Cramming For More Than Just Tests...

Hello America!

I have some big news, but I'll get to that later. 

This week has been another one for the record books. Actually, I spent a lot of the time cramming for midterms, at least pretending to. The course material isn't super difficult, but the draw of the city makes studying for tests super difficult. I'll be done with most of my classes by the first week of March, and then we'll stay at a resort in Galilee for ten days and fly to Turkey.

Our Sunday escapade began with inhaling some sugary cereal. I only mention the cereal because it's a really big part of my morning as of lately. Some people call them Heaven Pillows. The cereal is like a pillow full of Nutella and when you pour milk over it they kind of goosh/explode/ooze in your mouth. What's not to love about that? Rumor has it you can purchase it in the states and it's called Crave, or Krave. So appropriate and so delicious. Sometimes I'll even wake up ten minutes early or neglect blow drying my hair so I can make it to the Oasis before they're all gone. Breakfast starts at seven and ends at eight; one time this last week I made it there at seven am and I had three bowls. 

A few entries ago I talked about visiting the Western Wall with my class to observe the celebration of the beginning of the Sabbath. We decided to visit it Sunday and see what we could find. After having sat through a few more Israel/Judaism lectures from Ophir, I definitely was more aware of what was going on. This time I noticed some of the women were wearing wigs; hair should only be seen by a women's husband and God, so sometimes they'll just shave it off to bypass all the trouble of covering it. That being said, not everyone practices/believes the same thing. Also, I noticed that when someone leaves the wall they back away so as to not turn their back on the wall. As expected, there were a lot less people praying at the wall on a Sunday morning, so we were able to locate the table with paper and write down prayers to roll up and stick in the wall.

I actually convinced my paper to stray in the wall this time.

Once we made it into the Old City we ambled around the streets and somehow ended up playing soccer for the third time. I am going to give Messi a run for his money if I keep this up. Jenessa, Sara, and I took off from the old city and crossed over into West Jerusalem to find the YMCA. We had all signed up to play the carillon bells. Ya, I know, I had no clue what they were either before we actually got there. Here are some pictures to explain.

So here we are with the Squires, a service couple at the Jerusalem Center and also my personal next door neighbors. They were helping us figure out what was going on; two people are needed to play anything with more than two notes at a time because most people only have two hands. I was playing the top hand of the Minuet by J.S. Bach. You use all of your strength and yank a handle down for each note. The spacing of the keys makes it a really flustered motion to find everything, so I missed a G while we were playing. Gee, I wish I'd found that G. Only 300 thousand people heard, or rather didn't hear, my mistake. Depression for weeks.

Here we are practicing on the practice carillon piano thing. This one isn't connected to the ginormous bells in the YMCA tower.

After we had internalized that it's fun to stay at the YMCA, we headed back to the Center to work on homework and laundry because we were going out on the town later that night. Everyone met at Joppa Gate and we went to a little pasta restaurant off the road in West Jerusalem. I had goat cheese pizza and pesto spaghetti. It was about as good as it sounds, so I think I'll leave that open for interpretation. I think we overwhelmed the owner because there were about twenty of us in there and then the power went out. Oh, here's something depressing that we were able to confirm, there is absolutely no Mexican food in any of Israel. We met a Jew who immigrated from America and he confirmed my suspicions. 

After dinner we stopped to get gelato at Aldo's. They have a dark chocolate gelato that is really good on a coconut dipped cones. I just really, really like chocolate.

In accordance with the last few weeks we went on a field trip on Monday. This time we went to the Shephelah, the lower hills. The biggest things/stories we talked about were the story of David and Goliath, the Ark of the Covenant being stolen by the Philistines, and Samson. 

Tye, me, Kara. Behind us is the Elah Valley where David would have met Goliath. Also where David would have killed Goliath. With a slingshot. Sadly the rocks we used are rocks brought up for dorky tourist such as ourselves.

We went down into a dove cove and posed as doves. Not our best reenactment.

