorite painting of that area was the crowning of Napolean. How colorful, detailed, enormous, sparkling. I could really see the allure of the whole Napolean, Josephine, Revolution idea just in that one painting.

We tried to find the section of the museum with Chinese treasures in it for Cherry, but were unsuccessful and eventually left for our next destination--the Notre Dame.

We walked to the Notre Dame so we could spend time along the Seine. The city is shades of white and off-white, towers and spires, street cafes, painting and book vendors, plant and flower shops, and the sparkling river. The day was a perfectly warm afternoon, and the path full of tourists and parisans and cobblestones. We found the Notre Dame on its island in the Seine and waited for a half hour in the line to enter. My, what an incredible cathedral. I went directly into the nave to sit in the pews and simply look. While it was one of the darkest cathedrals I've been in, even with all the electrically lit chandeliers and so forth, it was nonetheless awesome. The stainglass reaches up stories and stories into the air, and the vaults are far enough above you you have to strain your neck to see them. It is still a functioning Catholic Cathedral, and thus has candle trays constantly lit in front of their varioius statues and side chapels. The rose windows of the transcepts are, naturally, the most strikingly beautiful thing about the building. I could hardly believe how large they were and how vibrant their blues and purples. I have to admit that I did quietly sing the song about helping the outcasts from the hunchback of Notre Dame... I couldn't really help it. We circled the cathedral from the South to the North, and left with a handful of coins to an old nun waiting at the door with a small woven bowl. Cherry got a crepe with nutella and bananas which Amelia and I both grew to envy the next day when we wanted one but couldn't find a crepe stand anywhere. Now we were off to the eiffel tower and dinner.

Amelia wanted to get a picture of the cathedral from across the Seine, so we ventured there and stood near a street violinist as she took her pictures. The light was just right now, afternoon again, and i think she was more than happy with them.

We took the metro to Bir Hakeim which is the closest exit to the Eiffel Tower, or the Tour Eiffel in french (It really helped when I figured out that Tour is the word for Tower in French because I had thought before that they were advertising tours...). It is a monsterously large structure, absolutely ridiculously big, but when we left the station it took us a while to find it because we were too enclosed by tall buildings to catch a glimpse. When we did find it, we were quite grateful because we were all getting hungry and I had some inkling of us eating on the tower. Unfortunately, we were told that the restaurants on the tower are prohibitively expensive, so we went to a small cafe instead and sat outside at a table on the sidewalk. I was determined that we do it the french way and eat slowly and enjoy the meal. I got lamb and Amelia and I both had crepes with nutella and icecream for dessert. We really got into crepes on this trip. We ate until Amelia worried that we weren't going to get good pictures of the city from the tower if we didn't go. So we went back to the tower and got into line by the South footing. We decided that we were going to walk to the second story of the tower and from there take the elevator because it would cost less and it had a shorter line. The women at the desk was not having a good day, and was surprisingly rude to us, but we didn't let that change anything. We commenced the climb. I began to count, and it was 328 steps later that we arrived at the first floor. We stayed there for only a short time before we completed the 688 steps to the second floor. This is more than half way up the structure and from it, you can see the whole city. By then the sun had set and we were looking out over the bluish city as the lights began to glimmer on the ground and the river. The city stretched out in every direction going on and on further than we could see. The city of lights. Amelia took many pictures of us and of it and everything. We tried to get to the top, but the line for the ticket to the very top and the line to get into the elevator was so long that we were unlikely to get up before it closed at 10.30. So we stayed on the second floor and wandered around. Amelia was really disappointed we couldn't make it to the top, but there wasn't anything we could do about it. that just means we have something to do the next time we go. :)

Then the lights went on. The lights, the ones that make the tower glow orange, were already on. These lights were different. They're new and they cover the whole of the tower. When they go off, the whole tower sparkles like thousands of paparrazzi hiding in every nook taking hundreds of pictures. The moment it went off, a gasp and shout went up from the people on the tower and the people on the ground. Then the ground seemed to reflect the tower. People on the arch d'Triumphe, the grasses in front of the tower, the people on the seine, all began to take flash photography so the city surrounding the tower sparkled in return. The tall building in the distance reflected the flashing lights, and so they glimmered gloriously.

A large woman with long hair and a long flowing dress walked by sobbing. A couple stood embracing for over ten minutes. Darkening figures milled everywhere, lit by orange and sparkles. It was surreal. We descended the 688 steps much more quickly than we rose, although the normal lights that display the tower shone in our eyes and made the descent somewhat precarious--like the blowout ends of scene changes they sometimes do in movies where the lights overtake the scene until nothing is defined. As we descended, I watched little purple and green glowing creatures being boomeranged into the air by the street hawkers. I don't really know how to describe them, but they made the scene down below that much more peculiar.

My knees began to protest by the time we reached the first floor, though they never got too bad. When we were finally on the ground again, the light show began anew and the whole spectacle repeated itself. We walked back to the metro and took it back to the hostel. At the hostel, Amelia and Cherry needed to shower so I took to sitting on the large window ledge and singing quietly every song I could think of that seemed parisan. I went inside shortly after a guy in the next room stuck his head out, saw me, and offered us rum.

Sunday--This was our final day in paris. We had only two things we really wanted to do: the Arch d'Triumphe and Versilles. We went first to the Arch which sits in the middle of a very large roundabout in the center of Paris. It was designed by Napolean himself, and was first built from wood. Dr. Kerry says that there was a myth that every time the construction paused on the arch, something bad would happen to the new Empire. Now it stands ridiculously tall, and from it radiates all of Paris' major streets. It was designed that way to look and act like light radiating from a source--very Enlightenment, the idea being that light can penetrate all things and that all can be seen from this one vantage point. We were there a half hour before the top opened, so we were second in line to get a ticket to go up. Stairs again, this time spiral and within the interior of one of the arches feet. It seemed like stairs were the major force we had to contend with on this trip. We climbed past various doors and chambers, which I hadn't expected to find within the arch but were there nonetheless. There was even a store and small museum. At the very top we could see all of Paris, in the morning this time instead of at night. I took pictures with the Eiffel tower in the background. The city was much more white now, less golden, and almost silent as it was earlish on a sunday morning and this was Paris afterall. I really liked this Paris.

We then redescended into the bowels of the underground to get to Versilles. We had to take several trains, then a real train, and converse with several people to figure out exactly how to get there. I was exhausted from the previous day and not getting enough sleep, so I slept for most of the journey. Finally, we arrived in time for lunch. We ate a small sidewalk cafe with a mirror on the ceiling. There were no walls on two sides of the cafe, so we sat on the inside but that was really outside. Once again they had a large television, this time playing Katy Perry which is better than Lady Gaga somewhat (everything is better than Gaga). I got an artichoke dish that was really disappointing and not at all what I had anticipated. We got crepes again for dessert, and then headed off to the palace which was only a few hundred yards from where we were. The palace is set behind a long cobblestone courtyard and with the sunlight it was all rather bright and striking. The fence and rooftops of the palace were gilded gold, and glowed quite harshly when looked at. We stood in line in the sunlight for an hour and a half before learning that we didn't need to stand in the line if we wanted the guided Enlish tour which would take us through the private chambers of the king and the opera house. We did just this, having 45 minutes before the tour began, and so we were able to rest for a bit. The tour guide was a small french man in a bright orange shirt and pointy shoes. His english was good, but his accent thick so it was a little difficult to understand him. We wore little hearing boxes which let us hear what he said into the microphone and made it easy to pay attention while not standing close. He led us through into the actual bedchamber of Louis the XVI and the XIV and XVII, as well as their private apartments and where they had meetings for treaties and so forth. Louis the XVI was crazy, having ceremonies for everything. People had to come to see him get out of bed, to get into bed, to get dressed, to eat, it was all about ceremony. The opera house was exactly what I would have wanted an opera house to be. I wished only that I could see the proper people in it, and an opera as well.

We went through the parts open to tourists after that, including the spectacular out of this world hall of mirrors with its views of the garden and the mirrors across from it, and through Louis the XVI's bedchambers. I think it was Louis the XIV who demanded to have his chamber look east so the sun would rise on him as it rose, because he called himself the sun queen. We also saw Marie Antionettes personal rooms, and her amazingly beautiful bedroom. Wow, what a place. You can even see the secret door she escaped through. Finally we went to the gift shop but didn't have time to do more seeing of the very french, very trimmed and cared for gardens than what is apparent through the windows. I would love to come back just for the gardens.

We returned to Paris in a hurry to get our stuff and get on the train back. We made it just in time for our train to England. the bell tolled exactly midnight when we walked through the doors of King's college in Cambridge. Home again.

Week Three--Making friends at the Mosque

2011-08-01T12:19:00.001-07:00

This is going to be brief because finals are starting this week (for the first module) and I have to find 40 sources for my supervision by Thursday.

Monday--I don't recall much, it wasn't that memorable of a day
Tuesday--I went to formal hall at pembroke. It was wonderful. I sat next to two fo the programme assistants, and across from a student of Pembroke. We spoke mostly about religion and the mentalities of different religions, the educational system in the UK, and how British people perceive the influx of Muslim immigrants. The student of Pembroke is a strong catholic, and I really wanted to get to know him better, but I didn't have the chance before the dinner was over. It would be wonderful to learn how he came to believe in Catholicism in such an atheistic environment.

Wednesday--Plenary lecture on translating books into film.

Thursday--my second supervision was in the morning. I showed her some of the things I had found, and that I had arranged a meeting with Kacem Idrissi who volunteers for Muslim Education and Outreach Cambridge. She was happy about it. There wasn't really much to talk about, so the meeting only lasted for about an hour. After class, which was excellent unsurprisingly, I went to the mosque with two friends, Annie and Katie, but was too late for the prayer. Afterward, Kacem came out and took us on a tour of the mosque. It is a house converted into a mosque, so it is not big enough for the local Muslim population. We sat up in the woman's section upstairs near the curtain, all of us wearing head scarves, and spoke for two and a half hours about my subject, Islam in the UK, and Islam in general. It was a great opportunity to learn a lot more about the Muslim faith. Another man joined us, Faisal, and both of them were extremely fluent in English and quite able to explain Islamic ideas in a clear and precise way. Their children ran all around the mosque, and kept coming over to eat some of the huge dish of samosas that Kacem had obtained for us. I met his wife and three children as well, they're some of the cutest kids I've ever seen. That took until dinner pretty much, and after dinner I think I intended to do some readings though I don't know that I actually did them.

Friday--I went back to the Mosque friday in time for the prayers. A friend of mine, Kate, came along (different from Katie) and we were there for the whole ordeal of fridays. Mohammed, the guy I spent time with in Edinburgh, came also, though we didn't see him during the sermon. We sat in the woman's section, obviously, upstairs and behind a curtain. There were a lot of women visiting that day from interfaith outreach programmes of Cambridge, which I would like to write more on later, so the women filled up the section entirely. We actually had to remove the curtain so there would be more room for the women, and when they opened it it was sort of a shocker because there were at least 200 men directly in front of it. We had listened to a sermon over the intercom, about giving your alms to Allah and not spending your money unwisely, before they did the actual prayers. Kate and I stood in the back trying not to stand out. People had, several times already, mistaken us for Muslims because we did a pretty legitimate job on our hijabs. So I think they were suprised when we didn't pray with them. I met at least 5 women who were converts to Islam and born in the UK. Afterwards, we met up with Mohammed and Kacem, and Kacem gave us another tour for Kate. We then sat up in the woman's section again, and this time for four hours spoke with Kacem, Mohammed, and Faisal about Islam They asked a lot of questions about our faith, and we were able to make many comparisons of our similarities and differences. We learned a lot of how they perceive justice and mercy, compared to how we perceive it, and how they justify the idea that there is not need for a redeemer. We were talking for so long, that Kacem disappeared to the store and returned with fruit juices and fried chicken and french fries. Arab hospitiality (Kacem is from Morocco, though he has hardly any accent) is remarkable. We finished the tour and so forth around 5.30 and were then back at Kings just in time for dinner, which turned out not to be there because of a party they were having. Consequently, Kate and I went down to Sainsbury (the local version of Vons) and bought some dinner for ourselves. We then went to another plenary lecture. This one, again in the Union Society room (which I love by the way) was on how language plays a part in law. The speaker is a linguist and he discussed how he, as a witness for multiple cases, has seen the syntax of the word "approximately" or "substantially" can have literally millions of dollars riding on it. It was, unsurprisingly, a fascinating lecture.

I spoke with Dr. Kerry and Annie, her husband, and Dr. Cope for a while, then returned to Kings. It was late by then, so I went to bed pretty soon.

Saturday--Amelia, Cherry and I went to Oxford. We took the train, which was a complex procedure because one of the lines was shut down, to King's Cross, then via subway to another station, then from there to Oxford. On the first train, about a 50 minute trip, I spoke with an aging Irish man who spent the majority of his life in South Africa. He told me how the crime in South Africa drove him out of the country, after being hijacked 5 times (5!), but how he loved the people, and had spent many years creating various items to help with sustainable energy. he had designed light fixtures for telephone boxes, he had used LED to create a cheap and sustainable way to light a home at night, and had even built his own airplane from nothing (a picture of which he showed me). He had an obvious love of his grandchildren, who he also showed me on his phone, and a deep connection to South Africa which, I could tell, he missed. We had to stand the whole way because the train was crowded, so talking to him made the trip seem much shorter. The rest of the ride was not that eventful, and when we arrived in Oxford, we bought tickets to a hop on hop off tour bus. That took us to Christ's Church College first, which we spent a while touring. It is where some of the first 2 harry potter films were filmed. We also spent a while in the cathedral there, the only cathedral in the world also to be a college chapel, and I spoke with the Priest for a while. He was a retired Anglican Priest, and he explained how they do not believe that there is any one church that has a monopoly on truth. In fact, he said the only reason to be anglican over some other similar denomination is preference. That was eye opening because I had always wondered how the Anglicans justified their founding. He was a very kind man, and he obviously loved to talk about his faith. We went to the bookstore after that, and I purchased a copy of Alice in Wonderland from their store because it was pretty and because this was the school Lewis Carol had taught at and written his books in. We then went to the castle, built 1000 ad, and took a tour there. It was part castle, part jail (a working jail from some obsenely early time until 1996), and the creators had worked really hard to make it a lucrative enterprise. The building is one of the oldest in England and has some fascinating tales associated with it. We took the bus to the book store, to a place called the Scriptum (which, if I ever have enough money, I want to buy everything inside... it was wonderful) and finally to the Eagle and Child Pub where we had dinner. It is the pub that CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien met for their discussions on their books--the Inklings was their group's name. We sat all the way in the back under a converted greenhouse. These two teenage boys stared at me awkwardly the whole time. I determined they thought I looked like someone famous. I ate a lot of french fries (chips) with vinegar, salt, ketchup, and mayonnaise. Yum. Finally, we were able to get back to Cambridge around midnight. It was a crazy train ride back, because most of the help desks were closed so we really just had to hope that people around us knew what they were talking about. In the taxi from the train station to Kings, the driver got talking to me (probably because it was so late, he didn't want to fall asleep) and I finally wheedled out of him that he was muslim. He was really redecient to tell me where he was from when I asked. it was obvious that he was afraid of my reaction. I even asked twice, and both times he said something vague like "all over, florida, mexico" though he had an obviously south east asian accent. Anyway, when he found out I was studying arabic, he got really excited and started to tell me about his habits as a pious muslim. When we arrived at Kings, he gave me several pamphlets on Islam. Now I have like 20 of them.

Sunday--I went to church, which was really wonderful because I feel spiritually deprived sometimes in the mayhem here. I sang in the choir, then took the bus home with a friend. We ate plums we picked from a roadside tree, mostly because neither of us had thought ahead to buy anything to eat on Sunday, and the dining hall would not be open for a while. I went to an interfaith meeting Kacem had told me of around 4. The meeting was about why we should read each other's scriptures, mostly the Bible and the Qur'an. I spoke with several people who were surprised to learn I was Mormon, and asked me more about it. One of them is in charge of this organization, Building Bridges, and he is someone I will hopefully speak with more about interfaith outreach here in Cambridge. I ran off to attend a mass in Latin at the Church of the Virgin Mary and the English Martyrs. A friend, Alison, met me for it. The mass was almost 2 hours long, and, unsurprisingly, most of it was largely incomprehensible (though I could discypher some of what was going on). We had a leaflet which told us when we were supposed to respond and what to say. Most of the people there knew what they were doing, so it made it easier. When we all greeted each other, instead of saying "Peace be unto you" we said "Pax Toum" or something of the sort. The incense in the air, the tall, beautiful building and stain glass, the soaring music, it made it all simply ethereal. I really felt that God loves these people--the Spirit was pretty powerful, my friend commented on it too. I hope to go back to speak with the Priest at some point, asking him about the ceremony and what he says and why they do certain things and what it means. After the mass, I went home and wasted time for a while on the computer. Then I spent a few hours with Alison, just talking. I went to bed around 11.

Second week--delving into classes

2011-07-19T09:24:00.000-07:00

It has been a most wonderful week. Naturally. There is very little to complain of. Even my bad ankle turned out not to be a problem. Monday was good because I had both a seminar and a lecture by Dr. Kerry for my class on the birth of the modern. His class remains fascinating, even though it requires on average 5 hours of reading a day. I would really like to get caught up (I'm behind because I joined the class late) but it will be hard now that my supervision has begun. So today, I'm going to do just the readings to today, then I'm going to work on my supervision for the rest of the day. We had our first proper FHE which consisted of sitting up in a high, small room in kings, called the Munby room, singing, and having a lesson from one of the Mormon professors here on the subject of his book. Dr. Kerry also spoke, trying to encourage us to feel that though we're outside of our accustomed surroundings with people who know and understand Mormonism, we still have a community here we can rely on.

Tuesday was also class, naturally, I have class every day with Dr. Kerry which suits me just fine. I went with Amelia and Cherry to Antony and Cleopatra which was being performed at a sort of nearby college. It was not the best production of Shakespeare I have ever seen, but like all shakespeare plays, after a little while it was easy to see beyond the old language and the strange dialogue and into the play itself. It was cold evening, and the play was in the college gardens next to a lovely stream and under the shade of magnificent elms. We had not thought ahead to bring anything for the rain or cold, so we were simply lucky that it did not rain. But it was cold the whole time, and intermission was mostly an attempt to warm up.

The play had no set, and only 6 or so actors, so several actors played several parts. Perhaps the best bit was Cleopatra--she was well played. I had never seen this play before. It lasted for three hours, after which we all ran back to kings to keep warm. We considered going to buy hot chocolate, but every place we tried either had just closed their hot chocolate stand, or did not have any to offer. Consequently, we just went back to our rooms and fell asleep

Wednesday I had a good deal of reading which I like to do at the Pembroke Library. Pembroke is the college just down the street which we are affilitated with. it is not nearly as grand and epic as king with its tall stone buildings and striped green lawns. Instead, it is more quaint and comfortable, like a tea cozy. It has beautiful roses and lavender beds strewn throughout the brick college, and tall circular stone staircases, and a beautiful baroque chapel.

I go to that library to read because they have the book I need but I am not allowed to check out. Also, while King's library has a better view, Pembroke library is more beautiful and less inhabited. King's library seems almost like an afterthought, placed where it is over an arch overhang and with its long, rambling rooms stretching out toward the back. Pembroke on the other hand, was designed specifically for the library duty and therefore has abundant places to sit and tall, cherry book cases on each floor. The upper story has the most fantastically arched roof, pink and white walls, rows and rows of book cases that lead to a great old globe at the end and a bubbly glass bay window. That is where I sit, typically next to the bust of Prime Minister Pitt who was a graduate of Pembroke and the youngest prime minister in history. The windows are all opaque with stain glass and oldness, as they were made so long ago, the glass was not clear enough to see through. The library is also the bell tower, so every hour and half hour, there is a resounding, thunderous thud followed by the heavy ding of a gigantic bell. it is a good way to mark how many hours I have been sitting there trying to plow through the readings.

Wednesday evening, we had a lecture by Dr. Dearlove who is the ex-Mi6 president. He discussed what modern security threats there are in the world. We all sat, all 400 of us, in the great Union Hall Debating chamber which is, as you recall, designed to look like parliament. I sat in the balcony because I had been reading for a while and unfortunately lost track of time, thinking it was 6 instead of 7, and therefore arrived several minutes late. At the end they asked for questions, and said that we should say what school we attend and our names when we speak. Just for that reason, I knew I had to ask a question. I had to represent BYU of course. The first person to speak was a BYU student, but that was before he was told to say what school he attended so people didn't know he was BYU. The next was also BYU. Then there was one Berkeley student, then me. I stood at the balcony bar and sort of had to shout for them to hear my question. I asked if he thought it was possible for the idea of modern extremist islam to be replaced by a different dogma, and eventually, to become passe. This was prompted by some of the things he had said earlier that evening. It was quite frightening, speaking in front of that whole audience and the former leader of Mi6, but not too bad. He said he didn't know. Later, I ran into a group of BYU students who said they had been talking about me. I was wearing my purple jerusalem skirt, so they all said I looked like Juliet at the balcony and they had half expected me to start with "Romeo Romeo" they also said I looked superbly self confident. That just tells you how well you can fool people if you try.

The next two students to speak were from Berkeley, and one of them was super inflammatory in his remarks, to the point that it was ridiculous. He asked something like, "well, what about all the terrorism the US and the UK have been doing to the world for the past 200 years? How do we answer for that behavior?" Dr. Dearlove, naturally, didn't really know how to respond. He pretty much said that he didn't even agree with the premise of the question. So, of the 6 students who spoke, 3 were from BYU and 3 from Berkeley. I wonder if that means anything. Yale, which has the biggest population on the programme, was entirely silent.

On Thursday, I unfortunately missed a seminar given by Dr. Kerry because I didn't realize we were having another lecture that day. I instead went wandering around the gardens of Clare College. They are truly the most spectacularly beautiful gardens. It was a perfect, sunny, muggy day for a british summer, and the garden smelled heavenly. It was created in the romantic style, windy, slightly overgrown, and designed to have each corner reveal another delight.

There was a section of entirely white flowers, a section where the flowers graduated from dark red to bright yellow, sections of tropical plants of deep purple and green, fountains, patches of warm green grass, and all of this along the edge of the cam river where dozens of punters floated by. It was truly remarkable. I have to go back to draw something for my class, but I intentionally did not do it the first time just so I could have a reason to return. At one point, there was a fountain surrounding by tall bushes and roses, and sitting on a bench was a man reading a kindle, then across the fountain/pond lay a woman playing with her giggling 3 month old baby. It was the picture of peace.

That night was the last harry potter. We all went to the midnight showing at a local theater, having bought out tickets the previous week. I won't say much about it, other than that is was epic and it was really a striking thing for all of us, all of us who are children of the harry potter generation. There was a lot of proclaiming it the end of an era, a lot of people who cried through the whole of the second half of the film. I even felt surprised at my own shock and sadness for the end of this all... most people considered it the official conclusion of our childhoods. But it was good when it was over, because now we can start afresh with a new sort of magical adventure, if you can forgive the cheesiness of such a statement. I was glad to call Dad when he was available. It was sort of fortuitous that we were up so late afterall.

I was, unsurprisingly, upset when I realized I had missed the seminar the previous day. I attended the next lecture given by Dr. Kerry, then went to a cafe to do my readings. While up there, I realized that I was probably mistaken about the time that the Architecture class was going to the Cathedral in Ely, a place I really wanted to go.

I pulled out my schedule and realized they should be leaving any moment, then saw that Amelia had already called me twice. I called her back--they were already 10 minutes out on their way to the train station. I started to run to get to the train station on time. I thought I should have caught up with them, but did not see anyone after about 15 minutes. So I called Amelia and found out I had been running the absolute wrong direction. While we had both bothered to clarify what street the station was on, neither of us had thought to mention the direction to go and both had assumed the opposite way from the other.

