This week, we got lucky enough to have two field trips! Our first was on Sunday, and honestly, it was the one place that I wished that I could have avoided my whole trip here. Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum. I'm not going to talk about it here, frankly because I don't want to, except to talk about something that our Judaism teacher explained to us. After WWII, no one really talked about the Holocaust. Survivors in Israel didn't let people know that they were survivors, unless they had taken part in one of the uprisings that happened. The general sentiment in Israel was that the people in Holocaust should have fought back, rebelled against the Nazi's, and that the people who did fight back were heroes. Everyone else who survived went along with what was happening. They didn't fight back, and because of this, the sentiment was almost like they had brought what happened upon themselves. It took a long time for that idea to change. The change came when the Israeli wrestling team was kidnapped from the Olympic village in the 70's and killed. The wrestlers didn't fight back the whole time that they were in captivity, and these were wrestlers, athletes who were trained to fight. Understanding this background, it's easy to see places in Yad Vashem where the idea of glorifying those who fought back was very much in existence.
Monday was our free day because of the field trip the previous day. I went to the Dome of the Rock again, finally got the chance to go through all of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and then the Rockefeller museum. The museum had a lot of interesting things it it, from a statue of Ramses III, to neolithic toddler bones, to wood work taken from the al-Aqsa mosque after it was renovated.
Two random notes. First, back in Turkey, every public restroom we went to had at least one, generally several squat toilets in addition to Western sit on the seat toilets. Several times we would be waiting in line at rest stops for the Western toilets, and the Turkish women would wonder why we weren't just going to the squat toilets. I hadn't seen a squat toilet here in Turkey, until Monday, when I found one in the Rockefeller museum. My second random thought is for anyone who has seen the TV show Doctor Who. It's a really, really, bad idea to come to a town that has a lot of statues, and while you're looking at a random statue think to yourself "Hey, that looks like it could be a Weeping Angel." Because when you see it once, you see it everywhere. And then you don't sleep at night.
This week in Jerusalem is the Festival of Lights. We're not allowed to go into the old city or East Jerusalem after dark, period, but we begged the right people who begged the right people and we got permission for a one time trip to see the festival. It was for sure one of my favorite things that we've done. The city was just a party. Several people I was with compared it to Disneyland at night. They had three different paths, all starting at Joffa gate. The first went through the Jewish and Armenian quarters to end at the Kotel. The second went through Christian quarter and ended in the Jewish Quarter. The third went down through the Muslim quarter through Damascus gate and then back up to Joffa gate. My favorite lights displays were a pyramid made out of one liter Coke bottles that were filled with water and these flying white manatee things outside of the Joffa gate.
This is where we get to the part of the story that explains the title of the blog. The scene was Monday night in my apartment. My one roommate Maddie was already asleep, and another, Reba, was in bed reading her scriptures. I was getting ready for bed. I walked into the bathroom, and saw something move. It was big, and it was white. My first thought was "Oh crap, it's a big white spider." After a second, I realized that it was actually a white lizard about six inches long. I started yelling "There's a lizard, there's a lizard! Get it!" as it ran out of the bathroom. Reba made a move for it, but it ran under the closet, and we couldn't get it out. we didn't see him all day Tuesday, but that evening I saw his tail as he ran under my bed. A girl named Victoria came and helped me lift up my bed, but he was gone again. I keep hoping that somehow he has been able to find his way out, we've left the door open enough, but I'm preparing myself to find his body in a few weeks.
Tuesday night we went to the UEFA under 21 soccer championship game between Israel and England. Israel won, 1-0. Watching the game, I didn't expect Israel to win. They just didn't seem as cohesive and together as England did. But hey, I'm no soccer critic. It was interesting, instead of vendors walking around selling cotton candy or popcorn, they sell watermelon.
On our way to and from the game, we talked with a couple of Israeli soldiers who were riding the same public transportation as we were. They explained a lot to us about the army, and how it works. The one guy had been at a checkpoint, but was recently switched to Jerusalem. The other was new to the army. He was from Beth-Shemish, and rode a bus into Jerusalem every day. He was also a student at a Yishiva, and was in a program to only be in the army for a year and a half so that he could return to studying the Torah.
Last night (caught up, finally!) our forum speaker was a man who was a Holocaust survivor. He lived through 9 different concentration camps. Because he could work, he was somewhat useful, and was lucky enough to make it through the random killings. He was the only member of his family to survive. After the war, he went to Guatemala because he had an uncle living there, so he spoke Spanish. It was good that we had so many RM's in our group that speak Spanish, they translated for him for the rest of us. It was really good to hear him, and his story. Even after all that had happened, he didn't let things get him down. He got married, had a family, and is now 95 year old. He does yoga for exercise. He's an amazing person.
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