Hunter, me, Sawyer. Sawyer was the one who led Sunday meditation a few weeks back. Suddenly your vision of sunrise yoga became a whole lot cooler. He's the greatest.

We took a break from cramming for midterms on Wednesday and celebrated Arab culture night. We mimicked the feast they have after Ramadan, and people were encouraged to dress up. Two of the local imam's came to present the call to prayer for us. An imam is the prayer leader and will sing the call to prayer over a loudspeaker five times each day. Technically it's not singing, but they stress and hold the Arabic words so it has a musical quality to it. They have the entire Quran memorized, and one of the imam's said it took him five years. Super impressive. As I've said in earlier entries, I really love hearing the call to prayer; it reminds me of how cultural of a place I'm living in and how there is still so much about people in general that I have yet to learn.

 I'm not the ONLY one looking, but pretty much.

 Stuffed carrots? Also I didn't know that I was eating lamb until the next day. I thought it was chicken.

 After dinner we had some dance instructors teach us a few Arabic dances. It went really well for thirty minutes and then everyone kind of threw in the towel and danced like Americans. I think the instructor's were a little bit amused. We probably looked so bizarre to them.

 I'm really not sure why I ended up holding J's hand. It makes no sense.

  Here we are with Jen, our fellow head scarf wearer. J and I went to town on the eyeliner as you can tell from previous pictures.

And now to explain my title and first sentence. I'm running a half marathon. IN THREE WEEKS!!! It's a little nauseating to think about. I googled how to train for a half marathon in three weeks and I found this, "Training for a half-marathon virtually from scratch in a month is obviously not a wise decision." Well obviously. But I saw the chance to run a half marathon and what better place than the Holy City. The event takes place on March 1st and it goes throughout Jerusalem. I haven't been running since the summer, but mob mentality will convince you to do a lot of stupid things. I started my training program Friday night running the Center stairs up and down. Who am I kidding? There is no rhyme or reason, let alone a program, to what I'm doing. This also means that I'm swearing off pita bread until this is all over and done with. I think I've lost all reasoning here. 

I went and visited the Garden of Gethsemane today after our church services; I didn't bring a camera with me because I'll be back multiple times. However, I did want to share my thoughts on the trip. We walked through Orson Hyde Gardens in order to access the entry to Gethsemane. Orson Hyde Gardens is a project by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS); anyway, the LDS church decided if the members wanted to raise the money, 1 million, the Israeli government would whole-heartedly support the development of the area. A lot of people hold great significance to the area because it's on the Mount of Olives, but it had started to become trashy and rundown communities were on their way to eventually consuming the mountain. So the arrangement worked out well for everyone; the gardens are beautiful and well-preserved and everyone can enjoy them. When we entered the Garden of Gethsemane I was surprised at the discrepancy between what I was seeing and what my brain thought I'd see. There is a small gated-off area with trees that date back to 500 AD, and behind this there is an All-Nation's church. The area is beautiful, well groomed, and peaceful. I always had pictured Gethsemane to be a forest. I'll take pictures next time in order to share what I mean. 

In Gethsemane I felt simple peace. I have found this to be a reoccurring theme as I have traveled here: the sites and locations don't touch me or inspire me unless I am focusing on the events or the knowledge I have. We can all experience our own visit to the Garden of Gethsemane by taking five minutes of every day to sit in solitude and remember the Savior, remember the worth of his life. It doesn't take traveling eight thousand miles to feel what I felt today, but I have learned more adequately how to make sure I have the Savior's love in my life each day. After all, isn't that one of our driving forces each day? To become more as the Savior? If you ask the gardener really nicely sometimes he'll give you a piece of one of the branches he's just trimmed off the tree.

And that about sums up my week! I hope all is going well. Oh, I found out how to say I want a kiss in Arabic: "biddi bowsee." We just study oral Arabic so I don't actually know how to spell it, but I figure Sara will get some use out of that one. Ice cream is boozeah.

Lindee