I was too late to get to the train they were leaving on now, so I had to get my own. I was also now several miles from the station, so I needed to take a bus. The busses, unfortunately, cost more money than I had with me, so it took a good deal of time and the buying of some candy at what is the world's most extraordinary candy shop (two stories, floor to ceiling candy) to get to the station. I was superbly frustrated, but I refused to simply give up. When I finally arrived, I got a ticket for the train which left in only 10 minutes, then boarded. No one really knew if this was the train going to Ely, but there wasn't really time to find out so I just had to hope. I was phenomenally relieved when we finally arrived in Ely, just as I had hoped. The cathedral spires stand high above the city, so finding it wasn't a problem. It was not long before I had found amelia in the beautiful building and joined the tour. The cathedral was built over a period of 6 hundred years, as much of it had to be built and rebuilt and rebuilt time and again for various reasons. Therefore, it is a remarkable example of the changes in architectural styles through the ages. It is also the 5th largest cathedral in Europe, and looks like it. Your neck quickly hurts from looking up. The whole ceiling is decorated in medieval paintings of the life of Christ (or at least, they're supposed to look medieval, they're probably redone) and much of the building is still c. the 11th century. It goes on and on, and has a stunning lady chapel on the north side. I could spend forever simply describing the Cathedral of Ely, but it is the sort of thing you have to see for yourself.

After the tour, Amelia and I bought a picnic assortment and sat in front of the cathedral to eat. The rest of the group left on an earlier train. I did much of my reading while Amelia took pictures of the cathedral. We finally left around 7. Ely is a fabulously family friendly city. It is beautiful, picturesque with little meadows filled with ponies and horses, people walking their dogs, and families playing in the park. It seems like the perfect sort of place to raise a family. I think I saw more little children in Ely than anywhere else on this trip combined.

I forgot, before I went to Ely, I had my first supervision. My supervisor is a 3rd year PhD student from Canada studying criminology. She sort of wants me to do whatever I want and let her know. AKA, no direction whatsoever, which is sort of terrifying.

After Ely, we got home and I spent a while reading at the library. I left at about 10, then was utterly exhausted and wanted to sleep. Amelia called me to let me know she and Cherry were at the pub and that I should come so we could plan our next trips. I reluctantly made my way over, and ran into Dr. Kerry who was walking by. he said he had sent me an email that afternoon that he was redoing the lecture I had missed for several people who were interested in the subject, and that he wanted me to go. I was ecstatic because this lecture, on Mozart's Magic Flute, was perhaps the most incredible thing he had spoken of thusfar, according to the people who had attended. He has written an article on the subject, and is a well known scholar of the opera. I went to that with the two people who had wanted to hear the lecture, people who were interested but not in the course, and was enthralled the whole time. On the way, I twisted my ankle. We went through the entire opera with Dr. Kerry explaining. It was Mozart's last major work, other than the unfinished Requiem mass, and it was laden with masonic symbolism. One person there was a mason himself, so he and Dr. Kerry spent and long time discussing the masonic references in the play. But then toward the end of the second half, it becomes something more. Mozart adds a woman to what is all an allegory for the initiation of the masons, and the man and women enter a temple. They go through fire and water, they show particular symbols and signs with their hands, and they are at the end sealed by the god of the sun in a room that is symbolic of the sun. It was completely revolutionary at the time, and it is still unexplained today because there is no precedent for what Mozart wrote. No one can really explain it. It is totally worth seeing and reading Dr. Kerry's article about.

I didn't get to bed until really late again, and the next day we were going to london. Unfortuntaly, I couldn't go because of my ankle, so the trip Amelia and Cherry had planned was off. We went to a city named Norwich in East Anglia instead because has a beautiful cathedral and it involves a lot less walking. The cathedral was much like the one in Ely, though longer it seemed. They were having a performance of Romeo and Juliet in the cloister, but we did not attend because it was too expensive. I would have loved to have gone though. We ate lunch at a pub next to their little river, then took the train home. Unfortunately, I lost my ticket when I paid for the food, so I had to repurchase everyone's train ticket back because we had gotten a group rate. That was really lame. The sunset on the ride home was spectacular though, and that helped a lot.

Yesterday was church, for the first time in 3 weeks. I was really, really glad to go and recharge after all the craziness. I don't like being away from church for so long. We filled up the congregation, and the choir afterward. The sunday school teacher was fantastic, wonderfully funny, and quite educated. The relief society women were simply adorable and smilely. They were all, in particular the choir director, happy to have us for the next few weeks. I'll be serving in primary.

After church, I slept for 3 hours, then went to dinner then to FHE (which I know, is not normally on sunday. We just have to fit it in wherever it works). FHE was again sort of a discussion of adapting to this environment and so forth. I shared how we had been planning on going to Bath on saturday instead of London, but how the group we were going to go with didn't want us to come because we were mormon. We ended up not going because there was no accomodation, however. That was my first experience with people not accepting me because of my religion. And they didn't even know who I was.

I went to bed shortly after FHE, and am now ready to start all my readings for today. Things have been, as you can tell, interesting, challenging, and wonderful.

My First week in Cambridge and Edinburgh

2011-07-19T09:20:00.000-07:00

What an amazing week this has been. I’ve been nigh overwhelmed with awesomeness. I made it to the UK safely on Sunday afternoon, then took the 2 and a half hour bus drive up to Cambridge from London. I was so ecstatic to be in the UK, that I was actually seeing the place I had so long dreamed of. I didn’t really sleep at all on the plane because I was sitting in the middle of the plane and I didn’t really have any way to stretch out or to get comfortable. I managed I think for a couple hours or less, but mostly it was an exercise in learning to be patient and uncomfortable for a long period of time.

There was a mother and daughter who sat next to me who were surprisingly unpleasant people. They taught me that people are people wherever you go, and whatever perception you may have of properness. They spent the first two hours on the plane pursuing gossip magazines which had far more pictures than text. They were really more stalker magazines than they were anything else because their photos were all grainy and candid, or at least for the most part. They spent the better part of those two hours saying that someone was hideous, or that she was much prettier than her parents, or that prince Harry could not be the child of Diana and Charles because he’s ginger and ginger people don’t just come out of non-ginger parents. Then finally, they quieted down until the turbulence began. The girl was so frightened, she started actually to cry and to yell at her mother to shut up any time her mother tried to calm her. It didn’t help that I had ordered salmon and apparently salmon has the most disgusting and horrible smell ever and it was making her sick. They really liked to cuss. I’m uncertain as to whether they knew any other adjectives than that and hideous and awful. They decidedly hated the airline and everything about it, and for the rest of the flight their discussion was of how horribly British Airlines were and what they would tell the president of the airline if they could.

Landing was a blessing in more than one way, because it meant I could get away from them. The excitement of being there soon eclipsed everything else. We waited for an hour and a half at the border to get through the questioning. The questions for me consisted solely of “how long will you be here?” and I was let through. I was surprised at how easy it was. It would have been much more difficult if I didn’t have the letter from Cambridge saying that I was in their program. That was really important apparently. Amelia walked quite a way underground to get to the coach station where we bought tickets for Cambridge. I was still enormously excited that everyone around me had wonderful accents. I tried to avoid looking too awed though because I didn’t want to stand out in any particular way. We took the last coach at 3 pm to Cambridge, and arrived just as dinner was about to begin.

Cambidge is absolutely the most perfect little city I could have conjured up in my mind. It is full of victorian, tudor, and every other sort of little building all connected to each other that line the narrow cobblestone streets. Brightly painted stores in blues and reds line the road with such names as “the haunted bookstore” and “the King’s store.” King’s College is about the most grand place imaginable. The chapel was built in 1500 by King Henry VIII (or at least it was finished by him) and it just stretches up so high into the sky it doesn’t seem like someone at that period could have possibly built it. It was apparently Oliver Cromwell’s head quarters during the civil war. The great hall where we have all our meals is a beautiful neo-gothic building, so perfect it could have been built during the gothic period.

It has thick stone walls, stain glass windows with the school crest and logos of the british crown in them, a high vaulted wooden ceiling, and candles on every table where you eat. Our first dinner there was a wonderful meal with all sorts of delicate foods. There were probably two waiters for every twenty five people. Meeting the students was certainly an adventure, and continues to be an adventure because there are over 340 students on this program. They’re generally from the Ivy Leagues or the UC system, though there are more than 30 from BYU which is nice. They’re all wonderfully inquisitive and pithy and fascinating to speak with. It is just the type of people I like to surround myself with because there is always some wonderfully fascinating discussion I can get into with someone. People are also incredibly friendly in the program.
Then of course there is my room. It is just as wonderful as I hoped it would be. I have a room and a study attached to each other in a beautiful gothic building with windows that come straight out of the middle ages. I’m on the ground floor, which is nice because it means I don’t have to transverse the rickety wooden stairs to get up to my room.

I have a view of the river, the Cam, from my window and the bridge over the cam. People punt by all the time. I also have on the opposite wall a view of a beautiful garden and courtyard. When I’m in my room, I open the window in the study and the room, and the flower laden breeze sweeps through beautifully. I have a double bed with a soft fluffy comforter, and a bedder who is a woman that comes in to empty my bins and clean the desk and vacuum and change my bedding every day or week. She is wonderfully kind, very caring—Veronica is her name. I love talking to her, and she loves talking. J Today was the first day her son was going to college and she says she didn’t sleep at all because she was so anxious about it. I have a sink in my room and a mirror, as well as wardrobe and dresser, and a desk right in front of the giant old window looking over the cam. I also have two fireplaces, though we’re not allowed to use them. You go through two doors to get into your room, I think because that means it keeps the sound of people in the echoey stairwell out.

I slept like a log the first night, literally because I don’t think I moved once. I was so exhausted, it was incredible. Because I didn’t sleep that day and only that night, I didn’t suffer from jet lag one bit past the first day. It was wonderful. Amelia did have some pretty bad jet lag though.

Our classes started the next day. I still don’t know what is going on with my supervision, which is frustrating, though I have pestered eh people in charge just about as much as I think I can without really irritating them about it. They say they’re working on it. So I only have one class to worry about.

Originally I was in Gothic Architecture which was excellent because I learned a lot about how gothic buildings are made and what their characteristics are. I can now with relative certainty point out what is a gothic buiding and when it was built compared to other eras. But after a couple of days I switched out of Gothic because it wasn’t that challenging and I thought that if I’m going to be here, I had better be challenged. Amelia is still in it though. I’m instead taking the class taught by Dr. Kerry which is on the birth of the Modern, or the Enlightenment. I am really excited about it because it is a political philosophy course and I love that sort of thing. I went to his lecture and it was the single best lecture I’ve ever attended in my life. I’m going to the next lecture in just an hour now and am really looking forward to it. Most of the people in my class are from Yale and none of them are from BYU which is why I think Dr. Kerry tried to hard to get me into his class. He talked to me about it and made copies of the reading for me to try and get me interested. Well, it worked because I read the readings and loved them.

The next few days mostly consisted of orientations and plenary lectures (which are wonderful) in the Cambridge Union Society. It is a building made to suggest the parliament, so there are two sides and they face each other to help in debating. I also did a lot of shopping for things like a phone so I could communicate with peole while I’m here in England. The phone was really cheap, like 30 dollars for everything, so I wasn’t too worried about getting it.
We went off to Edinburgh on Thursday. The drive took most of the day because we stopped so many times. We stopped in an adorable little northern town called Richmond.

I bought a rain coat there because I knew it was going to be important in Scotland and I was right. It was really wet in Scotland. We went up to the Castle of Richmond which was built by the Normans in the 1100’s and had a wonderful time looking around. It just kept going up and up and up. At the very top, I got out onto the tower right as a powerful rainstorm began. I stood behind a stone wall and watched as the huge, heavy raindrops pummeled the city far below. The whole of it was incredibly green, off in the distance, the hills, every bit of nature was as green as green can be. The city was wonderfully medieval. I had fish and chips for the first time, which were incredibly greasy, but fun to eat because of it. They don’t really put ketchup on their fries (or chips as they call them) but instead vinegar and salt. That was quite good, though not quite as flavorful as a lot of ketchup is.

We arrived in Edinburgh in time to wander around the city for a while before it became dark. We were living in the dorms of the University of Edinburgh. With Cherry and a girl named E-fan, Amelia and I wandered the city for several hours. The sky did not even get dark at all until after 11, so we had quite a while that we could safely wander around the city. We saw a monument to Sir Walter Scott which I got a picture in front of because he is one of my ancestors after all. My heavens, Edinburgh is a beautiful city. It was exhausting to walk it all, but we managed it rather well. It didn’t rain at all that first evening while we were walking around. We actually saw the other monument to Scott, which is even more elaborate. There was also a man wearing a kilt, horns on his head, and walking on short stilts that were designed to look like the back legs of a goat. He was playing the bagpipe for the tourists. It was quite the sight. And he played the bagpipe at light lightning speed as well. It was rather amazing.

The next day, we got up at like 8.30 so we could climb up Arthur’s seat. I’m still not sure which Arthur it is supposed to be, but apparently it is not the famed King Arthur it is named after. Anyway, it is up on this knoll that overlooks the city and is rather high up. It took a lot of energy to climb, and was really difficult for Amelia, but we made it in the end. I spent most of the time speaking to the Programme Assistant Tom, so that made the time pass better. At the top you could see the whole city of Edinburgh as well as the ocean in the distance. There are a ton of sea gulls in Edinburgh because of the ocean. It gives it a strangely grandiose feel.
We went to the parliament after that. I was really excited about parliament but we weren’t able to get on the tour because there weren’t enough spaces on it. So we conducted a self tour of the place by wandering around the very modern and very different building until we felt we had seen everything we could. Unfortunately, there were places we could not go without being on a tour. I bought a simple bracelet, which was the only thing I bought in Edinburgh. I tried to find a good drum, but didn’t have the time.

Amelia and I spent the rest of the day just going around the city, going to the museum where we had a guided tour by a PA who is a Dr. in Medieval Scottish history, and then getting lunch at the End of the World Pub which was absolutely perfect for Scotland. We finally went back to the Dorms and had a rest.

Then was the most intense bit of the day. We had a Kaylie which is a sort of traditional Scottish dance. It was awesome, because they taught us all of these really intense dances that took a lot of exertion to do. They were so much fun and everyone was joining and laughing and dancing. They were really long songs too, so I got to where I was completely overheated and exhausted. It was amazingly fun. Everyone loved it, though the majority of the people were also getting drunk so that was interesting. I wish we did dances like that more frequently.
Afterward, I almost went out with a group of people to go up Arthur’s seat again and to visit a club. I didn’t because I was already getting tired and I didn’t think it would be as much fun as it was billed as. I happened to run into a Saudi man and a man from the program who were speaking Arabic. I naturally went up to them and started talking and so we spoke mostly in Arabic for an hour and a half until it was nearly 1 and I had to go to bed. We agreed to meet the next evening for coffee to talk more about Arabic and the Arab world.

The next day was the epic hike in the Highlands. I hadn’t had much sleep when I had to go, so I was certain that this was going to be quite something. It didn’t help that I had exerted myself so much the day before. It was a two hour drive up to the highlands, and we stopped to buy lunch at one point. The place we hiked is called the Trossacks and is a national park. It was utterly spectacular. There were craggy mountains we climbed through, speckled with gray stone, covered in heather and wild blueberries, the lochs were a wonderful glassy silver, and the trees windswept and twisted. It was 2 miles in and a 600 foot elevation gain with most of it being gained at the end. I spent most of the time talking to our hike leader, named Mahmet, about Turkish and then talking to a Chinese guy about Chinese. I would certainly live in the highlands if I could.

It touched my soul, really, in a way I had not anticipated. Or I had, but I hadn’t expected it to be as wonderful as it was. We ate lunch on the top of a tall mountain so we could see four or five lochs below us and the mountains stretching off into the distance. Unfortunately, it was really boggy in a lot of parts, so my feet were entirely soaked and uncomfortable to walk in. When I finally returned to Edinburgh, I could hardly walk because my feet were so raw and swollen. It is still a little difficult to walk so two days later. It didn’t rain on us once while we were up there, though when we returned to Edinburgh, it was pouring like Noah’s flood. We had experienced that a little the day before, and it was so extreme that Amelia was laughing the whole time. Neither of us had thought it even possible to have it rain that hard. It was difficult to even hold up the umbrella. You know, grass in Edinburgh is so green, it actually seems blue. I’ve never seen that before either.

That evening, I met up with my Arab friends at a popular Indian restaurant to have Mango Lassie. We spoke mainly in Arabic, and the Saudi man, his name is Anas, had me read in Arabic a letter he received from a prince that said that he could get pursue his education further in France to learn French.

I went to bed after that, and the next morning got up late and rushed to breakfast, then went off on the bus. We stopped at the Fountain Abbey which is a gorgeous ruin of an Abbey in northern England. One of the PA’s explained how the whole thing worked, and what each of the rooms originally were to me. I had a quick lunch and a wonderful time looking around there. Finally, we got home late enough last night that we were almost too late to dinner. We ate, and I washed my shoes that were so destroyed from the adventure, then went to sleep at 9.45. I was so tired, I didn’t get up until 8.30 today.

It was a perfect beginning to the semeseter.

Since Jerusalem

2011-04-05T20:24:00.000-07:00

Life has been a madhouse since Jerusalem. I could quantify it in lists perhaps, classes taken, dates I've gone on, jobs I've had, illnesses and injuries, etc. Or perhaps things less quantifiable: relationships built, relationships forgotten, sins forgiven, silent moments, vibrant seconds so bright they outshine a week, sorrows or victories. I don't really know how I could describe my life since then. I can sense within myself a change of the whole. Like the herbs and vegetables I watched grow so through my untrained, youthful cultivation, I am (with the exception of God) the most intimate observer of my own genesis. It is a fascinating, difficult, and sometimes terrifying transformation to observe. I only hope to God above that it is in the right direction. I can only thank Him for the opportunities I've had.

And now, as I'm preparing to go studying in Cambridge for the summer, I will be restarting my frequent use of this blog. So look out for it.

2010-11-25T09:26:00.000-08:00

The rest of Galilee

2009-12-20T13:25:00.001-08:00

Day 4: This was a fabulous day: following in the footsteps of Christ.
We left early in the morning to sail on the Sea of Galilee. The sky was full of those perfect little clouds, with a stiff wind pulling the cold through all of us. We trundled onto a large wooden motor boat which rode us against the wind into the middle of the sea where the captain cut out the motor and let us bob around. There we had a brief devotional—three of the students were called on to discuss the different happenings of the Lord on the Sea of Galilee such has when he calmed the waves during the storm, when he walked on the water and Peter came out towards him. I feel like I’ve learned so much more about the personalities of the different apostles, Peter in particular. He was always doing one more thing than was required of him. He is full of fire, with an innocent, brazen desire to be with the Lord and to do as He would have him do. Peter walking on the water is just one example of this—another time, when he saw Jesus on the shore, he was too impatient to wait for the boat to come to the shore so instead, he swam over to Him. When Christ washed his feet at the last supper and explained that if He didn’t, Peter could have no part in Him, Peter asked that He wash his hands and head as well. He truly was an amazing person, called later to be the head of the church which Christ established here. Peter was one of the three who were allowed to be with Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration as well as during the suffering in Gethsemane.

After our devotional, we motored to the other side of the sea and saw a 2,000 year old fishing boat, from the time Christ would have been here. It is truly remarkable that the boat has survived—it was saved by the marshy water in which it had sunk, and the way they excavated it without it crumbling into nothing was incredible. Now it sits in a museum, its body filled with resin with which they slowly replaced the water which had inundated it during its 2,000 year old stint in the mud. From there we were off to what is possibly my favorite part of our time in Galilee—the Mount of Beatitudes. It is a beautiful little hill, looking over the Galilee, and landscaped with fragrant jasmine, colorful bougainvillea and leafy, low hanging trees. There is a relatively small circular Catholic church on the hilltop, and numerous places designed for large groups of pilgrims to sit and discuss the Sermon on the Mount which was supposed to have taken place there. I was assigned to discuss one or more of the beatitudes along with two other girls from our group who did their own outlines of the beatitudes. I chose, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” and “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” I discussed what the ambiguous term “poor in spirit” means as well as what it likely means to see God. The other girls spoke on different verses, and their insights were greatly helpful to my understanding of this incredible sermon, called by many the most wonderful sermon ever preached on the earth. The LDS District President of Israel, President Brown, then spoke for a while, and we sang several hymns. What I remember of that place is that the sunlight streamed right through the bougainvillea all around us, casting a golden, rosy glow on our group, that the breeze was just enough to make the air feel fresh and clean, and that the day was neither hot nor cold--just right in fact. After our little meeting, we had about a half an hour for contemplation and scripture reading, which I latched onto gratefully. I wandered around the grounds, explored the church, and stood by a pine tree, looking out over the sea and wondered if this was what heaven will be like. It was truly paradisiacal, and I felt such peace and joy in my heart. Knowing that God is a good God, and that He truly does love me and know who I am, that brought such comfort to me.

When we left, we walked down the hillside to the church at the bottom where it is said that Christ fed the five thousand—the place is called Tabgha and it has a beautiful, very famous, mosaic floor. It is run by the Benedictine monks.
From there we headed to a beautiful seaside church called Saint Peter’s Primacy where Peter jumped off the boat and swam to Jesus and where Jesus essentially promised him the role of the leader of the Church. The beautiful stone and stained glass church echoed incredibly well so we sang to our hearts content, entertaining the other tour groups passing through. That place was also wonderfully peaceful and pleasant. From there we went to Capernaum, the city where Peter lived and the city Christ lived in after being rejected in Nazareth. There he met the believing centurion whose son he healed from a distance and there he did much of his preaching and many healings and casting out of devils. It is an interesting little city—eventually it was cursed by Christ, along with two other cities, because the people stopped listening to him and they would not repent. It is now just ruins, no one has built on it almost since the 1st Century A.D. There, there is the synagogue in which Christ preached (I’ve stood exactly where he would have) and there, also, was Peter’s house which many hold to be the first church ever. The entire city is made out of basalt stone, a type of black volcanic rock. I should think it would be rather depressing to live in this city because of how dark it can be with the buildings so close to each other and so dark. But it was built right along the shore where we watched the sunset from the shoreline. It was particularly spectacular that evening—all reds and oranges and yellows. Once we returned to the kibbutz and after we had dinner, we enjoyed a two hour lecture on Ancient Near East, and then I was off to bed.

Day 5: This was a difficult day for me—the beginning of two days of absolute misery. At breakfast I didn’t feel that fabulous, so I ate a lot to compensate (brilliant, I know) and during our four hour class that morning, I felt more and more ill. By that evening, (we had no fieldtrips that day) I was downright sick with a dreadful twenty four hour flu which sent my insides into convulsions and after the initial period of actually beneficial vomiting, left me dry heaving for the next 22 hours. Half of our class was already out, many of them left during class, and there was even someone’s breakfast in the hallway as a testament of that. The whole experience was utter agony, the room I lived in was dark, tiny, and my roommate left it for another so she would not catch the flu from me. There was nothing to do or to think about other than hoping that the next wave of nausea would end soon. While the worst of it was over by two in the morning or so, I tossed and turned all night, my head filled with dreams of churches competing over shoreline on the Galilee. I was the middle man trying to adjust the placement of the shore line to meet their ever changing needs. It was chaotic and upsetting, a perfect reflection of the state of my stomach. Later, when we were on our way back to Jerusalem, Professor Manscill asked how many people had not become ill in Galilee. Out of forty students on our bus, nine raised their hands.

Day 6: Fortunately, we did not have church until 2:00 in the afternoon the next day. I did not get out of bed until twelve, and I could eat nothing at all at lunch. Though I had to walk at the speed of an exhausted slug, I was able to attend church in Tiberius and I greatly enjoyed it. Like the Jerusalem Center, the Tiberius Branch has a spectacular view, but of the Sea of Galilee. Church was also only one hour (another blessing) and when we returned, I was able to rest and talk to friends for a while before going to bed.

Day 7: We were back on the road the next day with stops at two very interesting sites and an afternoon all to ourselves. I was feeling much more alive than before, but was still really weak. Our first stop was at a place called Gamla. It is a very interesting and depressing site which I’m surprised I’d never heard of before. In the middle of some rolling grasslands, filled with Stone Age tombs, there is a very deep, steep valley with a knife thin ridge rising up in the center of it. There was a city of Jews at the time of Christ. Much like the Kingdom of Rohan in Lord of the Rings, they built their city on the hillside with houses cascading down the hill and a huge keep at the top. Idiotically, after the time of Christ, they rebelled against the Roman Empire and were sieged because of it. There are different Roman siege weapons and ancient cannon balls from catapults lying around because of this. All the people gathered to the keep to protect themselves when the situation became dire. As the Romans broke in and started climbing upwards, the people pushed each other farther and farther back in the keep until some people started falling to their death on the backside of it. Soon people were jumping and eventually, thousands of people had either accidentally or intentionally fallen to their deaths,leaving the Romans with control over this crucial city. We climbed all the way down the valley then all the way up the thin hill to the ancient city. It took me an extremely long time to get to the summit, as weak as I was, so I stood at the top of the keep looking down the cliff for quite a while. In spite of the horrible things that happened there, it was a beautiful place, much like something you could expect to see out of Lord of the Rings. But I was greatly saddened, realizing that so many had died in such a horrible way from the very spot where I stood. The Jewish historian, Josephus is essentially the only reason the modern world knows of these grave occurrences. I wondered how many other stories there are like this in the world that no one remembers… It gave me solace to realize that while we here may not recall them, God does.

As I walked down the hill, everyone else passed me and I soon began to worry that I would not make it to the bus on time. Going up the canyon then back to the flat plains was torturous—I was so out of breath, I had to stop every few feet. Finally, one of the boys in our group kindly stayed behind to encourage me along. Had he not, it may have taken me much longer to reach the top. It was certainly one of the most difficult things I have done this entire trip, and I felt a great sense of victory when I stood at the top of the cliff, gasping for breath. We walked just as slowly back to the bus where in jest they started driving away, but when they realized from my countenance that I was not doing well, they stopped and let us on. I also determined not to go up or down any hills on our next stop.

The next site was a place named Qazin—an ancient Jewish village of which bits and pieces have been restored. It was once a center for the study of the Talmud, and therefore has remained famous. When we arrived, we watched, in a large room with screens on every side, the oddest movie I think I have ever seen. I don’t even know if I could describe it because it was about a story from the Mishnah (Jewish oral law since put into writing). I had never heard of it before and had no context for the points it was making. It certainly made for some fabulous quotes though, such as “Music, Orchard Music!” said by the narrator and so forth. I know, that makes absolutely no sense. Well, it didn’t make any more sense to us either.

From there, we went to the ancient synagogue much of which has been restored, then to a house completely restored and outfitted with items which would have been in a house two thousand years ago. Because the stone was black, it was incredibly dark inside in spite of the light from the oil lamps, and it was surprisingly small though it did have a second story. It was not long until we left from Qazin and returned to the kibbutz for lunch. There was a rafting trip planned for those who wanted to go, down the Jordan River after lunch. I debated going—after my escapade that morning at Gamla, I didn’t know if I had enough energy, and, we had a major test in New Testament the next day from the hardest teacher we have here. Though I can’t recall my thought processes which led me to this conclusion--I eventually decided to go rafting. We drove to a typical outfitting place for rafters on the shady edge of the Jordan river, and there received our life jackets, instructions and five person inflatable boats to take down the river. They also gave us the most unwieldy paddles imaginable. They were too short to be used by one person effectively on both sides of the boat, and too long to really control well. Not only this, but the actual paddle was small and made out of thick plywood. Because of its unwieldiness, when the person in front of me in the boat started to enthusiastically use it (determined as we were to beat all the other boats) the side of the paddle she wasn’t using smacked into my nose like a baseball bat. Immediately, blood streamed down my face in copious amounts. I am sure I looked raving mad, sitting there in this floating concoction with four other crazy girls, and laughing about the blood gushing from my nose. It didn’t take too long to clean it off and get it under control, and we were soon able to concentrate on our sea battles with the other ships (though it was a full time job just trying to keep out of the voluminous bushes on either side of the river). Soon we had beaten and splashed all the boats ahead of us but one—they succeeded in thwarting us in the end. When we reached the point where they pulled our boats out of the water, we determined to go back in and swim, then splash the other boats as they arrived. I went out with the best of them, right to the forefront of the battle, and, in my vigorous attempts to douse my opponents, had another paddle slammed into my left eye, leaving it bloody and blackening. It really wasn’t my day. When we headed back, one of the boys was kind enough to piggy back my surprisingly heavy weight over the gravel trail as I had left my shoes on the bus.

That evening, we had a dinner of Saint Peter’s fish at a fancy restaurant, and ice cream across the lake in Tiberius. The dinner was fabulous—when they came out with the fish, there was no way you could mistake it for anything but a creature which recently had been happily swimming in the sea right next to us. They fried it with everything on—head, eyes, tail, and even little dorsal fins. It stared at me on the plate. Being at a table of some of my more ridiculous friends, there was soon a chorus of singing, dancing fish, picked up by their respective eaters and made to look as though they were swimming around while their mouth was being moved in a convincing way as they sang “Tell me how I’m gonna breath with no air” and “Under the sea!” It goes without saying that it was an eventful evening. I managed to eat exactly two bites of my fish, and part of a sherbet they gave us. Dessert in Tiberius was fun, though the only eventful part was that I had to find an ATM which accepted my card, and it seemed that all the people we asked had conspired to tell us to go in different directions to find one. Eventually, just before we had to leave, we succeeded and I was able to get money to pay off my debts. I was very glad to get to bed that night, but the thought of the test the next day loomed over everything else.

Day 8: I spent the entire day studying and feeling crummy still because of the lingering effects of my illness. The test in the afternoon went alright and when I received got my score it was better than I had hoped for. There are six people in our class of forty who failed it though. That evening we had a bonfire and my class, exhausted as we were from our two hour test, made it into a festival of ridiculosity. We had stories, boisterous campfire songs and fiddlers playing hoedowns. The people here are exceptionally talented. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve come to live at a music conservatory. Sitting up on the sixth floor of the Jerusalem Center is frequently like sitting in an orchestra pit, which I love.

Day 9: Only two days before we were leaving Galilee, and I was feeling surprisingly ready to go. Though it was beautiful and peaceful there, I had been in far less pain in Jerusalem. Our first stop was at one of the two traditional sites of the Mount of Transfiguration, and, in my teacher’s estimation, the more convincing of the two. Mount Tabor fulfills the requirements that it be a mountain “set apart,” and, in the Jezreel valley where it sits, it is completely separate from all the other mountains. It is also much more local than Mount Hazor which is way up north, and therefore would have been easier for Jesus to travel to with Peter, James and John. We took taxi vans up to the top—they rocketed up the one way switchbacks, pulling over to the side just in time for vans going the other direction to scoot by right next to us. At the top is a beautiful Catholic church with some of the most stunning mosaics I’ve seen. We held a devotional outside of it, discussing the transfiguration and its implications in our theology, on which I took copious notes in my little notebook. (Right now I’m looking over Jerusalem from my balcony, watching the city as the sun first hits it this morning. It turns the entire city this most attractive shade of light pink, and some of the windows are reflecting golden in the sunlight. As always, the Dome of the Rock is radiant right now, and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher stands out with its harsh gray domes turned soft in the morning light. It is truly beautiful).

Afterwards we were free to wander and look at the view over the Jezreel valley. On the way back down, I sat next to a kindly Catholic woman from Great Britain and we discussed (while holding on to our seats for dear life) topics from gardening in England to respecting the priests during mass. The next place we stopped was a tiny village named Nain where Christ raised the widow’s son from the dead. There is a tiny, seldom visited church there with a shrine dedicated to Christ’s miracle. The discussion regarding that miracle was surprisingly touching. Christ would have had to walk through the night to get to Nain in time for the funeral procession of the widow’s son, and, in raising him from the dead, Christ saved the widow who had no other family or any way of making a living after her son’s death. It is a beautiful illustration of how He knows and cares about even the least of all. We then went to a place which had the mosaic of an ancient synagogue from around 500 A.D. It took us about 20 minutes to get in because the woman in charge insisted not only on seeing the National Park cards that the Jerusalem Center program purchased for each of us, but identification which few of us brought along. Eventually she was so frustrated with our lack of ID that she had gave up and let us in anyway. There we watched yet another cheesy movie, this one about the creation of the mosaic. It is a fascinating thing because, against Jewish law, it depicts the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham using human forms (observant Jews believe that the law not to have any graven image extends to not having any form of re-creation of the human body or of animals even) as well as a zodiac wheel with each of the constellations of the zodiac in a circle around a depiction of the pagan god Helios. There is also a depiction of the temple, shofars, menorahs and so forth.

From Beit Alpha, we went to a swimming hole called Gan Ha-Shelosha which was a beautiful, giant, natural pool of mineral blue water with a little waterfall off to the side. I had completely forgotten my swimming suit, and so went in clothed, having a change of clothes from friends that I wore the rest of the day. There were tiny fish in the swimming pool which would suck at your toes in a way that was incredibly ticklish. There was as well as a little cave. The waterfall did a magnificent job of massaging me, and, though it started to rain while we were there, the whole experience was surprisingly warm and enjoyable. From Gan Ha-Shelosha, we went to an abandoned Roman city named Beit Shean. During its Israelite days, this city had been the place where Saul and Jonathan had been killed and where their bodies had been hung on the wall as an example. Though David had been alternately running from and fighting Saul, he had some of his men retrieve the bodies so they could be buried. It had also once been under the control of Egypt, as attested by the Egyptian idols found there. But the main city was completely Roman—with a colonnade, ancient pillars and mosaic streets, bath houses, market places and all. We were given a cursory introduction to the place, though the rain was coming down more heavily and it was beginning to get dark. I went all the way up to the top of the ancient tel where the Israelite city had been, and on the way down, I slipped in the mud and slammed my side into some extremely sharp basalt rocks on the ground. I could hardly sit down in the bus on the way back as a consequence. Now I have a nice array of puncture wounds, scrapes and bruises on my hip. We had dinner at the Kibbutz and class that evening again.

Day 10: This was our Thanksgiving Day, the kibbutz planned out a banquet-like meal for us that evening for which we were all very excited. First though, we were off to the beautiful city on the sea of Akko, also called Acre, or Acka or any other derivative of that root you can think of. Its heyday was during the Crusades where it was the home base of both the Templar Knights and the Hospitallers. Built right on the sea, it is everything you could ever want from a medieval city—there are tunnels used during sieges, ancient sea towers knocked over by the Muslims during their sea battles, sea walls with slots for shooting arrows, old fortresses and Venetian market places, left just as they were during the time of the Crusades. I was practically giddy being there—call me a geek, but I have a particularly strong love of the Middle Ages and all of its eccentricities. We watched a movie about Akko in the ancient dungeons of the fortress, then we were taken on a tour of the feasting hall, cloisteries and so forth. The most amazing thing was learning about the Templars and Hospitallers. They were essentially monk warriors—living most of the time as any monk should, studying and praying, but spending the rest of their time out battling whom they called the infidels for control of the holy sites. We explored all of the ancient, vaulted halls, some of them partially restored, most of them original, and then were taken to a beautiful 18th century mosque in which we walked around, exploring, before we realized we weren’t actually supposed to be in there.

We were then given free time to wander or to go with our professor of Ancient Near East as he visited the three famous marketplaces where the rich Italian traders did much of their work. Akko was, for centuries, the center of international trade and goods would literally come in from all over the world. He also showed us the Tower of the Flies, the sea tower I alluded to earlier, which had been successful in protecting Akko’s harbor from invading ships until it was finally destroyed. The story of one battle is particularly interesting: the people who were fighting, I can’t recall who--probably the Muslims, decided that the best way to attack this tower was through making one of their own. They therefore tied two ships together (which is, let me tell you, a feat in itself) and outfitted the mast with enough wood to make an effective tower. With this, they sailed up to the Tower of the Flies and were able to shoot at those defending the tower. But, those on the tower soon got savvy and they shot fire into the boats, burning them into char that was sifted away by the ocean. After our tour, we were free to wander and my group went and bought some of the best falafel I’ve had here. We then saw the templar’s tower which was entirely destroyed by the attackers, and where thousands of people who were packed in there were killed when the tower collapsed. All that is left now are wave-washed foundation stones, serving as tide pools for the Mediterranean life. I wondered how many people who came to Akko knew of that story, and how many just saw it for what it is now. Things like that should not be forgotten. On our way back to the kibbutz for Thanksgiving and our parting bonfire, we stopped at a place called Beth Shearim. Though it was once a city, now all that is left and is accessible from its heyday are the rock cut tombs. These tombs were built for the wealthy and are quite extensive cave systems. The reason people wanted to be buried there is that one of the most famous Rabbis, Rabbi Ben Jacob, is buried there and was revered enough that people wanted to be near his tomb in their death. The caves are full of ancient white sepulchers, some decorated with Jewish designs, some with carvings of pagan gods. We actually had an assignment to identify symbols from each culture.

When we got back to the Kibbutz, we were practically giddy for thanksgiving. When they opened the doors to the dining hall, everything was dark, but people took enough pictures with flash that we could see that it was set up like several ancient banquet halls with tables on three sides. They turned the lights on and we cheered, then, after we sat, they brought out our meal in courses. Considering that they weren’t actually American, they did an amazingly good job of replicating what we expect from Thanksgiving, though they did have the hall decked out in red, white and blue instead of the traditional fall colors. They also brought out the turkeys with sparklers stuck in them when the lights off. It was a very bizarre mixture of Fourth of July, birthdays and Thanksgiving, and it was rather entertaining. The food was fabulous and we discussed things we were grateful for. Afterwards, we had a big bonfire which I was assigned to lead. Since it was our last night in Galilee, we kept it spiritual and made the theme gratitude. We were going to have two bonfires going simultaneously, but one of them would not start so we kept it down to one. It is a good thing we did—everyone pretty much had something they wanted to say and the meeting went on for a good three hours, the wood from the second bonfire serving to replenish the first. The fishermen of the sea came out while we were out there, and the reverberating sound of them throwing in their nets sounded like heartbeats. The moon was waxing and it shone silver over the water, a spectacular site. I wanted to make sure that everyone had their chance to testify what they would on the shores of the Galilee, so, it wasn’t until 10 that I finally closed the meeting with “How Great Thou Art” and a prayer. I went to bed utterly exhausted that evening.

Day 11: that morning was the first morning in Galilee I woke early enough to go down by the shore and watch the sunrise over the mountains. I did that, reading my scriptures and so forth, for a couple hours, then finally went back inside to get dressed and pack. Having inevitably lost our room key, I paid for a replacement, and we were on our way. I must say I was glad to be going back to Jerusalem as I missed it terribly while gone on this trip. Being in the Galilee changed my attitude towards the city of Jerusalem—I want nothing more now than to spend all my time wandering around in the city, whereas before I would often flake out because I was too tired or had too much school work to do. Our first stop on the way back was at a place called Sephoris or Zippora, depending on with whom you talk. It is an ancient tel four miles from Jerusalem, and it was once another center of Talmudic studies. It is also the place scholars suggest that Joseph and Jesus would have worked as he was growing up. The word in Greek which is translated “carpenter” really just means “craftsman,” leading scholars to believe that Joseph was essentially a jack of all trades (also, there is very little wood to work in the Holy Land, making stone work much more likely). Zippora was a city of the wealthy and scholarly, and therefore was a place with much demand for craftsmen. It is likely that a few of the things we looked at could have been created by Christ. There we saw some of Israel’s most beautiful mosaics, there was the floor of a wealthy man’s house, as well as the most famous and beautiful of all the mosaics in Israel with the face of a beautiful woman as part of the decoration. It is truly a stunning mosaic—the craftsmanship is far superior to most of what we had seen so far. Brother Brown told a story of when he went there about eight years ago, there were a few Brethren of the church with him. When one man looked at the picture of the beautiful woman, he said, “My wife is better looking than that.” Another then said, “My wife is much better looking than that,” and the third spiritedly declared, “My wife is much, much better looking than that.” A man next to them who was not part of the group turned to them in amazement, “I’ve never heard anyone talk about their wives that way before,” he said, astounded at their devotion. That story made me happy for the family-oriented nature of the church.

From there we went to a Crusader keep in Acre, a very important location because it is where the generals of the Crusaders decided to fight a battle for which they were unprepared against Saladin, the leader of the Muslims, that lead to the defeat of the Crusaders and the end of the Crusades. From the top we could see much of Israel, and, once inside the twenty foot thick walls at the bottom of the keep, we sang the song “Onward Christian Soldiers,” because of its obvious Crusader connotations (not to say that we were or were not advocating their actions, BTW). We also went to another synagogue which had a zodiac in the floor there, and then proceeded to our next stop on the way back to Jerusalem.

That was Mount Carmel where Elijah defeated the priest of Baal and proved that Jehovah is the one true God of Israel. We sat at the very top of the mountain (the mountain is actually an astounding fourteen miles long, leading all the way to the shore of Haifa) at a monastery, and we read the story of Elijah and the Priests and discussed it for a while. We were admonished to figure out what in our lives were idols we worshiped and to remove them from us. I certainly have plenty of those to work on. There is also a fabulous statue of Elijah killing the priests of Baal after their failure to call the rain which he called after praying to God for only a few moments. Also, the fire from heaven which consumed the alter, the stones of it, the calf on that, and the water they had doused the whole thing in, is pretty awesome. It isn’t still there of course, but I love the thought of it.

Our next stop was an interesting one: the city of Haifa, the most important port city in all of Israel and is the capital of the Baha’i faith. They basically believe that God continually gives revelation through different prophets, including almost every prophet of every religion which ever lived. In effect, they believe that all religions are true. But they also have a theology of their own and their own temples, and for them, Haifa is the most sacred of all cities. Most famous are their gardens—they cascade down a hillside to their temple and each of the large terraces are landscaped symmetrically relative to themselves, as well as identically to the one above and below it. We weren’t allowed into the main body of the gardens without a tour, and we didn’t have time for it, so we just stopped there and looked down at the gardens from above. I would love to learn more about the Baha’i if I get the chance. From there we went to a cemetery which no one but the occasional family and the Mormons ever go to because to most people it is highly unremarkable. But there are buried the first Mormon missionaries who came to preach in Israel before the ban on proselyting. They died of the horrible fever which swept through Israel during the late 19th century. We learned about the missionaries lives from two of their descendents—we were just lucky to have had their descendents along on our trip! Afterwards, we all bought falafel and ice cream then took the final leg of the journey back to Jerusalem, arriving well after dark. I was overjoyed to see the center and the beautiful city. What a place this is.

Galilee--the first three days

2009-12-07T06:57:00.000-08:00

Day 1: We left Jerusalem early in the morning again, unsurprisingly. But I was really excited for where we were going: Caesarea is a beautiful city from the time of Herod the Great all the way until the end of the Crusades. It sits right on the sea shore, so the waters crash against the fortress walls, and there the palace where Paul was housed before he was shipped off to Rome to be killed has survived. We wandered around in the ancient theater and the palace, stopping in a room where it is absolutely certain that Paul would have stood to deliver his speech to the leader of the city who declared, “Almost thou hast convinced me to be a Christian.” It is really rare to go somewhere we are certain that one of the New Testament figures would have stood. This is one of them. The port, of which only about a fourth is left, is stunning because it was built by Herod the Great completely from scratch and it remained a prominent port for the next several hundred years. The Crusaders used this as a major base of operation and consequently they had an awesome triple gate and even a real, honest to goodness moat! I was practically giddy on seeing the moat… originally; guess how you had to cross it? Yup, a draw bridge.

From there we stopped at something which was equally awesome, though it didn’t sound like it. It was an aqueduct. And lest you think of a pipe running below or on top of the ground, know that it is actually a seventy mile long wall of beautiful arches which carried the water along the top. It ran right along the sea shore too, and let me tell you, it was the perfect place for a photo shoot, well, and for being ridiculous in general. The day was cloudy and the landscape the striking twin of California’s prime agricultural/orchard land. It started to get colder and colder, and this lent itself well to our next stop… Armageddon.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, we went to the place which the great battle which is supposed to end the world will take place. The valley, the Jezreel valley, is beautiful and flat, stretching up towards Nazareth and the mount of Transfiguration. The city which Armageddon is named for is now just a tel, called Megiddo. We learned all sorts of awesome stuff about the history of the place, but the coolest thing by far was sitting on the ridge of the ancient city and looking over the valley, the wind cutting right through our jackets, and reading about the end of time. Cool? I think so.

The day just kept getting better and better because our next stop was Nazareth. The city is almost exclusively Palestinian now, and it is chock full of churches dedicated to Mary or Joseph or Jesus. Interestingly, on the outside of the “Church of the Visitation” where the angel was supposed to appeared to tell Mary she was chosen to give birth to Christ, there are large banners in English and Arabic which say something to the effect of (quoting the Qu’uran) “God never was and never will be begotten, nor does he beget,” and, “Islam is the only truth, those who reject it will be thrust down to hell.” It reminded me of other such propaganda I’d seen in the U.S., propagated by a different faith against another. It was a good reminder that people are the same no matter where you go. We blazed through the “Church of the Visitation” and the place where Mary and Joseph may have lived then ran up to see the alternate “Church of the Visitation” which is run by the Greek Orthodox Church. Having two churches dedicated to the same occurrence, both claiming to have the actual location of occurrence, is far from unusual in the Middle East.

We arrived at Galilee that night, late enough that I was utterly exhausted and was glad to crash in the bungalows which four of us shared. The Kibbutz where we stayed is right on the shore of the Sea of Galilee; I would see it out my window were it not for the other bungalow in the way. Despite my exhaustion, I had to wander along the shore for a while, just soaking in the fact that I was now in the place Jesus loved. While he certainly spent a fair amount of time in Jerusalem, and the most important occurrences happened there, the Galilee is where he wanted to be. The moon was barely a crescent that evening, and a bunch of us waded out into the water, standing so we could look out over the sea. What a beautiful place that is.

Day 2: The first place we went was not that memorable, or in other words, I have little recollection of it past the fact that it had a palace which was constructed almost identically to Herod the Great’s temple. The other place we went that morning was quite something. In the Old Testament, whenever they’re referring to the whole of Israel, they say “From Dan to Beersheba.” We’ve already been to Beersheba, so this was our chance to go all the way to the top of the ancient kingdom of Israel. Dan was named for the tribe who was given the land after they were pushed out of their original lot by the Philistines. It is stunning because there are three different springs which gush out of the mountain and make the place a virtual rainforest. We wandered through it for a while until we got to the original city where the idiotic Old Testament King of Israel after the end of Solomon’s reign, decided it would be a good idea to create golden calves and put them in Dan and another city named Bethel so the people of Israel wouldn’t go down to Judea, the rival kingdom, to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem. This sin was the main problem which plagued Israel for the next few hundred years until it was destroyed by The Assyrians. We saw the foundations of the temple they built there.

The next place, Caesarea Philippi, is the place where Christ told the Bread of Life sermon. A famous spring comes directly from the mountain there and a temple was built right on top of it a few thousand years ago, a pagan temple dedicated to the God pan. It’s gone now though, but the spring is still pouring out water. We headed from there to the coolest castle I’ve ever been to. It was stunning, built high on a mountainside overlooking a valley, and had been used by the Crusaders then the Arabs after the defeat of the Crusaders. It is one of the best preserved castles in all of Israel, the walls at least ten feet thick, and the whole place large enough to hold several thousand people if needed. It is called Nimrod’s castle because the local population said that it was such an impressive castle that only the biblical figure Nimrod, the great hunter would have been able to build it. I loved being there; I could have stayed there for hours more. A few hundred years ago, there was an earthquake and, awesomely, it rocked the castle walls so that the keystone of a hall of arches started to slip out, but then the walls rocked back, trapping the keystones again. So there is the is long stone hall you can walk along where the keystones of all the arches have slipped out exactly the same amount almost as though it were planned. From it, you can see the exact actions of the earthquake. How cool is that? We stopped briefly after this in the Golan Heights, one of the most contested pieces of land in the world. We parked near mine fields so we could take pictures near the signs which say, “Danger, Mine Field,” in English, Arabic and Hebrew. It is a sad reminder of the hate between these peoples and the problems which continue today in this area. Later that night we had a bonfire right on the beach of the Galilee. It was a wonderful event, we just stood up and sang or told stories if we felt like it. The group of students here is the most incredibly talented group I’ve ever been in. My talents are positively dwarfed by theirs and we’re always kept entertained by someone. The bonfires we enjoyed while there were some of the most memorable things we did, though it was mighty cold outside of the influence of the fire’s warmth.

Day 3: We had New Testament for three and a half hours straight in the morning of this day, and then studying for the rest of the day.

Learning to love the locals-- a fabulous week

2009-11-15T21:26:00.000-08:00

This week was something entirely different from the rest of this trip, but in a very good way. Let's start at the beginning shall we?

Sunday was our fieldtrip day, giving us Monday as an exam prep day for what many people feared would be the hardest of our exams. Since we're just now starting the New Testament, we are starting to have our fieldtrip emphasis on the period around the year 0. Therefore, our tour this week was on Herodian Jerusalem--pretty much everything that was in Jerusalem which we still have from the time of Herod the Great. When we left, pretty early in the morning, our first destination was the kotel tunnel. This tunnel goes along the length of the actual western wall--they started digging down there a few years ago, so now you can walk from one end of the Western side of the temple mount (which is huge by the way) to the other, mostly underground. The tunnel is hugely controversial, mostly because there are houses on top of it and people are afraid that the foundations of their house will be weakened, but also because some of the Jews who were originally digging it started to head UNDER the temple mount itself, something which was hugely taboo for the Muslims. It was a pretty big deal for a while. The wall was beautifully made, and as we walked along it, we were encouraged to touch as much as possible. Remember, for the Jews, the spirit of God left the Temple upon its destruction, and came to inhabit the wall. According to tradition, the holy of holies of the original Temple was exactly where the stone of the dome of the rock is now. So when we reached the point which was directly closest to the holy of holies, there were perhaps twenty women praying at the wall just like they do at the traditional parts of the western wall. They were all very traditional, rocking back and forth, and praying with their beautiful little books. I would have liked to have stayed and watched. We exited the tunnel on the opposite side of the city, and from there, headed to one of the few discovered homes of people from the time of the destruction of the temple in 70 a.d. It is deep underground, unsurprisingly, as Jerusalem is a tel after all, and there are only a few stones on top of each other dividing the rooms of the house. They found a spear head and right next to it the arm of young girl, detached from her body. It is striking evidence of what happened there 2000 years ago. They showed a very badly acted movie based on the people who lived in this house during the Jewish revolt and the Roman destruction. It was such a ridiculously crazy time--there were Jews trying to incite their fellow Jews to fight, and as the Romans besieged the city, these Jews (Zealots) went around and burned the food storage of the people. Many people ignored the problem, others ran to Alexandria, everywhere there was fear and chaos. When the temple itself was destroyed, no one could believe it. It had been one of the 7 wonders of the world, it, like the titanic, was unsinkable. We went to other houses from this period, all of them priestly, aristocratic (Sadducee) homes. They were full of beautiful mosaics, mikvahs (or ritual baths) and stone pots because stone does not transmit impurities. Every one of them had been burnt to the ground in the deluge. From there, we went back to the temple mount, and we went through the archeological museum there. It is ridiculous how many peoples of different periods have built things there-- from the Mamluks (Mongolian looking Muslims) to the Byzantines, to the crusaders and templar knights, and all the way back to Solomon. The most interesting there was the pile of stones from the original temple. They had been a part of the temple wall but had been pushed over by the Romans. There is a large stone which had been the very pinnacle of the mountain and which smashed the pavement of the road below it when it was pushed over. In Hebrew, it says "the place of the sounding of the trumpet" and it is where the priests would stand to blow the trumpet to announce the beginning of holidays or the Sabbath. We had a fabulous little talk about Christ's experiences on the temple mount before we finished. When we left, I went to an extremely interesting, and controversial, place. Called the third temple institute, it is the organization dedicated to recreating everything which was in the original temple exactly as it had been so when they were able to (as in, when the Dome of the Rock was gone) they could immediately step in and rebuild the temple. The people there could be alternately called fanatics or dedicated, depending on your perspective. It was fascinating--they showed us the priestly clothing, the recreated alters and menorahs and other things used in the temple and even offered their explanation for how they hoped to solve impossible situations; most prominently, the lack of the ark of the Covenant. According to them, the ark was hidden under the temple mount during the destruction of the temple, and it is there still. They just have to get to it. It was amazing meeting people working so diligently on such a thing as this. I don't know if I've ever met anyone so dedicated to something so incredibly controversial. Our tour guide was a girl who, instead of going into the army, was doing national service by working in the institute. She said she had come into it slightly skeptical, but she now saw this as one of the most important things anyone could be doing.

Monday was essentially dreadful--in theory I studied all day, in reality, I wandered around studying everything else and occasionally studying the right subject. Tuesday was dominated by preparing for the final in the evening. It went remarkably well, and then I was free of finals for another month and half! Woot! As nothing of any consequence occurred on Wednesday, I'll skip right to the good stuff on Thursday morning. After classes, a few of us had agreed to go do service in the old city with an organization called the Good Samaritan center. It is right in the middle of the Christian quarter. I'd noticed it before, but I'd never thought to go in. When we arrived, we were shuttled up a flight of steps in a building which was obviously built over a period of years and different needs and styles, so the whole place, much like the old city, was an amalgamation of haphazard walls and misaligned rooms. We were led into a nicely Middle Eastern room where we waited for a while before having an hour long introduction to the program from its saintly director and founder, Raja. He told us of all the troubles which plague the Christian quarter of the old city where he had grown up and where he hoped to spend the rest of his days. There was a lot of drug abuse, alcoholism, broken families who, though they lived in the same house, would never speak to each other, poverty, children who had free reign of the internet from a young age and who were consequently filling their minds with the dirt of the world, mistreated mentally retarded people, and 450 elderly who were frequently without family or, if they had them, were frequently neglected by them. It is all of these people who Raja tries to help in whatever way he can. He started by bringing meals to the elderly who were unable to cook for themselves and had no one to do it for them. He provides services for taking people to the hospital in wheelchairs when they need it. With the help of many volunteers, he assures that the elderly have a blood sugar and pressure check every week, and that those who live alone are visited by someone every day. He knows each of their needs and he will work to find a way to solve them, for example, one woman we visited had no bathroom she could use, even though her family had one upstairs, and so she had to go outside. Raja has been working on repairing the neighbor's bathroom on the condition that this woman would be allowed to use it. He knows everyone in the Christian quarter personally. He watches over the children to assure that those who have drug addict parents are looked after, and those whose parents simply don't care about their whereabouts are being safe. He is just about to start a program where he'll have volunteers teach the parents how to use a computer so they can monitor their child's doings. The organization has even adopted seven girls who are completely neglected, and he assures they have somewhere the live, food, friends, and he even goes to the school to assure that things are going well there. To teach the children the bible which most of them don't know, he has put signs up all over the quarter which are scriptures in English and Arabic, and has the children memorize them for prizes. Every year, people get Christmas presents from the organization of things like some chocolate, new toothbrushes, soap and towels (this year, we provided all of that for them). He even started putting trashcans in the street so the people would stop throwing their trash all over the road. It worked perfectly, and the Christian quarter is much cleaner than the majority of the rest of the city. I am astounded by this man, and I hope to emulate him in some way. He has completely transformed this part of the city from what it was before.
Anyway, to continue. We visited three different homes. In the first was the oldest man in the old city--he is 105! I've never met a person over 100 before and he was 105! He could easily have been 80 with how mobile he was. His wife and he spoke excellent English, though they had difficulty hearing. They're house could have been taken straight out of the 1920s. It was adorable. The next house was much more saddening. We went upstairs to a tiny apartment where the bedroom was also the sitting room and the only other rooms were the kitchen and bathroom. The old woman living there had a deep, gravelly voice and she hobbled around on swollen feet. Her daughter, I think, had a deformed arm and a prominent limp; though she insisted on giving us the good seats and even getting up to give us the culturally demanded chocolate. The horrible thing was that next-door, a new family had moved in and for three years they had been doing renovations during the day. It sounded like someone was using a jackhammer in the middle of the room. The woman looked like she was on the point of tears with all the noise, and she complained of pain in her head and the back of her neck. I could barely hear myself think and I'd only been there 20 minutes. Raja had tried several times to convince the people living there to do renovations for less time each day or at a different time of day, but nothing had made a difference. We sang them a couple songs, and by the time we were ready to leave, the old woman was smiling and clapping along. It felt good to make some good of her day. We then went to probably the most pitiful house we had been to yet, and the sweetest woman. Her name was Aida and she had been the seamstress for Queen Noor of Jordan. She lived in a single room, smaller than my bedroom at home, where she had a narrow bed covered in some of the bed sheets she had sewn, and a tiny couch we squeezed onto. Next to her half sized fridge, she had the smallest camping stove I had ever seen, where she was making coffee which she offered us. I was amazed by her face. She still puts on makeup every day, though she is probably over 80. Her hair was nicely died brown, and her eyes, surrounded by kohl, seemed to jump out at you. They were the image of sweetness. She was so tiny, I don't think I've ever seen someone that hunched and skinny before. Wearing all black, it was like her head was a little bobble on top of a stand. But she smiled so sweetly, and she refused to sit while we were there, though we are all young. We sang to her too, and she smiled pleasantly the whole time. Then she slowly shuffled over to the fridge and tried to find us some chocolates, even though she had hardly any food in there. She was unsuccessful, but we assured her it didn't matter. She insisted on telling us some of the stories of some of the things she had made through Raja acting as our interpreter. I didn't want to leave her there all by herself--she is the woman who I spoke of earlier who has no toilet, though her family lives right upstairs. This sort of thing should never happen. No one should be shoved into a hole because they're too difficult to take care of. We had to go so Raja could get back to his work, and we were returned to the center. Later that day, I was able to get out and meet some of the families across the street from the center. Though I speak only a little Arabic, and only a couple of them spoke English, we had a really fun time being together. I love the girls here, they're generally really sweet. They smile easily and laugh with sparkly eyes. I also learned about Islam from the father, Samir, who promised to try to take us to the Dome of the Rock. He read some of the Qu'aran to us.

The next day was fabulous. We went over to another family's home and stayed for a while, playing with their adorable children. The oldest girl, Aya, is good friends with a girl from our center who I admire hugely. She made us dinner while her parents were out to a concert (we would have gone if we had arrived when we said we would, but we had some hold ups) and they have a beautiful little girl and a five year old boy. They had SO much energy, it was astounding. We stayed with them for hours and went caroling at some of the houses of the people here. It is strange in their culture to do that, but they appreciated it. It is sometimes nice to be a foreigner because you can be as weird as you want and it's ok. We stayed at their house until ten--they kept feeding us! Oh, by the way, the 15 year old boy I forgot to mention (it was his birthday) played Runescape the entire time we were there. It is taking over the world!!!! AAACH!!! I loved getting to know those children. By the end of the evening, they had warmed up to me completely and pulled me all over the place to show me all their toys and all the stunts they could do. The older girl speaks English really well, but the two younger kids speak no English. It didn't seem to matter though, they rattled of descriptions of their day and the items in their rooms all the same. My Arabic came really in handy there. It was a fabulous evening. Today was another wonderful Sabbath--I went to the garden tomb again, which I always love doing. And tomorrow, we're going snorkeling in the red sea down at the southern tip of Israel, and then on Monday, we're off to Galilee for two weeks. Yay!

Petra, Amman, Jerash, and everything else you could ever want. :D

2009-11-09T01:28:00.000-08:00

First day--Driving to Jordan.
This is what I wrote the evening after we arrived at the portal to Petra:
We left this morning at six o’clock, and it wasn’t long until we were crossing the checkpoints on the West Bank side of the Jordan/Israeli border. There were people with huge guns everywhere, as there is all throughout Jerusalem, so it wasn’t surprising. The border crossing into Jordan was quite easy; easier and quicker than going into Egypt—though I heard that it will not be that way coming back at all. We’ll see.

Once we were in, we had to take a different bus (because our bus for Jerusalem has Hebrew on it) and we met our tour guide. He’s a very tall man who speaks remarkable English, even for a tour guide. But, like all tour guides, he talks the entire time we’re driving so there is really no time to just think. Our next stop was at Mount Nebo, the place where Moses looked out over the Promised Land which he would never see and also where he “died.” Of course no one has found his tomb.

Unfortunately, the famous church there is closed for renovations, but the view from Mt. Nebo was stunning — overlooking the Dead Sea (which, by the way, I went swimming in a couple weeks ago), the Jordan river, and, if the day had been clearer, even the Mount of Olives where our Jerusalem Center is located. There was also this really cool stone with inscriptions in various languages about Moses on it which has a hole positioned so that on June sixth, in the morning of every year, the light shines through the hole and exactly onto a depiction of the sun they’ve carved into the rock on the ground. After Nebo, we drove for only a short while before stopping at a city named Madaba, which is surprisingly quaint for a Middle Eastern city. Not really comparable to Ein Karam, I visited yesterday, but still fabulous. There we saw the oldest map in the world of the Holy Land in a mosaic on the floor. It is mostly destroyed, but what is left depicts the Dead Sea and Jerusalem in tile as it was back in the first few centuries after Christ. A much needed lunch followed, and then we were off again. This time we drove for a while through the heart of the desert of Jordan. There was very little to see in any direction except for the occasional Bedouin on a horse or a donkey, herding goats or sheep. Yes, there are Bedouin and yes they still live in tents. Actually, the country of Jordan has a total of 70,000 Bedouin in the state among a total population of 6 million. There were Bedouin living in the caves of Petra until only recently when the government kicked them out so Petra could become the tourist destination it is now. But finally, we came to the coolest site of the day—a Crusader’s castle. Granted, most of it had been destroyed after the Crusaders left, and had been rebuilt by the famous Saladin who conquered all of the Holy Land and much of the Middle East in about the year 1000, but it was still an honest-to-goodness castle with many of the rooms completely undamaged. It sits on a lone bluff amongst the barren hills of the desert, and it had served Saladin as his main fortress from which to stage his attacks. I truly felt like a medieval princess running around in there. The only setback was that my camera died after Mount Nebo, so I could only get pictures of myself there from other people kind enough to take them. The sun was setting and the half moon just got brighter and brighter as the sky darkened. Jupiter was right next to it making for the perfect trio of the castle, the moon and the king of the planets. I honestly wished we could have stayed there all night mulling astronomy or the like, but, alas, Petra called. Though one really can’t complain when Petra is doing the calling…. It was only a half hour drive in the darkness to the city where we were to stay the night, Wadi Musa. The next day, at 5:45 a.m., we set out to see one of the modern Seven Wonders of the World. (It was actually built from 200 BC to 200 AD, but it is called a “modern wonder” because it was not appreciated until just recently).

After we arrived in Wadi Musa, I went with some friends down to the main street of the town. The entire place is devoted to tourists so all the shops were pretty much the same. But the people were nice, and I enjoyed speaking to them in Arabic. Afterwards, we got some ice cream from a Swiss hotel, we passed by a large number of our group dancing in the street to an Arab man beating a drum, and we finally meandered back to the hotel. I was psyched for the morning.
Morning. I went down to breakfast (on the coolest elevator in the world by the way--it has only three side so you can see the wall falling past on the door side) and was greeted by a very iffy set of eggs and the most ridiculously loud birds squawking in a tree outside. We rushed off, shoving our bags in the busses, and soon we were flying down the street on our way toward the extremely non-descript hills ahead of us. Seriously, from afar, you would never guess that a wonder like Petra was enclosed in their white, barren walls. No wonder it was only known to the Bedouins until the 18th century. We parked amid dozens of other tourist busses and jostled down the wide road which leads to the Siq. A Siq is about one of the coolest things in the world. Over thousands of years, the waters of the desert, what little there were, carved a knife-thin canyon through the bare rock hills of Petra. This was capitalized on by the Nabataeans (c. 100 BC) who carved it to be more consistent and then used it as the main (really only) thoroughfare into their city of tombs. I was anxious to go into this Siq because I had seen so many pictures of Petra’s famed Treasury building (remember Indiana Jones?).

At first it was unremarkable but for some of the huge, square-cut tombs along the side. There are also a lot of staircases which lead nowhere, carved by the Nabataeans. Apparently, they would build these staircases so the person who stood on the top of them was standing closer to heaven and therefore on holy ground to commune with the gods. That is one theory at least. For every random staircase, there is an equally random rectangular block carved out of the wall to represent the Nabataean's head god, Dushara. I thought the name was pretty fabulous myself.
Probably the coolest parts of the Siq were the water channels on either side which were built to carry the much needed water into Petra's heart. They are just little gutters dug into the side of the rock, with even the occasional curve to slow the water's movement. So, with all of these pieces in mind, you are now picturing the Siq of Petra but for one most important part: the rock which I said was just white, well as we walked, it went from plain white to gold, to orange, to red with streaks of silver and yellow and white and orange which swirled up and down the canyon sides and met in blobs or seemed to fall in streaks. The colors were astounding. I would have come all the way to Jordan just to see this! As it was early morning, the walk was cool and slightly dark. It was much longer than I thought it would be, but I was so overcome by the beauty of the Siq I wished it to continue even farther.

Eventually though, our guide stopped us, had us line up into five parallel lines to march forward with our heads down. I was too impatient to not look, so I tilted my camera up to look ahead of me and I peeked in its screen. There in front of me was the Treasury: huge, magnificent, orange, and framed by the Siq's walls. I gasped and put the camera down, now almost bursting out of my skin in excitement. When he told us to look up, there it was, stretching above us just as magnificent as you can imagine. Personally, I think the guide revels in the gasps of his group, and I'm sure he wasn't disappointed. After taking a few pictures, while half running to get closer of course, we left the thin Siq and stood in the huge plaza before the Treasury. If you've never seen a picture of it, go look it up. < http://www.crviewer.com/targets/061115/061115.htm > It is quite something to see.

Our guide explained exactly how it was designed and when, though I must confess I wasn't really listening. Instead, I took off up the Treasury steps and walked around examining the pillars which were wide enough that it would take several people holding hands to encompass them, as well as the colorful inside of the Treasury itself. Lest you might have believed that most abominable film, Transformers II, there is no life source thing behind the wall, and there certainly is no tunnel which leads to the Holy Grail. Unfortunately... : )
We found several other caves (all of which, unfortunately, smell like urine) and I took numerous pictures. The sun was just beginning to hit the rocks above the Treasury and turn them golden when we finished our group picture and continued down through the valley of Petra. There is so much to explain, there was so much to see, I could literally write dozens of pages about it. Seeing as I have so much else to write, I'll limit myself to a couple things.

There were tombs everywhere, some grand, some relatively small and most remarkably well preserved for sandstone. Really, I could almost imagine the people who had lived there when it was still a sacred place and when it had been filled with trees and flowers. There were Roman roads everywhere -- Rome made this a part of its empire -- and they were some of the best preserved in the world. There is also a huge stone-cut Roman theater just like the ones you see from pictures of ancient Greece and so forth. Amazingly, the theater was built in such a way that they even had to knock down a few of the tombs; something the non-Romanized Nabataeans would never have allowed. We ran around, looking at everything we had the time to see and following our guide as he steadily lead us down the valley.

Soon we stood at the end of it under the shade of one of the few trees in Petra, and he pointed to a narrow path of 1,000 stairs which leads up to the Monastery. Actually, I think it was more like 900 stairs but 1,000 sounds more epic. And that it certainly was. The first 200 were fine, but after that, I was certain I was going to faint. After I passed that stage, I knew my knees were going to give out, or my shoulders would suddenly fall out of their sockets, or my back was on fire, or I was simply going to die from exhaustion. But I didn't stop, and we kept pressing forward past all of the Bedouin vendors and up to the Monastery.

This place is well worth going to -- it is actually the largest rock cut structure in the world, therefore being even MORE epic than the Treasury. When we finally reached it, I stood for a moment in awe at seeing such a beautiful, symmetrical structure cut out of rock which was so rough and tumble right next to it. I soon became distracted by a little Bedouin girl with flies on her face whom I spoke to in Arabic for a while (but we mostly spoke in English...I think people become irritated trying to communicate with me when I understand so little). She promised to show me the spring where Moses had hit the rock and the water had come out. I had heard the spring was up there, but we weren't planning on going to it. I didn't really trust her, but she was only six and I kept good hold on my camera.

She led me down a short canyon to where there was a metal plate in the ground with a lock on it. She seemed pretty irritated that the lock was there because that was supposedly the spring, but she did show me that there was a stream coming from it, and that there was a jug of water nearby. There was also a flock of goats which she kept throwing rocks at when they got too close. It was rather entertaining the way they ran away bleating, even though the throws were far from the mark. After our little escapade, I walked up to a tall pinnacle which has a tent at the top which declares, in rather large letters, "View of the end of the world." The view was rather spectacular -- it was all desert, mountain and the inevitable rock stretched out as far as the eye could see. It was almost like being on the top of Mount Sinai again.
It seems I haven't written about Sinai yet. Brief description: it was a really, really hard walk, with its own 900 stairs, and at the top we watched the sun rise and sang church songs. I talked with the Bedouin for a while, we had a Testimony Meeting which was awesome, and I rode a camel down because my knees were killing me. I tried to get the beast to run, but a camel will be a camel and he lumbered on as contentedly as ever. Well, that is except for when he tried to bite me twice. At the bottom at St. Catherine's monastery, we saw what is supposed to be the descendent of the burning bush, and then left. It was awesome. Anyhow, back to Petra. When I came down from the end of the world, I climbed up into the large room of the Monastery -- so called because when it was discovered by the monks hundreds of years ago, it was temporarily used as a Monastery. Originally, it was a tomb like almost everywhere else. The entire room echoed a lot, so I started to sing a really haunting tune which reverberated off the walls. A friend of mine joined me, and, since we couldn't find any other song which we both knew, we sang Silent Night. A crowd gathered outside the Monastery and clapped when we finished, demanding an encore. I let my friend, who is a voice major, sing a beautiful Aria. After the descent, which was rather questionable on my highly protesting knees (I sound like an old lady...), we had a quick lunch in a pink restaurant (meaning, the walls, the seats, the table cloth and napkins were all different shades of pink). Then we had some free time. Most of the people climbed up to the "great high places" which is even higher than the Monastery and which really is only a flat rock where they used to sacrifice year old camels. I didn't go for fear of massacring my knees, so instead Tara, who is one of the most wonderful people I've met, and I wandered around several temples and ancient tombs. We soon found another group of our friends, and we were greeted by a little Bedouin boy who poked his head out from around a rock. He was only two years old. Soon two other little boys came and joined him and they played with our cameras, taking loads of pictures. Don't worry, I didn't take it off my wrist... which made for some very interesting pictures and a camera smeared with dirt. They were utterly adorable, and when we were leaving, they followed us. Some of the people in the group played a game where they would swing the little boys between them, and they were giggling so that they were almost doubled over. It was utterly adorable. I may have more pictures of them than of the tombs.... There are also some very awkward pictures of my shirt taken by the little boy who snapped pictures any direction he could. When we finally left, it was afternoon. I was loathe to go, but I was excited for the way of our escape--horses! If you know me, you may know that I have a fear of horseback riding, but this was different. After I waited my turn in line, I got on a beautiful gray horse and the Bedouin man who led me allowed me to trot. It was great fun, but for the life of me, I couldn't get the horse to go any faster. I guess camels and horses both really know when the person on their back have no clue what they're doing. That was one of the most fun moments of the day. When we left, we drove all the way to Amman, which is a huge city and capital of Jordan. We stayed there the night.

The next day was fun, mostly because we went to one of the best preserved roman cities in the world. Called Jerash, it was built at the time of Hadrian who built the famed wall that divides England and Scotland and a gate which still is visible in Jerusalem. The city is astonishing. Most of the roads and stones are still visible and many of the columns still stand making the entire place look like a field of Roman columns. There was a giant theater, larger than the one in Petra, where we heard a retired Royal Bagpipe Band play, and we sang some hymns. There was also a temple to Artemis and I think there was one to Athena, though don't quote me on that. There were also 3 Byzantine churches whose mosaics are still visible, and a wonderful fountain from the Roman era. Of course it doesn't work anymore. The entire city must have been quite something in its heyday. One of the best things by far was the show we saw in the ancient hippodrome. It was, quite honestly, a chariot race. That is right ladies and gentlemen; I sat in an ancient Roman Hippodrome and watched as Jordanian men drove three Roman chariots around in a circle as fast as the horses could go. It was spectacular. I am not at all surprised that chariot racing was the most popular race of all – the people had races five days a week with15,000 citizens attending every time. There were only a total of 30,000 people living in Jerash.
Oh, I got a little ahead of myself. Before we saw the chariot race, a legion of Roman soldiers came out and demonstrated the tactics, the orders given and the weapons and armor they used to fight. Did you know that Romans would march into battle in blocks and that the only person expected to fight was the person in front? He would fight for eight minutes, than he would fall back and the person behind him would take over and so forth. That way, every soldier spent most of the battle resting or getting their wounds looked to. I think that's pretty rad. And when you see the soldiers arrange their large, curved shields so that they're protected from the front and on top, it is pretty easy to tell why Rome was able to dominate most of the known world.
Anyway, after the chariot battle, the gladiators appeared. Most of them weren't that impressive, and their fights were slow enough to see that the defense came before the attack, but there were a few who were awesome, including one where the guy ran into the stands and had to be dragged back. Then we voted using our thumbs whether he should live or die. I'm not telling you my vote, but he died. The biggest and muscle-iest of the gladiators slit his throat and they used a gag where real looking blood spewed all over his shirt. A little gruesome, but effective. Then they dragged him away.

After that I was able to take pictures with some of the guards, and the guy on the chariot even took me for ride! It was INCREDIBLE. You would not believe how fast you feel like you're going and how easy it would be to fall off. I held on for dear life and laughed the entire time. Someone took pictures of me which I'm hoping they'll put on Facebook. In my chronic idiocy, I brought my camera but left the battery in my hotel room.

After Jerash, we went to Amman, to the LDS Branch Meeting House in Jordan where the Branch President discussed the progress of the church in the Middle East and so forth. I skipped dinner in favor of going with my professor and a few other kids to an ancient tomb, which was sacred to the Christians and, after the rise of Islam, became a Muslim shrine.

This was the first of two times I had to wear a full black dress over my clothes and a black hood on my head. I looked just like a death eater. It was amazing. Though rather hot. According to legend, there were seven people faithful to Allah who were being persecuted. To protect them, God put them to sleep in this tomb, a cave for 100 years and when they woke up they went outside and talked to the people who were there. They convinced them they were who they said they were with the coins in their pockets and so forth. Then they died the next day. The tomb was awesome because they had collected all of the bones found there and put them into one of the crypts which they put a glass window in. If you flashed you're camera, you could see the bleached bones inside. We went out that night to a mall which could have been plucked right out of a poorer part of the U.S. and got ice cream.

The next day we went to a beautiful mosque called the Blue Mosque where our tour guide taught us about Islam. I had to wear the black dress again and a scarf on my head. There are some pretty rad pictures of it online.

<http://www.atlastours.net/jordan/abdullah_mosque.html> The mosque was the biggest in Amman until recently. Then we went to the ancient part of Amman which is now called the citadel. I, unfortunately, was sort of out of it and I didn't really comprehend a lot of the explanation.

The view of Amman was beautiful. It really is the white city -- everything is faced with white and all the buildings are similarly built -- rectangular and flat topped. There was a temple to Hercules on the top of the citadel. By the way, this was also the place where David sent Uriah, the husband of Bathsheeba, to be killed. The coolest thing there by far was a little museum. It had artifacts from every period in Amman, I took tons of pictures. But what made it so special was that they had the COPPER SCROLLS inside. If you're Mormon, you've heard of these scrolls because they discount the argument that Jews of ancient times did not write on metal plates. They are actually a part of the Dead Sea Scrolls and, even more incredibly, they're an honest-to- goodness treasure map. They give directions where to find several treasure troves of things from the temple. Unfortunately, the clues as to where to find them are worded like "turn left at the large tree" or, "go past Ugg's house." Of course, I'm not being accurate, but you get the idea. The clues are basically useless to the modern treasure hunter. After this, we had a while at the hotel where we stayed the night, and I went to a place called "Mecca mall." It was fabulous because it was probably the biggest mall I've ever been in except for the one in Provo -- it is five large stories tall! We wandered around and I got a Mrs. Fields cookie which was like a miracle. Minus the many veiled people and the Arabic over the loudspeakers, you would never have guessed it wasn't in the U.S.A. Most of the time, the stores’ names were even in English!
The next day we left to return to Israel. First though, we stopped at Bethany beyond Jordan where Christ was baptized in the River Jordan (at least they think it was here -- it is hard to tell). It was amazing, I stood in the water and got some of my own. We had a really neat meeting about baptism and John the Baptist. And I especially loved going through the Greek Orthodox churches located there.

Crossing back into Israel took most of the rest of the day because it seems the Minister of Tourism hadn't gotten the word down to the people stamping the passports that we could be allowed in! We had to sit there for hours and wait. It wasn't as bad as it could have been -- this border crossing into Israel from Jordan is said to be one of the most difficult in the world. As we left, clouds were gathering and I (recently) discovered that during the next day there were monsoon-like storms in Amman. This wasn’t the only reason the timing was good -- there was a lot of fighting in Jerusalem’s Old City the day after we left, including gas bombs which injured some Israeli soldiers, but by the time we returned, everything had calmed down. God is good.
This week has been ridiculous. All finals. I've studied enormously. Thankfully, I have only one final test left which I'm not too worried about. If I study as much as I need to, I'll be fine. But I did manage to go out twice this week anyway.

I went to a couple of churches on the Mount of Olives, and then on Friday, to Mary's tomb (which is amazing, by the way), the Grotto of Gethsemane where Christ was supposed to have been betrayed by Judas, and a whole bunch of tombs carved into the hillside of the Mount.
It was a good week in all, and today has been a wonderful Sabbath. Sabbaths are by far the best days here.

The worst and the best

2009-10-25T21:54:00.001-07:00

I'm on my way out the door to Jordan, therefore, I have not had the chance to proof this for errors... though if you were to look at some of my earlier posts, you wouldn't think I proofed them at all. Nevertheless, hope you don't mind. I'll be back in four days! :)

Sunday, October 25, 2009 2:24 PM

This week encompassed essentially every emotion possible—anger, sadness, flashes of hate, grief, great joy, plenty of pain, excitement, laughter and silliness, and so forth.
Why the first of these? Monday was the day we went to Yad Vashem—the Israeli Holocaust Histotry Museum. I’ve studied the Holocaust on and off for years. This is mostly because I find the storiy of how people were able to survive astounding. They were thrown in the most difficult circumstances known to man, in most cases without more than a shred of hope, yet they still made it through somehow. With this background knowledge of the holocaust, I went into preparing to go to the museum thinking I pretty much knew the major points already. But reading the fifty page assignment our professor of Zionism gave to us, I realized how incredibly out of the loop I’d been. Concentration camps were just one part of it—there were Nazis who marched around Eastern Europe gathering the Jews of every town they visited, marching them to a pit where they would have them strip and get inside, and then shoot them all. There were death camps, which, if you were brought to them, within about four hours you would be dead. There was no separating of the fit and unfit in these camps—they were all just murdered. There were ghettos where the Jews were smashed in so tightly, the disease and starvation would do most of the work for the Nazis. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning with Yad Vashem.

When we arrived, it was a pretty warm day for this time of year, and I was already feeling a little exhausted. Our professor of Zionism took us on an hour long tour of the museum and memorials, focusing specifically on the way that Israelis over the generations have regarded the Holocaust. Remarkably, for the first twenty years after it, no one ever spoke of it unless they had been part of the few people who had resisted the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto. This was because there was a pervading belief that if you survived, it was because you did something selfish or horrible to keep yourself alive—you may have bribed someone, or hidden behind another person who died in the holocaust. Essentially, the survivors were regarded as cowards.
This all changed around 1967, when the Israeli people began to realize the similarities of fear and so forth with the impending war with their Arab neighbors (later called the Six Day War). It was then that the definition of heroism broadened from those who had physically attacked the Nazis to those who had fought to live when all the Nazis wanted was them dead. This was said by a famous Rabbi, he declared (to paraphrase poorly) that because the Nazis wanted the bodies of the Jews, it was heroic to keep that from them, and to therefore win against them. That was about when the holocaust began to be spoken of again. That and the trial of a famous Nazi Otto Adolf Eichmann who had hidden in Argentina for years. When he was found and brought to Israel to be tried for his war crimes, the chief prosecutor, Israeli Attorney General Gideon Hauser, who is a national hero in Israel, starting his opening statement with, (and this is another poor paraphrase), “With my finger, I point the fingers of six million people in accusation.” It was then that the holocaust became almost the religious basis for secular Jews—it is the reason a lot of them are proud to be Jewish and want to live it fully. They still won’t let people like the Nazis win.

After this tour, a tour guide for the museum came to replace our professor as guide. She was short, wearing all black, and spoke with a British accent. She led us through the museum. This is not your typical museum. I’ll try to describe it to you the way I’ve described it to a couple of other people, but it’s difficult. Imagine a tall triangle, elongate it into a column, make it out of gray rock and then shove it through a hillside with part of it hanging off either edge. That is essentially the way this museum is designed. When you walk in, you go underground and you don’t go above ground again until you leave. At the entrance to the museum, they had a continuous reel of old movies playing about life for the Jews of Europe just before the Holocaust. It is a good reminder of how unaware they had been, and of all they lost. When we turned around, we could see to the end of the long triangular building, literally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. But to proceed through the museum, you have to turn to your right and enter a dark room full of the exhibits of the rising of Nazi Germany.
We went through that and crossed back across the hall to where we could see the end again, then entered another dark room where we learned about the beginning of persecution. We considered this all the way through the museum, continually getting closer to the end, but having to enter many rooms full of reminders and stories about those who suffered and died in the holocaust. There were a couple of things which stuck with me most: First a letter by a Nazi soldier who traveled around in the “Einsatzgruppen” throughout Eastern Europe, systematically shooting Jews, and, secondly at the very end of the museum where they have the names of three million of those who died contained in thousands of cases on the walls, leaving room for the other three million names they’re still gathering.

The letter of the Nazi soldier to his family was fascinating because for me, it explained how a seemingly normal person could become such a monster. He wrote something to the affect of, “It is considered a weakness to have trouble seeing dead bodies. The only way to fix it is to do it more often…” and then, We have great faith in our Fuhrer and that gets us through doing these difficult and thankless tasks.” While I still have questions about the process a person travels from goodness to evil, this letter answered a lot of them. It was because they trusted their “commander,” (Hitler) who had, after all, pulled them out of a broken state of a depressed economy and lost honor leftover from World War I. The soldier did it because of this trust and his desire to help what he saw as his country. This was at least his excuse for his actions.

The room with the names in it was incredible, partly because of a quote in the entrance. I wrote it down, “Remember that I was innocent and, just like you, mortal on that day, I, too, had a face marked with rage, by pity and joy, quite simply, a human face!”—Benjamin Fondane, Exodus. Murdered at Auschwitz 1944. This stuck with me for obvious reasons. When you walked into the completely circular room, you immediately were drawn to look up at the large canvases of faces that surrounds you. They created a collage of peoples who died in the holocaust. Then you look downwards toward the center of the room where a large stone pit was dug, much like a very wide well, with a pool of water at the bottom. This, they said, was put there was because water is a symbol of continuance in Judaism and we must continue to remember what happened. It was a striking chamber to be in—surrounded as we were by the thousands of black boxes stretching from floor to ceiling for several stories and knowing that each of those contained thousands of names of the dead. And why they were dead? That is still beyond me. The children who died should still be alive as grandparents now.

When we left the museum, it slopes upward and the triangle column splits open like a banana peel, revealing the hills of modern Israel filled with comfortable suburban houses. The guide said that this was the future and ihat we had the choice in assuring that something like this never happens again, to anyone, anywhere.

As difficult as this all was, the hardest was yet to come. We went to the children’s memorial. It is not what you would expect; there are no graphic images of the dead, in fact, there are hardly any pictures at all. The building is entered through a short tunnel, and after passing a lit collage of some of the faces of these children who were murdered, you enter a completely dark room. All around you, the walls and ceiling is made of mirrors which reflect the lights of the candles they have somewhere. It creates the affect of there being thousands of little golden lights, some closer some father, strewn through the darkness. As you walk on the little winding path holding hand rails, a voice calls out the name of each child who died as well as their age and birthplace. We were asked to remember one name. I crouched down by the footlights and listened for mine, writing it down in my notebook. He was Vol Spres, 12 years old, Poland. Then he was gone, another of the 1.5 million names of the dead children being read. Our guide told us to never forget the name of the child we had heard because if we didn’t forget, then that child would never be forgotten. I stood in the memorial for a good fifteen minutes, feeling like I was in space, looking at each star from a perspective not clouded by the atmosphere. Why should they have died? The sadness was momentarily replaced with anger at the people who did this, and those who began it. But then it was gone, and I felt completely -- empty.

When we left Yad Vashem, we immediately went to a place which our professor calls the holy of holies of secular Judaism. I suppose it is appropriate that this place of hope is right next to the place of reminder. Together, they should show the observer what happened and should never again be, and then how they are trying to resolve it. That is at least what I think the designers intended. This is where Theodore Herzl, the father of Israel, is buried. It is also where the various prime ministers are buried. But I won’t go into it any more than this, there is just too much to say.

That was essentially my Monday, most of the day filled with Yad Vashem, and the rest filled with mt. Herzl and scrambling to prepare for tests and turn homework in. I didn’t go out at all the rest of the week because of having four different midterms, but at least they’re over now. On Friday, when I was finally able to get out again, I went with a group of nine people to the American Consulate here in Jerusalem. There are actually four consulates, but this is the main one. The US does not have an embassy here because they do not want to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. To do so would be to say that it was not going to be the capital of the Palestinian state that the US is hoping to help create, and that would be a poor diplomatic choice. But much of the consulate here is beautiful—the main building was actually a monastery, so it is old and the architecture is medeivel and quite stunning. Our group was being given a lecture on becoming Foreign Service officers. We have about six different people in our Jerusalem branch who work for the consulate, so two of them gave us this lecture. I’ve heard some of it before, but it was informative nonetheless. By the way, this week we also had a wonderful Arab culture night, featuring a performance of the call to prayer by two of the men who do it at Al-Aqsa mosque every day (the main worship mosque in the dome of the rock compound). They also did their prayers in front of us so we could see how they are done, and they “sang” (they call it “reading,” though there are notes and it sounds like singing) the chapter in the Qu’uran about Mary and Jesus. After that we had a wonderful Arabic food dinner, then traditional Palestinian folk dancing. It was fabulous.

Continuing now with the best day of the week by far. If Yad Vashem was the low point, this was certainly the high point, though it was so remarkable it is almost to compare a foothill to its mountain. For church, we had the primary program (for those of you who do not know LDS lingo, that means that the children were given parts to sing and tell us for our service). I smiled so much the whole time that my face hurt afterwards. They were so adorable. Then we went to the garden of Gethsemane, which is one of my favorite places in the world, as it is where Christ suffered for our sins. There were too many people there this time for it to be really spiritual, but I met some wonderful women from India who offered me a place to stay if I were to ever come, and a couple of very nice men from Uganda who promised to write me and tell me all about their country. On the way back we met a group of Palestinian children from the neighborhood. They were so wonderful and sweet, it was a real blessing to talk to them. But the best thing was that Elder Holland, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, came and had dinner with us at the center, and then gave us a fireside afterwards. I have never met an Apostle before, so I was utterly brimming with excitement like everyone else. He gave the most beautiful sermon, standing as he was in front of our stunning view of Jerusalem. It was about how Christ is ultimately a merciful being and how, in Christ’s kingdom, mercy will always trump justice. He said those words exactly. If any of you are interested, I took copious notes of the meeting. I met him a couple times, and he was so kind and sweet, just like a Prophet of God should be. So basically, it October 24 is the best day ever.

Today we went to a really remarkable stalactite cave as well as a quaint city named Ein Karem where there is a church for the birth of John the Baptist there as well as the visitation of Mary and Elisabeth. It was a wonderful day, but it happened a little too recently for me to want to write it all down. We also saw the Chagall windows at the Hadassah church, if any of you have heard of him. That was remarkable as well. It was a wonderful day all in all, no doubt about that.
While the week certainly contained every possible feeling, I am extremely glad that I experienced it. The only thing I would change, really, is to have some of you with me here to experience it. This whole place is just so remarkable—it is jaw dropping.
Oh, and by the way, I’m going to Jordan. In just a bit too. Literally. I’ll be in Petra rather soon, looking at all the red rocks and so forth. Envious? You should be. :D

Land of the bible. Plants and animals included

2009-10-19T10:33:00.001-07:00

What an interesting week this has been. For our weekly, all day field trip, we went to a place called Neot Kedumim where they have recreated the biblical landscape and environment. All the plants and most of the animals that are mentioned in the bible can be found there. I, obviously, being the nature freak I am, was in heaven. It is so cool to see the plants mentioned in the bible.

Case in point: even heard of Hyssop? Well, it is this herb that is used like four times in the scriptures as the comparison against the Cedars of Lebanon as the smallest plant in the world. It is sort of the thing you say, "from the hyssop to the Ceders of Lebanon" which means that it encompasses everything. It’s the equivalent of saying "from Dan to Beersheba" which I think I mentioned in an earlier posting. Anyway I think it is mentioned in a couple Psalms and it is mentioned in relation to the wisdom of Solomon. The plant is also what was used as the brush which painted the lamb's blood on the doorposts of the faithful during the Night of the Angel of Death. It is also what they used to dip the water in to give to Christ when he was held up on the cross. Anyone notice the connection? Anyway, it’s pretty much awesome. Its modern usage is huge. In Arabic, it’s called Za'atar and it's the herb they put on bread ALL THE TIME which really means that almost anything you get in the city that goes with bread will be za'atar. I had it my first day here and I love it. With olive oil and pita, it's delicious. So it was growing there right next to a very small cedar of Lebanon (the cedars take 60 years to mature). According to our guide, it is supposed to be a symbol of the people of Israel because it comes back year after year and it doesn't take much time for it to blossom. Also it is not unbending like the cedar. That's just an example of the things we learned about the plants in the bible. There were so many others.

A really short one I’ll share is when Abraham had two holy men come to him who told him his wife was going to have a son in his old age, he had them sit with them under a Tamarisk tree which is awesome because when you sit on the ground underneath a tamarisk tree is always 2 to 3 degrees centigrade cooler than places around it. Why? They think it is because it collects dew on it in the morning and it takes the dew a while longer to evaporate than usual, so it cools down the area under the tree. Therefore, Abraham was being as hospitable and respectful as he could be when he invited the men to go sit under the tree. Cool huh!

But moving away from plants….. You give me a moment, and I'll go off about them for pages. We also did something really amazing that we got to herd sheep and goats. That's right, I went with a group of completely inexperienced city slickers and had to organize 16 very oblivious, occasionally murderous, animals into a circle of rocks, keep them there, then make them circle around a tree and come back. We were surprisingly good at it, partly because (for some reason) the animals took a liking to one of the girls in our group and the whole lot of them would trudge after her wherever she walked. When she went around the tree, they followed. It was rather entertaining when she was walking back up the hill to where our group was sitting and they were still following her.

But anyway, the guide taught us a lot about shepherding and how a shepherd knows his flock and uses the natural leader among them to lead them where they need to go. You know the Psalm that starts, "The Lord is my Shepherd"? Well, David is comparing himself to being the lead sheep who is following the direction of the master. I was in the first group to go and take the sheep and goats around. The second group had a more difficult task, they had to separate the sheep and goats and then get them into different circles of stone. That was rather entertaining to watch because, let me tell you, those sheep and goats see absolutely no reason why they should ever be in anything other than a tight wad of smelly fur.

After all of that, including with the hyssop and such, we went on a tour of the history of the four species that the Jews use in their holiday Sukkot. It is a long and involved story, therefore, if you want to know more, look up "four species" and I assure you, it'll pop right up. If not, add Sukkot and you're golden. I really like the history though; it's worth taking a moment to figure out.

We also saw the seven species that are traditionally grown in Israel, and we learned how to thresh wheat. If you've grown up in any Christian faith, you'll know the parable of the wheat and the chaff. Even if you aren't Christian, you may have heard of it. It’s basically the idea that after you've done all sorts of stuff to get the wheat cut, to slice the long stems into manageable portions and so forth, you have to separate the beautiful, useful little grains that make the bread from all the straw that accompanies it. How you do this is pretty interesting. Basically, you take the whole lot of it and throw it up in the air and the light straw flies away, (hopefully not back into your neat little pile) and the grain is supposed to fall back down where it started. I always, and still do, wonder what you do if there is no wind. Or, if there is such a wind that you're grain goes right along with the chaff. But anywho, our tour guide entertainingly took a whole bunch on a shovel and threw it up in the air, with all the chaff flying right into the face of the teacher accompanying us.

Ooh, I utterly forgot, we saw the COOLEST thing. They have a Torah scribe who works there, and he demonstrated what is used to create a kosher Torah scroll, and even showed us a Torah scroll that was made over two hundred years ago. It is SUCH an involved process, let me tell you. Everything has to be correct, and if you make a mistake, you have to scrape it off, or, in the case of the name of God, you have to completely excise the piece, replace it with a patch, and then in a special ceremony, bury the name of God with other retired books and such that carry God's name. The technique he was using was hundreds of years old, and the art of being a Torah scribe had been in his family for almost as long. Did you know, for instance, that the Torah scroll is not written on paper but on parchment--or in other words, on the skin of an animal? That is why they don't disintegrate very quickly and also why it takes so long to create a complete tradition scroll. Now, thankfully, there are machines which make the skin into parchment for them. He then demonstrated reading the Torah in the three different traditions. I'll give you the names, though they probably don't mean much to many of you: Ashkenazi, Sephardic (this you may have heard of, I know I had a slight inkling of what it was before I learned fully) and Yemeni. It was all very beautiful, and fascinating. I took tons of pictures of all the things he uses in the ink and so forth. It was a lot like those displays at revolutionary war re-enactments. I loved it.

So, moving on, when we left it was already four in the afternoon and we had a half hour drive back to Jerusalem. BTW, as we were driving through hills covered with the olive groves I saw several ancient watch towers ... just like the ones in the parables.

That whole evening I spent studying as I did all of Tuesday and most of Wednesday. I did get to go into the city on Wednesday. We went back to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It was a lot better this time because on Tuesday we had a lecture from the man who used to be in charge of Religious Relations for the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem. He talked about relations between Christian faiths here and gave us some pretty entertaining stories about the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Church of the Nativity. He also taught us a lot about the general structure of the church. So when I went back on Wednesday, I took a map of the place along and we explored -- this time knowing where Golgotha supposedly is, as well as the places Christ was supposedly tried and where he was flogged.

There were two other things which really stood out to me about this trip.

First, the church is shaped, unsurprisingly, like a big cross. At least it was before a whole bunch of things were added, but you know. In the large rotunda where the apex of the cross is where they have the "aedicule," or in other words, the cave where Christ was supposed to have been buried. It looks nothing like it did back then; actually, it just looks like a tiny, highly decorated room in the middle of a church. The floors all around it are utterly filthy. Why? Because the aedicule area is run by all five of the churches which have dominion over the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. That basically means that none of them cleans it because, in ancient time in the Near East, cleaning is a sign of ownership. But that's beside the point.

Directly behind this aedicule, in line with the little clay figure they have that represents the middle of the universe (that's right, I've touched the center of the universe. Beat that!) was a tiny Syrian chapel which had been gutted by a fire years ago. I have no idea why it hasn't been repaired. There is a little hole in the wall there which is just large enough to go through if you duck. It leads to first century tombs. There is no light, no tour guides or anything in there; in fact, it is barely large enough for two crouching people to get into. But just inside it, right next to the head of two of the tombs, was a little candle that was still burning but was burnt almost to the end with several photographs laid right next to it. They showed some people who looked like a family. The walls were black with the soot of the fire, and the ceiling was for some reason sticky. While I know this part of the church is by no means unknown, probably everyone who stays in there long enough has seen it, it still seemed like a secret kept long away from the world. I would like to read more about it.

The other thing I want to relate is that on the exact opposite end of the church, there is a flight of steps that leads down to a chapel called the "Chapel of Saint Helen." When we first went down those steps, I failed to notice that on our map, there was a little line that pointed to the steps and read, "29 steps with cross graffiti." As we descended, I was thinking about how observant I am when I'm interested in things, and how I had managed to notice everything that should be noticed about the chapel we entered. Of course, I was proven wrong when I looked at the map and saw that little caption. As soon as we finished looking around the chapel, we raced back up to the 29 steps and looked for this famous cross graffiti. We had almost decided that it was gone before I realized that there was a tiny cross carved into the wall that leads up the steps. And next to it there was another one. I stepped back and realized that the entire wall was made up of little carved crosses, some smaller, some larger, some in clusters or by themselves. This was the case on both sides of the steps and the wall around the carved crosses was black with the fingers of thousands of people who had traced their contours or perhaps carved the crosses in themselves. I felt like I had made another amazing discovery, sort of like Indiana Jones.

While neither of these stories have any point, I chose to relate them because they sort of emphasis for me what the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is like. It is a fascinating place. I assure you, I could go back again and again and not tire of it.

Oh, oh, I must mention this. There is a little Muslim man that sits on a bench just inside of the church. He is there almost every day, as his father before him had been, and his father before him. His family has been in charge of holding the keys of this much disputed building for hundreds of years, since the time of the Ottomans. We met him as we walked in and he showed us pictures of him meeting the Pope, and told us how he met Barak Obama when he came to the church. He also gave us each a little card that reads:

Wajeeh Y. Nuseibeh

Custodian and Door - Keeper

of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher

Tel. Resid. 02/6285910 Jerusalem

Church 0522992524

He was adorable in his self importance and his kind welcoming of us. "You Mormons?" He asked when we first walked by. Everyone can tell in the city, even when we wear NOTHING with any BYU or Mormon-ish logos on it. We have several theories of how they can tell, but even on our way up to the church, wearing by chance nothing which would give our faith away, we had three different shopkeepers call us over by saying, "Mormons! We love Mormons!" or something similar. It is rather entertaining, though it is a good reminder that we'd better do the right thing because everyone knows who we are.

Thursday went by with five different classes -- a total of 7 hours spent in class in all, and Friday was almost the same. But there was a definite perk to Friday.

Just before sunset, we went to a synagogue in the City of David. It was actually in a scout building which is used as a synagogue on Fridays and Saturdays. We arrived in our Sunday clothes, received prayer books with English translations and transliterations so we could sing along, and after an introduction by our Judaism professor, we went in and sat down. The particular congregation we attended had many attendees from the U.S., so most of them spoke English almost perfectly. Not that we spoke during the service, it was mostly singing Psalms and reciting portions of the Talmud. The congregation is liberal-orthodox, or in other words, they're Jewish enough that they really observe the Sabbath well and wear the kipa, but most of the women don't wear head coverings. They are also of the "neo-Hasidic" persuasion, which basically means that for them Shabbat is a joyous time that should be full of boisterous song and some dance. We sang and danced right along with them, we women on one side of the synagogue separated from the men by a white cloth barrier. At one point, we even danced around the chairs in a circle holding hands, our hands going up and down in time to the song. They were very welcoming and I enjoyed the entire thing.

As we left, we spoke with some guys attending a local Yeshiva, literally meaning "place of learning," which traditionally is attended by observant Jewish young men who want to learn the Tanakh (The Talmud, Torah, and Mishnah put together) as well as the Halakha (or Jewish law). This Yeshiva, they said, is best termed a "pseudo-Yeshiva" because it doesn't require you to be observant and is co-ed, which is almost unheard of. Anyway, they were great fun because they were all from the Midwest or east coast, so they had great Chicago or New Yorker accents and a sharp sense of humor.

Our Jewish history teacher walked home (as it was now officially Shabbat) with his adorable three-year-old girl who came along, and we drove back to the Center in time for dinner.

What's been up since I've been back in Jerusalem

2009-10-07T07:48:00.000-07:00

Alright, so since the last time I wrote, lots have things have happened.

We were just about to head out the door to go to the old city when we were turned back because of problems on the Temple Mount. East Jerusalem and the Old City were off limits to us. I've heard two different versions of the story: one, from the Jerusalem Post, says that riots started because a group of Jews tried to get up on the Temple Mount, or Haram As-Sharif, the Dome of the Rock, to pray. They took armed guards with them and the Muslims up there began throwing rocks in protest. The other version which I've heard from people here is that there were rumors that the government was going to let some people go on the Mount to pray (some Jews I mean) and that the Muslims were really wary of this. As a consequence, when a bus full of French tourists came up onto the Mount, the Muslims there started throwing rocks at them thinking they were the Jews. Even after it was discovered that they were not, the Muslims were still afraid of something that has been termed by a Hamas leader (who has been banned from the Old City as a consequence) as "The Jewish takeover" of the Holy Mount. Therefore a group, which I've heard was anywhere from one hundred to two hundred people, mostly young men, spent the night on the Mount to protest it being used as a prayer site for the Jews. This sort of problem has been getting worse, with people lighting trashcan fires and protesting at night in the Jezreel valley just below the Mount and across from us, between us and the city.

This problem was compounded because there are thousands of Jews from all over the country who came to have a priestly blessing at the Western Wall, the consequence being that the whole of southeastern Jerusalem is overcrowded with pilgrims. The government has not been allowing nearly anyone except Jews into the city; they've even closed the Holy Mount to all Muslim men under the age of 50.

This holiday, called Sukkot in Hebrew, or the Festival of the Tabernacles in English, is going to continue until Friday, so we can expect to be barred from the eastern or Old Part of the city until then.

Therefore, we went on a different field trip yesterday which turned out to be smashing. It was to the old part of the City -- the City of David.

This was the place where the city, once ruled by Melchizedek, stood and also where the Jesubite city David conquered and took for his capital had lain. It stretches along a long narrow hill, flanked by two valleys which meet in the middle and eventually slope down toward Jericho. There, all the history of the First Temple period took place, all the way up until its destruction in 587 BC and the capture and carrying of Judah into Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. We toured some of the few places they've been able to excavate back to the time of David. There were a few standing ramparts and a couple houses which had been attached to the walls before they were burned down or built over. Undoubtedly some of it was there when David walked those streets and some during the time of the prophet Jeremiah and Lehi as well.

Most interesting though was our excursion through Hezekiah’s tunnel which allowed water from the Gihon spring upon which the city relied, to be relayed through a half mile stone tunnel to the pool of Siloam at its end. It was through these very tunnels, some of which had been dug previous to Hezekail, that David's men infiltrated the walls and destroyed the city. It was also the extension and reformation of these tunnels that saved the city in the time of the failed siege of the City of David by the Assyrians (circa 700 BC). The walk was forty five minutes. Some of the time, the roof of the tunnels stretched far above my head and I could walk upright. Other times, it sloped downward until I nearly felt as though I was inside the Pyramid walking up to the Pharaoh's tomb again, although this time the air was filled with the moldy smell of algae instead of stale age.

Normally, the water flowing in the tunnel is waist high, but because of the persistent drought plaguing this part of the world, it measured on up to mid thigh. There is cause for hope, however, because today, for the first time in nearly a month, it rained! I could not help but wonder if the prayers of the faithful Jews calling for rain on this holiday were being answered with this brief shower.

On our slog through the tunnels, we sang and talked. I watched carefully for stalactites which had miraculously missed the head of another tall tourist and which could, painfully, hit mine. Thankfully, my diligence paid off. I only hit my head once.

At the end of the tunnel is the ancient pool of the Byzantines with four squat pillars poking out of the water. We wandered about for a bit, before heading off to try and find a way back to the center. First we passed the New Testament period pool, empty now of water as it has been for centuries, and only recently excavated. It was to this pool that the blind man who Jesus had anointed with mud made from dirt and spit on his eyes, had come to wash himself and receive his sight (John 9).

After our security personnel figured a way to pick us up, we walked up a prodigious slope out of the city of David and all the way to the garden of Gethsemane where our cars picked us up and drove us the rest of the way. We passed numerous checkpoints adorned with machine-gun toting soldiers eating lunch. Our driver seemed intent on returning us at record speed, or at least, testing how good the suspension really was on his van. Though I ought not complain, I have become accustomed to rocketing down hills and careening round corners. It seems just as normal here as honking incessantly and shouting out the window to anything which may be construed as a threat.

Once we were returned to the Jerusalem Center, I dithered away my day. We had no classes this week but Old Testament and Hebrew and only on Friday our Jewish history class. This is partly due to the holiday.

In preparation, the Israeli government shuts the borders to any Palestinians trying to come through the West Bank to Jerusalem. That cuts off our Palestinian history class. It is also due to the unfortunate death of our Ancient Near East Professor's father. Naturally he flew back to the States for the week. Our surprising lack of work would be wonderful were it not for our restrictions to the majority of the city. I suppose I'll take the opportunity to explore West Jerusalem more thoroughly.

I spent Sunday, when we couldn't go to the old city, visiting numerous sites and wandering around hopelessly lost for about a third of our travels between them. We visited the largest (I think) synagogue here, as well as an old book shop. It was just like something you would dream of -- books up the wazoo in a tiny hidey-hole type shop, all of them old and falling apart. There were a surprising number in English which I perused with pleasure.

But let’s not get into all that. I could describe the book shop and the bird-like little Israeli who ran it, for hours. Suffice it to say, I bought three fabulous looking books for 10 shekels. That's only 2 and one half dollars. Bother, I've lost my train of explanation. What have I left out? Today has been utterly unremarkable, other than the rain of course, and the fresh feeling to the air. I did notice that a pomegranate tree just outside of Hebrew class looked greener than ever against the china blue sky.

Anyway, the third day in Egypt may come soon. At this rate, I’ll have written about them all by the end of the semester... hopefully.

THE PYRAMIDS

2009-10-07T07:37:00.000-07:00

The next day was the day we'd all been waiting for.
I got up pretty late-- about seven, because I was so exhausted from the day before, got dressed and hurried off to breakfast. Our hotel was exactly like you'd want a hotel in Egypt to be. Instead of floors on top of each other, we each got a bungalow which was surrounded by palm trees and other tropical plants arranged in pretty, fountain-centered gardens. The day was already hot when I finished breakfast and ran to get a front seat in the bus. But that didn't matter-- it wouldn't be Egypt without the incessant, muggy heat. It was a quick drive through the city.

Though it can be easy to forget when you're live on the delta, Egypt really is a desert. Rain is so infrequent that the moment you're outside of the affects of the Nile’s water, plant life completely ceases. In some places, you can be standing on lush, ready farmland with one foot, and with the other stand on dusty, barren desert. The ancient Egyptians built their pyramids on the latter sort of terrain -- the Giza plateau is only a few feet from the Nile's influence, but you'd never know it standing next to it.

When we disembarked from the bus, we had to stand in a long line (we all squeezed together to prevent anyone cutting into the line) so, hopefully, we could be part of the 200 people who are permitted to go into the Great Pyramid and climb all the way to the ancient tomb of king Cheops each day. It seemed to take forever -- I felt bad for the short girls who were squeezed so as to get little air -- but finally, finally, we were ready to go. To our amusement, they had us hop back on the bus to drive us the 200 meters up the hill to a parking lot that was parallel to the side of the pyramid.

Impatient might be the wrong word to describe what we were all feeling as we stared at the pyramid which rose like a mountain in front of us as our bus carefully parked. We tumbled off, and the first people in our group started running towards the pyramid, eager to be the first people to go into the tomb that day. Believe me, had I not destroyed my knee before I came, I would have been right along with them.

It is difficult to try to scale the pyramids in your mind. Even the night before, while I was sitting and watching the light show, I couldn't really tell how large they are. This may help you to imagine it: when I stood at the base of the pyramid, the stone right in front of me was almost taller than I am. There are MILLIONS of these stones that make up the structure. To even see the top, I had to crane my neck back almost as far as it can go, just like looking at a skyscraper. It's extremely wide too -- we never even walked to the other side of the pyramid, but I can tell you it would take about three minutes at a normal pace to go from one end of one side to the other.

But returning to the tomb…I scrambled after the other people in my class, up the steps carved into the stone to the narrow opening (barely my height) that was left for access into the tomb. They punched my ticket, and I stepped into the rough hewn tunnel.
At first it was almost exactly like a cave--the walls seemed seamless (no pun intended) and the shape of the tunnel was irregular. This quickly changed when I climbed a half dozen recently installed metal stairs, to a very narrow shaft that ascends rapidly to the tomb at the center of the pyramid. 5,000 years ago people were short, I know, but no one is as short as they made that tunnel. Either they decided it was too much effort to make a human height shaft that gave entrance to the pyramid, or they enjoyed walking for almost an eighth of a mile bent double! That part of the pyramid was probably the worst just because it was so uncomfortable. The air quality was poor too -- it's not easy to get fresh air into a cave sealed so tightly that some claim aliens created it. It wasn't long until I was utterly drenched in sweat of a cool, slimy quality unfamiliar to me. There were brief openings in the low tunnel where you could stand for a moment and look up a few hundred feet to where it peaked like the inside of the pyramid. Why they didn't build it all like that is beyond me. Because of our eagerness to get into the tomb, we practically ran up the steep slope, so, in spite of the difficulty, it wasn't long at all until I stood up straight and entered a tall, black doorway to the darkness of the tomb.

The room was only maybe 60 by 30 feet, but the walls reached up two stories above me. They were made of a dark, almost black stone which seemed to suck in rather than reflect the light of the dim florescent tubes built into the sides of the tomb. It was almost completely empty, with walls, floors and ceiling as smooth as marble and so straightly cut I would have sworn it was hewn by a machine. The only object in the room (besides the 20 or 30 of us sweaty, echoing students) was on the far end from the entrance. A long, narrow black box made out of the same stone as the floor, the remains of the sarcophagus, was the instant focus of attention. I quickly walked over to it and stood on the side, my hands joining the thousands that had traced its edges into a polished, slick surface. The sarcophagus had no lid, and one corner was broken off in a V almost to the floor. The inside was just as smooth as the outside with the bottom covered in a thin layer of dirt. It was a while before the first person was brave enough to get in, and a while after that before someone lay down. I quickly realized that my opportunity to lie in the sarcophagus of Cheops, one of the greatest Pharaohs of the first dynasty, would be completely eclipsed if I didn't act before all the students gathered the courage to take their turn. As the fifth person in, I lay down with my head on one end and my toes pointed upward at the other. The coffin was my size, perhaps six inches too long. I crossed my arms over my chest just as everyone else had done, and, though I felt supremely immature, thought about how the people of the first dynasty had laid their God in this tomb after more than a month of mummification, and, leaving the tomb full of priceless treasures which were plundered only a few years later, slowly marched out. I only took a few moments in the sarcophagus, staring up at the black ceiling, sucking in the stale air, before I stood and exited.

While more people filled the tomb, someone started a song -- partly because we were in one of the greatest treasures in the world, and partly because the place echoed. It was "If You Could Hie to Kolob," one of my favorite hymns and one of the few which speaks directly of our theology about the afterlife and the preexistence. A few other songs were sung, and, as people became more comfortable, some of the boys started to hum as though they were mummies rising from the dead. I left about then, thankful that it was almost solely our group in the tomb because I was positive they would assume we were some strange cult. It didn't help that we'd naturally stood in little circles all throughout the tomb...

The descent was less strenuous but more difficult. Should I walk down forward doubled over completely in two, or should I descend more comfortably but with a greater chance of falling and walk backward? I opted for the first of the two, recognizing that my track record of injures due to clumsiness (or idiocy) isn't that great. When we were out, we wandered around on the rocks near the tomb’s exit for a bit, careful not to climb too high and get arrested. I took about a dozen pictures of me standing on the pyramid. For me, this is one of the most irritating things about traveling. I would rather do anything than pose for my thousandth picture! But I know that without photos, memories fade more rapidly. We left soon after, off to see the Sphinx.

We entered through the temple of Chephren, builder of the second pyramid, and the son of Cheops, builder of the great pyramid. His pyramid is, I believe, the one which the transformer in Transformers 2 tore through to get to something-or-other. That movie is really irksome. I don't know why Michael Bay has something against relics of the Near East. Anyway, the temple was spectacular of course, with many wide-based columns as all the Egyptian temples seem to have, and a well at the entrance where you're supposed to throw in money if you ever want to return to Egypt. I didn't throw in money, but my professor said he hadn't either when he was here the first time and, here he was again. So there superstition!

Exiting from the back, we came to stand on the left side of the Sphinx. People don't actually
know why it has no nose. There are multiple theories -- such as the Ottoman's blasting it off because it was sacrilegious, something-or-other about Napoleon or, as the movie Aladdin postulated, because two people flew by on a magic carpet and the distracted sculptor accidentally broke it off with his chisel.

The Sphinx is big, as big as you'd expect -- it still seemed large even though we were standing on a walkway 20 feet above ground level and 40 feet away from it. Apparently, when the Sphinx has been neglected for a while, it becomes covered in sand every few thousand years. In antiquity, because the desert had risen over it, some people believed the Sphinx was only a head planted on the sand. Most recently, when it was excavated, they found a little plaque between its legs. On it, in hieroglyphs I believe (though don't quote me on this) was a story from a Pharaoh on how, as a young boy, he had fallen asleep one day in front of the Sphinx. According to him, the Sphinx sent him a dream and told him that if he would remove the sand from around its body, he assured the boy that he would become king. This the boy did, and years later, as Pharaoh of all of Egypt, he came back to leave record about it.

President Brown, the District President of all the Middle East pretty much and the director of our center, who has been a consultant on such religious and diverse things as the Coptic encyclopedia, the movie Prince of Egypt and the movie Journey of Faith, gave us a brief, spontaneous discourse on how the ancient Egyptian temple system is similar to ours in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was fascinating. A friend of mine took a picture of me "kissing" the sphinx which is actually pretty convincing. Hopefully he'll put it on Facebook so I can have a copy. Realizing that I should purchase something as a record of these places, I got a really overpriced brass pyramid with hieroglyphs on the sides and a "wooden" Egyptian cat. Over the course of that week, I lost or broke both of them. So basically, I will have to go back, just so I can get a proper souvenir.

We left the Sphinx, to my sadness (I was feeling quite chummy with him) and rode around the Giza plateau to a place where we could get pictures of all three pyramids together. From there, we went to a small valley of tombs built into the rock and specifically into the tomb of Ti. If you've never heard of Ti, I wouldn't be too distraught. He was actually just a hairdresser. Really! But for some reason, he was wealthy enough to create an elaborately carved, hieroglyph-covered tomb. We spent a good deal of time standing in a room deep in the tomb whose walls were completely covered in hieroglyphics and drawings of daily life at the time of the Egyptians. The color was even preserved on some of the carvings which were even more impressive because they weren't carved into the stone; the stone around it was carved away so the pictures were raised up and even contoured so you could see the shape of the muscles in the arms of the workers of the field. Our tour guide, Ahmed, bless his heart, spent almost an hour explaining pretty much every aspect of the tomb despite the fact that we were all utterly exhausted and it was ridiculously hot. Through it all, the face of Ti stared at us from the other room. The chamber where we were was the “offerings chamber” where people were supposed to come and offer victuals to the family of Ti. In order so he could see it, they had carved and painted a statue of Ti then put a little hole in the wall where, if you stood directly in front of it, it seemed his dark eyes were staring right at you.

THIS IS A CHANGE FROM THE ORIGINAL (originally I said we went to Memphis this day, but that was actually in Luxor, and here we're still in Cairo...)

What actually happened was that we went to a papyrus factory where we spent quite some time. It was below a really fancy market place for overpriced souviners, and it was constantly being filled by busses of tourists. They had a man demonstrate exactly how papyrus was made anciently, then tell us how to buy some of our own made by the artists there who created them and painted them the ancient way. It was a really legitimate place, very nicely taken care of. Though the papyrus was, of course, over priced. I ended up only buying one as a gift-- a beautiful papyrus of a ship from ancient Egypt. I was too stingy to buy any more. When we left, we were off to eat and then to fly to Luxor.

Because it was still Ramadan (though that night was the end of Ramadan and the beginning of Eid Al-Fitr, or the little feast that lasts three days and is the Muslim equivalent of Christmas), when we went to lunch at a nice restaurant, there were no people there but us. We had an entire staff of 8 people serving us at the buffet and providing us with sodas -- which they didn't tell us cost money until the end. The food was good, and we over-looked the Nile wetlands and greenery filled with palm trees and houses that were falling apart. The manager had a really fabulous sense of humor, so he went up to a girl every once in a while and did this really incredible trick involving a cup full of tea or coffee and a spoon where he would pretend to spill it on someone but then catch it at just the last second. That was also my first experience with being told that I had beautiful eyes like the moon... it happened a lot in Luxor. I spoke with the waiter in Arabic for a bit, so I think he was impressed, and he told me a couple times how "yo have bautaful eyeis," (read out loud, it should sound like an Arabic accent). There was not one time anyone complimented me on the rest of the trip that it was not about my “eyeis.”

As we headed back to our bus they played really loud Backstreet Boys music -- not for us, but in preparation for a party later that night. It was really quite fun to hear though -- at least in Egypt the Backstreet Boys are still cool!

From the restaurant, we drove straight to the Cairo airport where I broke the cat I bought at the pyramids on the security machine. The plane we took to Luxor was sort of small, but the flight was really short and they provided us with seemingly endless drinks. The landing was the roughest I've ever experienced: we bounced at least three times and lurched to the right and left several times before straightening out. I felt ill for about an hour later.

After a short bus ride on our new Luxor busses, we got to the beautiful Sheraton Hotel where we were going to stay the next couple of days. It sits right on the Nile, but unfortunately I got a room on the side that looked over the parking lot! When I did see the Nile that evening, it was a shimmering strip of black, reflecting the lights of the boats gliding over it and the hotels that lined western edge. The moon was barely a crescent and it hung low and golden. It was stunning.

Oh, I mustn't forget to mention how amazing the rooms were. They were modernish, black wood and white beds, and they were equipped with huge televisions that played Arabic soap operas which are exceedingly entertaining to watch, let me tell you. I was exhausted and, still feeling slightly ill, I didn't go out on the town that evening. I went to bed pretty early, excited for the next day.

Coming next: Luxor's temples, and the flight to

Cairo. The real deal.

2009-09-28T11:23:00.000-07:00

The next day was our first day in the country of Egypt.

It was pretty exciting to get up in the morning and rush on to the bus to drive across the Sinai. I was excited not only to get to the actual, traditional part of Egypt, but to cross the famed Sinai. Yeh, I’ve crossed the desert on my way to Utah, and the day before had driven through the Negev, but this was my first HUGE desert, so inhospitable that the only real population by the Red Sea are nomads. But first came the border crossing.

Talk about a long wait. When we came to the Gulf of Aqaba, we had to grab all our stuff and disembark into the hot sun -- the beautiful view of the pristinely blue sea was helpful, I must say. It seemed to take forever to get through the line and out of the bureaucracy of Israeli checkpoints just to enter the Egyptian side. I paused at the sign which said "Welcome to Egypt!" in English and "Marhaba bukra Misr" in Arabic (which I was stoked that I could read, btw) and took pictures. Then we rushed across the line and into Egypt.

Realizing that I was suddenly in one of the oldest kingdoms on the entire planet was dumbfounding. Were it not for my exhaustion and general heat stroke, I would likely have been bouncing up and down like the Energizer Bunny. The Egyptian policemen wear antiquated uniforms--all white with a leather belt which has an extra leather strap that wraps over the shoulder. It was like a last vestige of the colonial period of the Middle East, or of the Ottoman Empire. For some blasted reason, Egyptians never quite adopted the air conditioner. That means in almost every building we went (other than our hotels) it was just as hot as outside and frequently more stuffy.

People had warned me about the Middle Eastern tendency to cut into lines but I'd forgotten. As I stood there in the line, I got progressively farther and farther back due to the nonchalant groups of other people who would stride up to somewhere in the middle of the line and slyly integrate themselves into it. Thankfully we were saved from being in the line for the next week because the Egyptian checkpoint passport-people realized we were just a huge group of extremely harmless Americans, so they called us to come to our own separate line so we could get through it.

Once we were on the other side, we had the fabulous opportunity to experience our first Egyptian bathroom -- meaning, no toilet paper ever (they generally have someone standing outside who, for a few Egyptian pounds --about 5 to a dollar -- will give you two or three squares of paper), toilets which actually operate only half the time, and typically no soap or paper towels. We never encountered a bathroom without running sinks though, thankfully. Because of the numerous warnings we'd received, we used hand sanitizer obsessively. I became very paranoid about touching anything after going into that bathroom. It was not pleasant.

After that little adventure, we trundled onto the bus which was as colorfully decorated as a fiesta, and started off into the Sinai. The water of the Red Sea is transfixingly beautiful -- it’s this shade of blue you can hardly believe is real because it’s dark but clear and bright at the same time. Sort of like the night sky just before the first stars appear, but more brilliant. Soon though, we had passed into the mountains which were just as starkly empty of plants as the mountains in the Negev.

When we emerged from the mountains, we spent the next five hours driving through flat land where the only trees were telephone poles and the only life was old men running dirty way stations, that is, except for the checkpoints. I couldn't quite figure out why there were so many of them. You would think they would only need to check you a couple times to make sure you weren't Israeli terrorists or smugglers, not to mention there was only one road you could drive through most of the desert anyway. Yet this was the scene of several recent major wars, from the Suez war with France and England on one side and Egypt on the other, to the 1967 War where Israel conquered all of the Sinai and kept it until the Camp David peace accords.

At the check points, they'd have us stop for a minute and they'd talk to our bus driver for a moment in hypersonic Arabic. Several other soldiers, either in their distinctive camo or the white police uniforms, would unabashedly stare at us until the engine revved and we were off again.

I listened to my iPod for a while, unfortunately, I only have exercise music on it so my ears were full of Linkin Park and Green Day. The music did make it easy to imagine the soldiers of so many generations who'd traversed this wasteland on their way to Israel or to Egypt. Soon though, I became absorbed in a conversation with one of my favorite people on the trip, Yassir from Cairo. He’s one of our tour assistants who has been coming with BYU students on this excursion for years. He spoke with me in Arabic as frequently as I could understand him, and he taught me about Islam, Egypt and his life in Cairo. It was fascinating to see it from the perspective of a native Muslim, and I found him to be amiable and intelligent. As I had been warned by my Arabic professor, he soon pulled out his cell phone to show me his beautiful family: twins, a little boy and girl. In turn I showed him what pictures I have of my family on my camera. The trip seemed a lot shorter with him for company, though he did have a habit of speaking so softly that I had to strain to understand him. Like most middle-aged Muslim men, he had a calloused bruise on his forehead from his daily prayers. I became very accustomed to seeing it all over Egypt.

In the late afternoon, we passed under the Suez Canal which we weren't able to see except for the huge ocean liners passing over it. Someone in our group held her breath the entire time we were passing under the canal in the large, curving tunnel. It was extremely impressive. I tried on the way back and failed miserably. When we emerged, we had left the Sinai and were officially, indisputably in Africa.

I have now been on four different continents. It was a very cool thought.

At first, Egypt was almost exactly like the Sinai, but then the city of Cairo began to emerge. It holds 14 million people and is the biggest city in all of Africa as well as the 16th biggest city in the world. And, as Egypt is a third world country, it is extremely poor for the most part.

This may help you imagine what it looks like: You know those games where you can construct a building? It starts with just the outside, the walls, roof and floor, in only brick or cement. In Cairo, there was a lot of brick. So imagine a high rise apartment building with nothing but the shell of the walls, roof and floor. Then hang laundry out of the windows, break off a few pieces, put a rusty bike on the balcony and makeshift shutters on the window. Put hundreds upon hundreds of these buildings next to each other, of slightly varying heights and levels of dilapidation, Middle Eastern people in traditional Arab clothing, headscarves and out-of-date western clothing, cars which squeal around corners, bicycles and carriages, a Mosque or ruin every few hundred yards, lots of smells -- most unpleasant, and a strange film of grime over everything, and you have greater Cairo. This was essentially what I saw of it while there. This may sound mostly negative, and it was difficult to see people living in such squalor, but I did not get the impression that along with the poverty the people were unhappy. On the contrary, they seemed to be contented with their lives and happy with the communities surrounding them. Yet no one deserves to live in streets full of filth. I can see why people devote their whole lives to charities employed in aiding these countries. But in all this, I'm forgetting a major part of Cairo -- the Nile.

The first time we drove over it on a large, freeway bridge, I clapped my hands in joy and gasped. It is everything it should be, wide, meandering, blue (at least from the surface) and edged by bright green papyrus and tiny houses made of straw. The delta together with the Nile is the most stunning combination of color. Dark, dark brown, every shade of green thinkable, yellow from the shacks of papyrus, and the blue Nile. It was almost shocking to look from such verdancy to the cement, metal and brick of the city. On the Nile sailed feluccas (one-masted, triangular sailed boats, one of the oldest vessels in the world), tour boats and dinghies. And way far in the distance, almost dwarfing the buildings of Cairo, the three pyramids of Giza waved in the heat, pale with the atmosphere between us and them, and an even more shocking contrast between the old and new. Something that crossed my mind several times as we drove towards our hotel was how much Egypt had changed. From a civilization who four thousand years ago built the only remaining wonder of the ancient world, to the country that had so little power in the current world... that was astounding.

Finally, we got to the hotel. When we disembarked, I was exhausted and absolutely ready for bed. But first, we had the “Pyramids Light and Sound” program to attend. If that sounds cool, believe me, it is. The sun had set while we had dinner at the hotel, (skipping over the fresh fruits and vegetables--no one wanted Pharaoh's revenge), so we drove through dark, winding streets of Cairo. It was one of the last days of Ramadan and, accordingly, there were few people on the streets. I watched the hundreds of souvenir shops shoot past, carrying the same wares as the next, and the men in their traditional garb sitting in sidewalk cafes smoking on hookahs. When we arrived, for the millionth time that day, I could hardly stand to stay still. Grabbing the arm of my friend Lindsay, we rushed over to seats as close as we could get to the front. We sat directly in front of the temple of the Pharaoh of the second pyramid. The Sphinx sat only a little off to the side, and the three giant pyramids of Giza rose monolithically in front of us. Against the orange light pollution of Cairo, they were giant black triangles that gobbled up a significant portion of the sky.
The light show began slowly with the first pyramid, Mycerinus', the smallest of the three, as it was lit in blue. Then the most famous, with the portion on the top still covered in limestone as they had been originally, Chephren's pyramid was lit green. Lastly, the largest of the three: Cheops’s pyramid, the father and grandfather of the other two, lit up yellow. Then the light show began. Green lasers, projected pictures onto the temple, various colored pyramids and a loud British narrator told the story of the pyramids and the Sphinx from their beginning through Alexander, Napoleon and the Ottomans until now. It was spectacular to say the least, though perhaps slightly too extravagant in its praise and descriptions. The term purple prose comes to mind. I took pictures of the show, some of which actually aren't blurry, and I hope to post them as soon as I can.

Unfortunately, sleep is a nastily controlling thing and I found myself drooping during the performance. When we finally got back to the hotel, I fell asleep almost immediately after I went to bed.

Coming next: the Pharoah's tomb in the pyramid (I actually laid down in the original sarchophogus inside the tomb), the sphinx, memphis and exploring Cairo.

The Negev.... dun dun dun….

2009-09-27T00:15:00.000-07:00

I would call this the first day in Egypt, but really, it’s just the first day driving to Egypt. Left really early in the morning, 6:00 to be exact, which I guess I shouldn't say is so early seeing as Dad always had us get up at 4:00 a.m. for our adventures into the wilderness. But it wasn't long until we were heading down the road which led us south out of Jerusalem and into the fields of central Israel.

Though I tried valiantly not to, I spent a large part of this drive sleeping uncomfortably in our oversized bus with undersized seats. Fortunately, it was only about two hours before we arrived at our first stop, Beersheba.

If the name doesn't sound familiar to you, you're a poor Old Testament scriptorian. This is not only the place where Abraham lived, naming it Beer-sheba because it means both "seven wells" and "oath" (he took an oath with the local king that assured him the right to that land), but it is also the place where Jacob lived when Joseph was taken into Egypt, and where Jacob left from when he was called to come to Egypt by Joseph who was by this time the second in command.

On top of all this ancient patriarchal stuff, this was a major city during the divided monarchy (when there was the state of Israel and the separate state of Judah--this is just before the fall of the kingdom of Israel in the north). They had a temple there, whether pagan or not I'm not sure, but which was dismantled by King Josiah. From stones archeologists found throughout the site, they reconstructed the altar which was built there and a replica sits in the entrance to Beersheba. It’s a beautiful alter made of white stone with the famous stone horns on the four corners representing a bull who is the symbol of strength.

I took several pictures with me holding the horns of the altar in the manner that people seeking sanctuary in ancient days did. That's actually what the pretended king at the time of Jeremiah did trying to preserve his life after a failed coup of the kingdom. He was eventually killed at the altar. So basically, it was pretty much rad. Oh, also, Beersheba is the traditional southern end of the kingdom of Israel, with Dan at the northern end.

As soon as we left, we were no longer in the land of milk and honey but in the wilderness which Elijah famously wandered through: the Negev. That drive was fascinating because it was immediately apparent that we were leaving the fertile plain and entering what they call here the "steppe," or basically, slightly hilly land which is essentially desert except for some plants that are enough to support animals but not agriculture.

The Bedouin are the people of this land. They are in a very strange situation because the state of Israel is determined to find something to do with them. It is very difficult for a first world, highly bureaucratic country to figure out what to do with nomads. If they're not on the same land all the time, how can they be controlled, taxed and how can the government be assured that they're acting lawfully and not intruding on other people's land? This conundrum has led to a strange half citizen status for the local Bedouins, where the government builds settlements for them which allow for their children to attend a permanent school, but they don't have access to running water and (frequently) electricity. The water question is the biggest though, and has created a great deal of strife between the peoples.

As we drove, I looked out of the window to the desert in the east, and watched the Bedouin tents flash past. There were a surprising amount of them, as well as random dogs, children and sheep. Their tents are no longer made out of hardy, homespun fabrics, but largely of plastic and highly degenerative tarps. It’s a very strange clash of the old and new to see such a fabric formed into a structure as ancient as the Bedouin form of a tent--basically poles holding up a high roof, sides which are rolled up and down as doors and only two or three sheets falling through the center roof to create flimsy rooms. From what I could see of the tents with their walls rolled up, there is little furniture other than decorative rugs.

I'm not quite sure if we had a stop between Beersheba and Avdat, but since I don't remember it, it mustn’t have been very memorable. I'll therefore skip to Avdat which was by far one of the coolest sites we've been to.

Now we were definitely in the desert. Greenery had all but disappeared and everything was a monochromatic orangish-tan. This mostly flat, rocky desert shot off flat on both sides of us, rocketing up to mountains of the same make in the distance. On the bus, people were passing through phases of fitful slumber, quiet conversation and irritatingly raucous group discussions mostly centered at the back of the bus. Occasionally, someone would stand up to do a "spotlight" where they read information from a form we all filled out about ourselves, and then had a question and answer period about the person being spotlighted. Those moments were occasionally entertaining, but I preferred the reverie the monotonous landscape drew me into.
Avdat soon came into sight as an extremely impressive, gigantic, fortress-like city on a hilltop, built in the same stone as the surrounding land. I stared at it as we passed, wondering if this was one of the places they were planning on taking us and, to my joy, the bus took one of its preposterously wide turns onto a thin road that lead up the mountain to the city. When we disembarked, I ran around gleefully in the remarkably well-preserved city. Quite a bit of it had been reconstructed, but most of it was in its natural, degenerated state. It amazed me that some of the things which were most preserved were the arches. While the walls they supported had fallen, the single row of blocks of the arch would stand as solidly as ever-- a testament to the power of combining compression and tension. It also reminded me of the keystone analogy of the church. Not only is the keystone necessary for the existence of the arch, but with it in a completed arch, it was stronger than all the thick, high walls surrounding it.

This city had been mostly built by a people called the Nabeteans (I think I may have spoken of them before) but they are pretty much one of the most awesome people ever to live. They were based in Petra, Jordan; in fact, they were the creators of the city of Petra which we're going to visit in about a month. Accordingly, this huge complex not only had buildings above ground, but houses carved into the mountainside which I, unfortunately (due to time constraints) only had a couple minutes to glance at. But up at the top of the hill, I walked through a fortress made by the Romans who took over after the Nabeteans left, and from the top was able to see the entirety of Avdat as well as the valley.

From the fortress, we ran down to the “keep,” or castle-like area on the opposite side of the hill (which I can't recall who built it. I'll look it up later, but it was either the Romans or the Byzantines or both.) The Byzantines certainly built part of it because they had their church in one corner, with the cross shaped baptistry still intact.

We wandered around for quite some time, taking some stunning pictures in the gorgeous light which reflected off of the stone walls and using the arches as frames for the desert.
Unfortunately, before I was able to see the Roman tombs and wine presses, we had to leave. It was quite disappointing to go. I really hope I get the opportunity to go back there someday. As far as tels go, that was by far the best I've seen.

When we left Avdat, our next stop was at a National Park building where we watched a video in an extremely hot and stuffy theater about a massive, tectonic plate-made crater which we were about to enter. From there, we ran up to the top of the museum which explained more about the creation of the crater and came to the overlook of the valley. Though it was spectacular, it wasn't as stunning as some of the views I'd seen earlier in the day.

Which reminds me of what it was we did between Beersheba and Avdat, and, to my chagrin, it actually was an important event.

We went to the grave of David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel. It overlooks the Negev desert in one of the most beautiful scenes I’ve ever seen in my life. We talked for a while about Ben-Gurion's part in the creation of Israel, and after we were finished, I got into a really interesting conversation with one of our tour agents who was on the trip with us about Israel. She was born in Holland, but she moved to Israel to live in a kibbutz even though she isn't Jewish, and through a period of years, became fluent in Arabic, married an Arab and converted to Islam. She was very interesting because she said that he had a really hard time being at the grave of the man she considered to be the culprit for the destruction of her adopted country. Her husband, who was with her, agreed.

Anyway, after we left the crater, we went to tour a kibbutz before we went to a different kibbutz to spend the night. This first kibbutz is much more commercial than kibbutz's traditionally are, but our guide explained why later. She came onto the bus in one of the most immodest outfits I've seen in Israel-- it was really rather shocking after becoming so accustomed to people being more modest than I in my daily clothing. It was quickly apparent that the reason for this kibbutz is the culture of Judaism and not the religion. She rode on the bus with us as we toured their farms and housing areas. They grow dates and things like corn and yams, but according to her, the ground has more salt than wanted so their crop output is much less than it should be. About 20 or 30 years ago, they added a dairy aspect to their kibbutz, which was a big deal because it is not easy to have cows in the desert for milking purposes. But they did it, after much persuasion of the Ministry of Commerce, and now their industry is thriving.

Our tour guide was fluent in English and Hebrew, as her parents had emigrated to the kibbutz from the U.S. before she was born. She discussed life on a kibbutz in length, and let me tell you, the idea of never having to pay bills or buy food or clothing or anything is mighty appealing when you are just starting life on your own. We discussed the upsides and downsides of this system in length and she explained that the system works mostly because they're able to pick the people who live at the kibbutz, so they can almost assure that the person isn't simply going to leach from the system. People can volunteer at a kibbutz for up to three months with everything paid for them. Just saying.

We had a delicious dinner there and then traveled to another kibbutz twenty minutes up the road which had the ability to house us. The room was spartan and comfortable, but we got there too early to go to bed but too late to really do anything (as it was dark everywhere). After unsuccessfully trying to play a game of soccer with the kibbutz kids (they were reluctant to allow girls in their game) and talking to people about random things for almost an hour, I went to bed.

We had an eight hour drive across the Sinai in the morning and an evening in our hotel in Cairo.

Coming Next: the Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx, Memphis and something-or-other-else which I have to look up.

The tale of the Western wall and the Garden Tomb

2009-09-12T07:52:00.000-07:00

Hey, I'm back after a while of not blogging. Why? Basically because I'm phenomenally lazy and I have this strange idea that if I THINK about blogging, I've done it. Or something of the sort. Anyway, for those who read this incredible blog, be excited... you're about to hear about my ventures into two of the most religiously revered places in the world not to mention the story of a harrowing shooting and the hill of the scull--Golgotha.

But first, let me keep good on my word to speak quickly of the burial place of Samuel the Prophet. It is on this hill top of the freeway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the valley Paul was taken through when he was captured by the Romans and carted away. From the road it looks like an ancient, limestone crusaders castle (which it essentially is) with a large steeple which seems like it may now be used as a minaret. We parked and walked up a boardwalk which rises over some ancient excavations of something we never found out what, then into the ancient church. It has a fascinating history.

Since all three major religions in the area revere Samuel as a prophet, each of them has or has had a presence in the building. As I alluded before, it was originally built by the crusaders--in fact, it was on that hill or a hill near there that Richard the Lionhearted on the last crusade stood as he looked out over Jerusalem. The Muslim forces arrayed against him were too great, and, even though he could see the city he dreamed of conquering from the hill top there, he had to turn back and return to England. This is, by the way, the same Richard the Lionhearted that is king during the time of the legendary Robin Hood.

But getting back to the point. Since the crusaders were beaten by Saladin the Magnificent, the church was taken over and turned into a mosque of sorts with a cenotaph for Samuel on the top floor (a cenotaph is a thing which is created to represent a person though they may not actually be buried in or under the thing). The inside of the church is old and in disrepair--I don't think anyone has bothered to repaint it for hundreds of years, and, as a consequence, the entire place looks an awful lot like somewhere Indiana Jones would venture, deep in the heart of the middle east. Unfortunately for me, no 1930's era men on motorcycles flew in through the window, and I didn't find a giant key which was sure to unlock the treasure trove of Ali Baba and the Fourty Thieves.

While I was there, I didn't see the Muslim cenotaph, but I certainly saw the Jewish one in the basement. That was by far the coolest thing. We weren't quite sure if we could go down there, but with the guidence of our Professors, the women went down the right staircase and the men the left. The woman's room was dominated by half of the blue silk covered cenotaph, leaving only enough room to walk parallel to it to the tiny bookshelf at the far end. Women there were reading books in hebrew and rocking back and forth as is their habit. Someone told me it has something to do with the biblical injunction to worship the Lord with all your might, mind and STRENGTH, hense the rocking.

But I'm spending far too much time on this. We left pretty soon, done with our day long geography fieldtrip (basically meaning that we went to every good lookout spot with 15 miles of Jerusalem and had a lecture on the important places within view--including a view of the mountain from which David fought Golith as well as Bethlahem and the wall which leads into the West Bank, which we were technically in anyway. It's confusing), and went back to the center. I really enjoyed the Samuel's tomb thing mostly because it felt SO foreign and old, which is, of course, a funny thing to say when I'm living in one of the most historically significant and foreign places in the world....

Now, what you've been waiting for. The Western Wall. We left from the center on foot, passing through the valley where Joel says the last Judgement is going to take place, and walking along Saladin's wall on the East of Jerusalem--including past the Golden Gate where Jesus made his triumphal entry (it is now permanently sealed and there is a Muslim Graveyard in front of it. It is the only gate of Jerusalem we can't go through at all anymore.) From there, we joined the small groups of people heading up through Dung Gate to go to the Western Wall.

As a side note, Dung gate is called such for a reason. It is where they historically through out all the garbage of the city. As a reminder of this, the entire area around there still smells like it. It also opens right from the old city to the actual old city--the City of David. Unsurprisingly, it is where David built his Jerusalem. But the city of david will figure more later in the story.

Returning to the main narrative. From Dung Gate, we walked up to the large security entrance of the huge Western Wall plaza. They hardly glanced at me as I passed through--at first they checked our bags, but I think when they realized we were just the Mormons, they didn't bother anymore. As soon as we got inside, we were distracted by the group of soldiers and civilians dancing in circles with a guy with the Israeli flag running around in the middle. As he ran, they yelled in a continuous stream, and when he stopped, they would dance one direction, holding each others shoulders, and then turn and dance the other way. It wasn't long before we realized there was a women's circle right next to theirs, and we ran over there. They danced in circles like the men, but more quickly, and everyone was singing some patriotic song I'd never heard. An Israeli girl pulled me into the circle and we danced and twirled around.

I was anxious to actually walk over to the wall, so, taking my good friend Lindsay with me, we slipped through the crowded woman's section (the woman's section is one third the size of the mens, though the men's section was markedly more crowded) and finally got to where we were standing right in front of the wall, but still to far to touch it. Everyone around us was holding a holy book, reading and praying. Every once in a while, someone right up at the wall would put their faces to it and cup their hands around their face, then whisper something I, of course, could not comprehend. Sometimes someone would push forward with a folded slip of paper in their hands and a prayer written on it, then push it into a part of one of the cracks in the wall that was not completely packed with prayers. Lindsay and I were able to push forward enough eventually to touch the wall-- it is smooth and light with thousands of hands, faces and lips over the years. It was not long until the sun had set, and, since this was Friday, Shabbot had begun. An old women not taller than 4'5" walked up to Lindsay and I and said something in Hebrew, holding out a paper for us to take. I nodded, and she gave one to each of us, then walked away. It was a quarter sheet prayer in Hebrew of which I could only read the five letters they've taught us so far in Hebrew class. When we had our fill of standing at the wall and thinking of Herod, Solomon, the Jews and Jesus, we walked backwards as far as we could.

It is tradition there to never turn your back to the wall. To the Jews, though the spirit of God left the Holy of Holies when the temple was destroyed, it never left this wall. And as it is a sign of disrespect to show someone your back, everyone walks backward away from the wall. It does make for a good deal of tripping and running into people.

For maybe an hour, she and I stood at the fence that guards the Men's side and watched with dozens of other people as the men prayed, danced and sang. They are more entertaining to watch because they're more numerous and lively than the women, as well as because they have more tables to sit and pray at, and they partake in elaborate prayers and chants which involve several different movements. It was sort of like watching the water in a pool--in one corner, there would be whirlpool of people dancing, several feet away was another, towards the back the men waved back and forth as they prayed, and those closest to us were mostly sedantary except for when they would turn to face us, say something in Hebrew, and turn back to the wall. The ultra-orthodox wore their beautiful silk robes and fedoras or fur hats (unfortunately, I don't know their offical names) each hat representing a different "sect," if you will, of orthodoxy.

It wasn't long before it was time for us to walk back to the center, but as we began to leave, another dance party started up in the middle of the square away from the western wall. This one had both men and women in it, and they were louder and less organized than before. We danced with them--they're incredibly welcome towards gawking tourists--and finally, reluctantly, gathered outside the gate with the rest of our group.

That is when the news of the shootings in the city of David was broken to us. Just as we had gotten there that evening, a 20 year old Israeli had shot two Palastinians, reportedly 16 and 40 years old, in the leg. The shooter claims he did it in reponse to an assault by 6 Palastinians and that it was out of self-defense. The tension of the situation was compounded because it happened in a neighborhood, Silwan, which has been in the news recently because it recently evicted two Palastinian familes. There are many people who claim it was done because they were Palastinian and not for other reasons. As a consequence of this, and because the city of David is literally right down the street, there were police and soldiers literally everywhere. The center, always diligent as they are, got two busses and parked them just up a different street in the Jewish quarter which we were to take back to the center. One boy didn't make it. Don't worry though, he had been in the bathroom when we left, and seeing we were all gone, he took a taxi back to the center. But we were sitting in the busses for a while with the professors and security trying to find out where he was.

Something remarkable I must mention about the center is the level of security they provide. It is phenomenal. I don't know if the guards are full time or not, but I've counted at least 5 seperate people whose job it is to keep the 90 odd of us safe. When we go on large fieldtrips, there'll be one of them walking along in the middle or the back of our group, and two in a car that follows us as we go. It is very comforting to know that they are there. But this doesn't mean our freedom is impeded. We can go to Tel Aviv if we want to pay the money, and we can go into the city almost any time as long as we have two other people with us.

But that is beside the point. I sure do digress a lot.

That was last night. Today was something totally different, and utterly incredible. For the first time I went to the Garden tomb. No one knows for sure if this is the place that Christ was resurrected--many people will tell you it was at the Church of the Holy Seplechre-- but it certainly seems like the place and President Lee even said he felt the spirit every strongly there.

Alright, i have to go to a fireside, so I'll post this and write more about this later...

Pilgrims, Pools and Priests

2009-09-07T04:23:00.000-07:00

Before I launch into my latest rendition of our travels, I'd like to complain about the fact that Blogspot.com here in israel is in Hebrew. Now I completely understand why it'd be that way, yet, there is the inevitable problem of me being unable to change the language to English because I can't read the Hebrew which would tell me where to go to make the change. But that is neither here nor there.

What is here is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. That is one heck of a building. I know you've heard about it before, everyone has, but I want you to forget everything everyone has ever told you about it so I can tell you all over again.

Basically, this is the main battle ground of the different sects of Christianity. If you thought that the four corner churches in in Palmyra was bad, you should come here. We entered the building through the roof, strangely enough. Up a short flight of stairs in the christain quarter, we walked by several extraodinarially trashfilled allyways to a little courtyard which led into the heart of the first of the six churches which occupies this single building--the Coptic church. Theirs is I think the smallest of the lot. The chapel was dark and ancient, with icons of Jesus in gold on the wall of the narrow room and two coptic priests in the back. Coptic basically means that this is Egyptian Christianity. It's a pretty small religion, so it is impressive that they've got a piece of the building at all. When you go down a flight of stairs, you reach the courtyard outside the building which has the famous ladder at the window. If you haven't heard, this ladder was put here forever ago and never taken down because no one actually knows which church owns that part of the building and therefore who has the right to remove the ladder. So it just sits there as the perfect example of their odd quarrels over territory in the building. previous to the Emporer of the Ottomans saying that there would be no more changes to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the priests of the different faiths were constantly fighting, to the point of punching each other in the nose over who got to be where.

Anyway, knowing this, when you enter the building, it is unsurprising to see that the upstairs area looks exactly like something out of byzantium, down at the front like something you'd see pre-gothic europe and in the middle it smacks of gold. It really is like six different buildings slammed into one. Off to the side sort of in the middlish area is the tomb where the Emporess Justina decided officially that Christ was ressurrected. When we were there yesterday, it was positively brimming with Pilgrims. But that is unsurprising as it was Sunday afterall. The tomb has been so decorated over the years that it looks absolutely nothing like the original. That doesn't stop people from making pilgrimage there though. They also have the place where Christ was Cruxified, but I didn't see it.

Still taken aback by that incredible structure, we had a very Israeli lunch (courtesy of the Jerusalem Center) next to the coptic church and then headed to the Citadel across the street. I won't bore you with the details of it--there are a lot of details, but it is an incredible fortress which has pieces of literally every period of Jerusalem exposed. We toured the entire thing, going through exhibits which proceeded chronologically from the Canaanite period to 1948 and then, after some deliberation, went to the mall in West (or Jewish) Jerusalem for a lunch.

But now we're back to an exciting part. The tour of the ramparts of the City. this may sound like I went around looking at walls, but in reality, we were able to walk on TOP of the walls of the old city, looking down onto the roofs of the Christian and Muslim quarters. The first, most noticable thing about the roofs is the black water barrels that are everywhere. For some reason, especially in palastinian neighborhoods, a family's water is stored in a smallish black hold on the roof, presumibaly carried up there by the plumbing. They are everywhere, sort of like a forest of blackened stumps. These roofs are rarely flat--typically they undulate strangely because below the ceiling may be vaulted or domed. I occasionally worry that a roof I'm standing on may be dipping in the center due to a lack of support. Inshallah, i'll never fall through one but with my luck...

Now that you have the structure of the roofs in mind, add strings of colorful laundry hanging everywhere, blankets hung to hide a backyard from the wandering eye, broken glass and rusty barbed wire, people in religious and western attire wandering below and the occasional impish teenager loaping around on a building top, and you've got old Jerusalem from above. The ramparts we walked have been there since the 1500's, and will probably stand until the end of time with the way their built. We were convinced at one point that the little area which jutted out of the side and the hole in the corner was for pouring boiling oil on your enemies below.

Something especially peculiar about Jerusalem and probably the middle east in general, is the children. They're abnormally outgoing.
"Hello, how are you?" they'll say as they walk by with their hands out so you can shake it.
As you reply, they've already walked past to the next person while the child behind them has his hand out to shake yours. Or they'll be standing on their porch and call out, asking for your name, then after you've called back and forth for a minute, blow you a kiss as you walk by. These kids are maybe only 5 or 6 years old. It surprises me especially that they have so much free reign in a city which could be dangerous for little children, as all cities are.

The ramparts that you can walk on end at the temple mount, or, as the Muslims call it, the Al-Haram Al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary). That is pretty much the walled area around the Dome of the rock and the Al-Aqsa mosque where they worship. We walked as far as we could, until some of the guards started yelling at us, then we got off at Lions Gate (the gate that Jesus likely used the most often because it was on the path to where he lived with Mary and Martha) and, on our way to the Wailing wall, saw the pool of Bethesda to our right and the traditional birthplace of mary. Only in Jerusalem would you accidentally come upon a site as holy and important as the pool of bethesda.

Though these pools were public in the past, now the entrance fee has risen to 7 sheckles, or about a dollar and a half. Not bad at all. The pools are now empty walls that stretch 50 feet down into a hole with the remnants of columns at the bottom. I probably would have gotten much more from it had I been with a guide. There was one part which was particularly interesting--at the edge of one pool that had been built in the 3rd centry bc, there was a dark hole in the ground and a sign which said "Dangerous Descent" in about 5 languages. Walking very carefully, we descended into the moist darkness on slippery, steep steps until we reached the pit of a medieval cistern which, amazingly still had water (and smell) in it. We came back up quickly--anything metal was pretty rusty and it creaked as you walked, but I at least felt like I knew what it was like to be a rat at the time of the crusaders. On our way out, I happened to ask my companions if they wanted to see the inside of the church of St. Anne with me and we went in.

First of all, let me say that this is one of my most favorite churches I've ever seen. It is the utter opposite of ornate. There was only maybe one or two decorations in the entire Cathedral, including the simple gold cross at the front. But the walls were made out of a beautiful light gray stone which vaulted up several stories until it met in several pointed arches in the cross shaped chapel. The windows were only decoratively cut holes in the rocks, but with the added electical, and tastefully hid, lighting of the building, the church seemed surpringly bright and open. Better than that was the acoustics. If you think you've ever been somewhere with wonderful acoustics, come to the Church of St. Anne's and see what the real deal is. We sat down on a bench towards the front and the tiny movement of the chairleg rippled through the entire church. They were just beginning a mass and upon invitation from the Priest, we joined the people sitting up in the apse. The mass seemed much longer than I am used to (I've been to several masses because my father's family is catholic) but that is probably only because I didn't understand a word of it. Perhaps I should have taken German instead of Spanish in high school... when they sang, everything in the entire building sang, and somehow the way the voices echoed, there seemed to be an extra note which floated above the others in a perfect harmony.

If you ever choose to go to a mass, be prepared to stand on a floor which will likely be stone for some period of time. They stand a lot. It especially seems like a lot when you've spent the entire day on your feet. I was certain that someone had added spikes to the floor which were going right through my shoes, and then maliciously put several hundred pound weights on my shoulders to push me down into them. I was extremely thankful for those brief interludes that we sat.

After the mass, we went down into the cave like area that Mary is said to have been born. There we ran into the Father of the church.
"Where are you from?" He asked.
"California" (by lucky chance, we were all Californians), I answered.
"We're students, we're studying at the Mormon University," a girl who was with me added.
The Father and a priest next to him immediately took a step back.
"God bless you," he said, clapping his hands together.
When he left, it seemed he had wings to his feet. We had a rather good time chiding the girl for her remark, though really, we hoped that seeing how quitely and respectfully we behaved at the mass, the father might change his opinion of our church.

By the time we left, the evening was falling into night. Carefully following a Muslim women who seemed to know how to navigate going through Lions gate (which is so narrow, only two cars going either direction can get through, with both of them pulling their side mirrors in so they do not stick out of the car), we headed back up to the center.

That evening, I ushered a concert we held at the Jerusalem Center. I could hardly stay awake for most of it, though it was beautiful American Gospel music, amusingly being sung by very religious Jews.

Today was another great day which I am too worn out to write on at the moment. But look forward to my post on the geography field trip. Basically, we went to every good look out point in the entirety of Jerusalem and surrounding area, and talked about the numerous things that happened within sight. The best part was seeing Samuel's tomb and the Jews who worshipped there. But to here the rest of the story, stay tuned.

:)

The Old City for the first time

2009-09-05T10:35:00.000-07:00

Leaving for the old city from the Jerusalem Center was so exciting that I practically leapt up and down with it. Actually, I probably did leap up and down, which would explain why people looked at me strangely...

Just exiting the gate and walking down the street was fascinating becuase the houses are so different here, they really aren't houses at all, mostly apartments in really old looking, very middle eastern buildings with laundry hanging out the window, dogs barking and old grocery stores smattered around. Every building in the entirety of Jerusalem is faced with rough cut Jerusalem limestone. It is a very beautiful, yellow creamy color which gives the city a look as though it had not changed for thousands of years.

Lest you be confused, the word village is used here in the middle east to basically mean a neighborhood that has a name. So don't picture a tiny basin with little shacks seated next to each other like the villages in Africa--these villages are made up of tall but frequently old apartment complexes just like the ones you see in those video games placed in the Middle East.

After exiting the valley, we walked through the Kebron valley where Joel said the final judgement would occur (it is really shallow, more like a small dip between hills than a real valley) and then up into the old city, walking by the wall of Soluman the Magnificent which he built after he reconquered the old city from the crusadors. From there we were in part of East Jerusalem which is the Arab part of town, and they showed us where the money changers are and who we should go to for what. We met several people who have sent their kids to byu or have been there to sell their things to Mormons in salt lake (like olivewood carvings of certain things) then we actually went into the city via Damascus gate.

I was astounded by how much the old city looks exactly how it should. Layers was my first thought. Layers of people, of history and of haphazardly placed buildings from almost every nameable period of time. It was so much fun to walk through the old, windy streets and see all of the merchants selling Muslim, Jewish and Christian merchandise as well as some really delicious looking desserts and completely random stuff. While walking, we passed some of the 14 stations of the cross and went up to the roof of an Austrian Hostel so that we could see a really incredible view of the old city.

Jerusalem is something they call a tel, or a city which has been destroyed and built up again so many times that it creates a man made hill where the more you dig, the older the city is beneath. There are some things which stick up from generations that have long been buried otherwise, things like the Dome of the Rock and the Church of the Holy Sepluchre. Because of this building up, the tiny valley that the old city is built in has become shallower over time, and the things on the tops of the taller hills tend to be older than the things at the bottom of the valley because it is harder to build on top of buildings on hills instead of valleys. We wandered around for a while in the old city, some streets are covered on the top completely by tin or blankets to keep the sun off, so it is like walking thorugh a dark, highly populated alley. Other places are more open and less crowded.

There are some parts of the streets which they've found from the time of the Romans and raised up so that we can walk on them, basically meaning that the stones we walk on are the ones Christ would have walked on. We didn't eat or drink anything while in the Muslim quarter because of Ramadan, but the moment we got into the Christian quarter, we had some really good Middle Eastern bread with zatar or thyme (dried) that you sprinkle in the middle. I bought some pomegranate juice which the guy made right in front of me by squishing five pomegranates with this really nifty machine. It was awesome food... we then went to western jerusalem which is a lot more like europe than the middle east because it is more modern and primarily jewish. I was amazed how different it is that close to the old city.

We thankfully took a bus back (we'd walked 7 miles) and spent the rest of the day doing MORE orientation, if that is possible. After our classes today (which were Old Testament and Ancient Near East) I wanted to go into the old city with everyone else, but unfortunately, I had to go to the airport in Tel Aviv to see if i could find my large knee brace which I had checked onto the plane on Thursday and never picked up. They didn't have it so I'll just have to be extra careful that I don't redislocate my knee. I'm still wearing the small brace all the time though, don't worry.

Today was fast Sabbath and I went to Gethsemane in the morning with a few people from the center. We walked through the Orson Hyde park which the Church actually built on the mount of Olives (the government of Jerusalem wanted to preserve it as a green zone so the Church offered to design the park) but unfortunately, now the park is a hang out for druggies, forcing us to go there in groups of 5 with at least one guy. It was a beautiful park though, full of olive trees and terraces. From there, we walked down an extremely narrow street with stone walls on either side and on which the local people seem to love to drive down or up extremely quickly. Needless to say, it was a little precarious, but all worth it when we saw the arch in a wall which led to the garden. Unfortunately, the actual olive trees, each about 3000 years old, where they think that Christ knelt are off limits. We can walk around their peremater, and that is certainly enough to feel the incredible spirit of the place. I was amazed again by the love of Christ for me that he would do something like that. The church they've built over the location is quite stunning, it had been destroyed three times, the latest rendition is built after the model of the old Byzantine church which had stood there and it is controlled by Italian speaking, Fransiscan monks. After Gethsemane, on our way back through the Orson Hyde garden, we ran into a minister from a church in DC and his camera crew which was getting ready to film him doing a bible study about the final judgement day. We stayed to watch him discuss Jesus' teachings at the temple, and to see a man who had been born in Jerusalem but had converted to their church, give the geographical background for the occurances there. That was great fun, and church at the center was wonderful as well. I was greatly pleased with the members of the branch. As it was fast and testimony meeting, I bore mine quite happily. The rest of the day was fine, we returned to the Orson Hyde garden this evening in a large group, and now I'm sitting in the computer room staring at the screen while everyone else plays signs in another room. Maybe this is my hint to get up and go play...

Stay tuned.

Plane trip

2009-09-05T09:55:00.000-07:00

Hey, so the first real blog of the trip. This is mostly about the plane ride, which was an adventure all of its own. Read and enjoy.

Amelia and I left Provo at four in the morning to get there, and I was panicking about getting there on time. Thankfully, we made it before the check lines even opened, so I actually spent a while just standing there waiting for them to check our baggage. I was so tired, I had gotten up at 2:45--nothing at all seemed like it was actually happening. The plane to Denver was tiny and I wasn't able to sit next to the window so I just tried to sleep. It was a short ride, a little over an hour, as we flew, the sun rose over the mountains but it was shadowed by some clouds in the East. I've still never driven further east than Utah, so it was wonderful to see this part of the country even if only from the aisle seat of a tiny airplane.... When we landed haze completely hid the sky, so all I could see the tundra that stretches out all 360 degrees around the airport.

Denver turned out to be very interesting.
The moment we got off the plane, we all had to rush down about 30 gates to get to our next flight which was bording in ten minutes. But, for some reason unbeknownst to me, my ticket was for a flight that left 2 hours later than everyone elses.That meant that I had to walk almost a mile around the airport (it seemed like that, the Denver airport is monsterously huge) and then find somewhere to sit at my terminal and try not to die from exhaustion. I thought I was going alone, but God is good, and when I opened my eyes after napping for a moment, another girl from the program was sitting in front of me. It seemed she had a halo shining around her bright red hair. Her situation was identical to mine. It turned out that we were the only Jerusalem Center people on the plane, but that fortunately, we would be on the same plane as everyone else in DC. In affect, instead of waiting for two hours longer in Washington, we waited in Denver.

It turns out that this God sent redhead, Hilary, spent last summer in India. The way she talked about it, it was like she left half of her heart there. Just hearing about a really foreign country and someone who was obviously in love with it made me ridiculously impatient to get here. To my dismay, her ticket placed her across the aisle from me on the flight. My seat mate was a girl from San Diego on her way to a study abroad program in France for a semester. She seemed pretty surprised that my study abroad program was to the Holy land, because, who does that really?

Washington was exactly like it should have been. Forested, pleasant, and what I could see from the plane, full of those nice white houses and picket fences. iIwas eager to see the actual city but I didn't get a glimpse of it. There were several very large quarries which were dug straight down from the middle of the golf park like meadows-- the rock was stratified, reds, whites and yellows. It sort of reminded me of Jupiter. Who would have thought DC would be like Jupiter.

But anyway, we'd flown United on both of the first flights, and the next two were Austrian airlines which, except for their choice in upholstry (forest green seats with bright red, yellow and white head rests), was a rather nice airline: they gave use two meals on our way to Vienna, several beverages, not to mention the Flight attendants were several notches less choleric than the ones from the flights before. I had planned to spend this entire flight sleeping, hopefully with the aid of some benevolant student's tylonal pm, but the alternate was better. I was the only person in our group not seated next to a student, instead I sat next to an extremely pleasant, 30 somethings, woman from Tel Aviv who was going on the same flight we were from Vienna to her city. She had been living in Washington for the past year because her husband was working on his Post doc in Georgetown. We spent the entire flight, except for an hour and a half reprive, discussing the situation in Israel, what it is really like to serve in the military, my dad's job (she ADORES NCIS, particularly Ziva David), and various random psychologies. She was fascinating.

Apparently, if you are an Israeli, you are essentially shut of from the ENTIRE Middle Eastern world. She said it was unwise to go to any country in the Middle East... I asked her specifically if an Israeli could go to Egypt, and she gave me the example of a tiny resort town on the borders of the Red Sea which was the only exception to this general rule of no entrance. It astounded me, like living in california and never being allowed to go to any of the rest of North America, not even to Nevada.

Something else she said that was fascinating to me was how what she really loves about the US. It wasn't the prosperity--Tel Aviv is a very affluent city-- but the way that all of these extremely different cultures are able to live amicably with each other. She had never experienced that in depth before. DC is particularly diverse, and while it may have a high crime rate, the hate that she had grown up just isn't there.

Another thing she couldn't get over about the US is the affect of not being at war. We have the luxury to invest in universities, to spend a lot of our inventing energy on things which aren't military related, and to go for a walk in the park and say hi and smile to the person walking by you. That was something she mentioned a lot--that we say hi to everyone we pass by. Aparently, they don't do that really in Tel Aviv.

One of the hardest things was not letting on to my religion. I wasn't sure if the agreement not to preach in Israel could be extended to talking to an Israeli on the way to Israel.

She seemed a lot younger than she was, and we felt completely comfortable with each other. If the people of Israel are like her, I am going to make of lot of friends. In Vienna, we hung out for a while, watching a Ukranian, deaf men's group across from us and talking more about languages. After going through a second set of security, we sat in the waiting room before getting onto the final plane. A handsome Israeli started talking to us quite forthrightly there... pretty soon he was asking us about the exact theology of Mormonism. I had no clue what I could or couldn't tell him, but someone had suggested that we stay on the safe side, so we told him about the agreement with Israel and said that we couldn't say anything else. I really didn't want to be responsible for the down fall of the Jerusalem Center or anything. Thinking about it now, I realize that we probably could have talked to him about it since we were in Vienna Austria, but I can't change it now. He was not very happy with this arrangment--actually, I think he was rather mad. But it wasn't at us, he just kept going on and on about the Israeli government and how ridiculous they were. He is from Jerusalem and he considers himself to be a citizen of Jerusalem instead of a citizen of Israel, even though he is Jewish. It was a very odd experience, but worthwhile. It is always interesting to meet new people.

It already began to feel like the Middle East on the plane. The people who got on with us were obviously very Jewish, Muslim or tourists. I fell asleep several times on that plane flight, mostly because where I was sitting I couldn't see out the window, even though I would have loved to watch us fly over Greece and Turkey. By this time, we had been traveling for 18 hours straight. Getting off the plane, it wasn't nearly as hot as I had expected it to be. My first thought was that though Tel Aviv had a lot less windows in its skyscrapers than the ones in the US, it was still a lot like LA. This idea changed pretty rapidly when I realized that we really were somewhere else. every other person was dressed in really religious or militaristic clothing. If they weren't one of those two, they were more modern Middle Eastern peoples or tourists. The airport is beautiful by the way, if you get the chance, you should look at some pictures of it. It has an incredible waterfall which descends in a column from a cut out circle at the base of an inverted dome in the ceiling. Like everything else, it is limestone.

Customs was easier than I expected.
"Where are you going to school"
"BYU, but I'm going to the Jerusalem Center"
"Do you have any proof of your acceptance?"
"No, but I do have this name tag!" (Smiles hopefully)
I don't know if i was just imagining it, but I think the lady may have just been irritated by my excitment and she shooed me on. In my eternal idiocy, I left the larger of my two knee braces at the airport. They're working on getting it here.

The drive from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem really was like going back in time. From utter modernity, we went to the hills where in 1948 the convoys trying to get to the beseiged Jerusalem were attacked by the neighboring Arab villiages (I was particularly excited to see this, I had read quite a bit about it in "O Jerusalem"), to some abandoned Arab villages, to seeing the edge of western, Jewish jerusalem on the top of the far hill and finally, to driving along the South of the city and gazing in utter awe at the hugeness and uniqueness of it. The dome of the rock is the most immediately obvious site, then there are the dozens of other domes, steeples, minerets and hotels that carve the skyline. The Jerusalem Center is just as beautiful in real life as it is in the pictures, and it is extremely comfortable and well kept. They say, and they're right, that it is temple quality.

I recognized some of the plants since this is a mediterranian area like California, but there are some birds and bushes which are completely foreign to me. I'm excited to learn to recognize them. My favorite part of yesterday though was the evening after I got to my beautiful, open, and for now, completely clean room (you would not believe how nice our accomidations are. I love them, and our porches are HUGE! with an incredible view, my bed doesn't squeak and the showers are heaven.) and (to continue this overly long sentence) standing on the porch as the sun set over western Jerusalem and hearing the calls to prayer. The loudest was coming from the loud speakers of a palestinian village on the hill right next to us (the mount of olives fyi) but when it would pause, you could here the higher or lower tones of the other Minerets across the city. It was as though the city itself was singing. The air was thick with it.

Because it is ramadan, the city is full of lights--they light up their houses in celebration just like we do for Christmas. After the sun set, some fire works (which sounded like bombs, and sort of looked like them) went off and the partying began. I'm really lucky to be here now, Ramadan is a very unique time of year. After dinner (all middle eastern food in our cafeteria, really good food) we had a tour of the center and some orientation. I feel like I've been oriented to something or other a hundred times in the past week. Finally getting into bed was like heaven. I woke to the call for prayer at 4:30 and got up at 4:45 to go do my homework, which we already have a lot of. I hope to do most of my homework at the beginning of each week so I can have more time to spend in the city.

Next coming... the first trip into the Old City.

Introduction--unlike book introductions, do not skip.

2009-08-23T17:16:00.001-07:00

Actually, it wouldn't destroy the world were you to skip this introduction. But don't anyway. I am going to lay out my plan of attack for this next semester.

hang on tight.

Israel for 3 1/2 months. One week in Egypt. Four days in Jordan. Five classes and a heck of a lot of field trips. On top of all this, I'm going to write in my blog at least once a week. If I don't, I give anyone but Kimberly Heuer full right to flog me thirty times. Unfortunately, because of bandwidth problems, I can't post pictures very often i'll find a way to do it some how so y'all can see what I'm talking about.

Chk back and prepare to be floored by my eloquent, intelligent and all around extraordinary blog.

So...

You ready for this?