Several days in one post (someone might have gotten a little lazy...)

Wednesday was our Arab culture night. It was really fun, we got to dress up in traditional Arab clothes, listen to a legit muezzin, eat traditional Arab food, and learn a traditional Arab dance. Needless to say, it was a ton of fun.

For the dressing up, they didn't give us a lot of direction as to so what traditional Arab dress looks like, and the internet wasn't a whole ton of help. Our instruction was basically, "Go to the Old City and see what you can find." Yea, not very helpful. But most people were able to find some things. Like I mentioned in my last post, I got a skirt and a skirt, and I wore the headscarf that I got for Turkey. 

One thing that was a big misconception before I came here was that the Dome of the Rock was considered one of the most holy mosques in Islam. While it's a beautiful building, it's actually the mosque next door, but also on the Temple Mount, the al-Aqsa mosque, that is the really important one. The Dome of the Rock was actually built as a commemoration of the Jewish temple, and was actually called as such until the recent political situation became more...volatile. Anyway, that whole side note was to more or less explain, that because the al-Aqsa mosque is so important, the muezzin that came from there to demonstrate a reading from the Koran for us and the call to prayer were really amazing.

The food was similar to the food that we eat a lot here, except there was a lot more lamb. It was actually pretty good. The cafeteria here was decorated, everything was really nice. Dancing was great fun. The dances that we were taught from some Palestinian students from a local university went to pieces rather quickly, but we all had a good time. And we ended up making a Harlem Shake video, which we shared among ourselves quite a bit, but that I think a lot of people pray never sees the light of day outside the center.

On Friday evening I had the opportunity to visit a synagogue for the Sabbath service. All of the students get a chance to go, and it was my turn. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I wouldn't have expected what it was actually like. Most of the service was sung, and you could follow along with it in the prayerbook...if you knew Hebrew. It was an Orthodox synagogue, so there was a separation between the boys and the girls. After learning more about it, I think that in some ways, it's a good idea. It keeps certain members of the opposite sex from being...distracted...and focused on the meeting.

Something that I've really come to love about Judaism is how they treat the Sabbath. For them, it's something to be celebrated, cherished, to hold dear and high above all the other days. They compare the Sabbath to a bride, and the children of Israel as the groom. At the end of the Sabbath, everyone stands and bows to the back of the room, to welcome the Sabbath like a bride. The Sabbath is a day to be celebrated, not a day that just a list of the things you can and can't do.

Today, I visited the Garden of Gethsemane for the first time. It was also not quite what I expected. There was a garden of really old olive trees there, then a church, called the Church of All Nations. It was called that because there were people from several different countries who donated to help build the church. It was interesting, they would put little flags or pictures of things representing each country in an unassuming place around the church representing the various countries. We also stopped by an Armenian church next to the garden that was representative of the place that traditionally was where the Virgin Mary was buried.

There are two experiences from today that I'd like to share. The first, walking out of the Church of All Nations through the garden with the olive trees, I noticed that they had a yellow rosebush. My dad's mother, who passed away 10 years ago this September, loved yellow roses. My mom planted one in our garden, so that we would think about her. Seeing one there...it was really special.

The other experience was in the Armenian church. My mother's father, who passed away a few years ago, was Catholic. I've heard my mother say many times about her father that he "loved the Virgin Mary." Going to the Armenian church, seeing the icons, some of the pictures rubbed off from all the people that have touched them, my mom's voice came into my head "My father loved the Virgin Mary." I thought that that church would have been a place he would have loved to visit.

Shabbat Shalom!

And the walls came tumbling down...

Jericho field trip day! We were all pretty excited, not only because Jericho is cool, but it was also the first of our two trips to the West Bank. To be honest...it wasn't that much different than Israel. All the road signs were in Hebrew, Arabic, and English, like they are here. There was still trash everywhere. I guess there were more Palestinians than there are here, but it is the West Bank.

Our first stop was a place called Wadi Qelt. We climbed up a mountain overlooking a monastery that is traditionally theMount of Temptation. The Judean wilderness by Jericho is a dry, bleak desert. In every direction, there is just nothing there. There really is nothing there, except monasteries and random wadi's. And it's hot. We were there at 9 in the morning, and it was already an oven. But being there really puts into perspective the stories of the Good Samaritan and when the devil tempted Jesus. It really helps to appreciate the stories when you have a visual of the setting.

Jericho itself is very much an oasis in the desert. Because of it's proximity to the Jordan river, and a good, clean spring, it get's some good water. We stopped and looked at the ruins of the city. At Jericho, they found the oldest known human made structure. It's a tower, dating back to 9000 BC. Most things, like towers and walls, don't really stand the test of time, and when you go to the various sites, many are a reconstruction. But this tower, it was still at least 10 feet high, which is very unusual. Especially considering how old it is. Professor Stratford, my Ancient Near Eastern Studies professor, explained that the most likely reason for building the tower would be to protect some kind of agricultural surplus. Again, with it's water sources, always warm climate, and good soil, Jericho is a great place to live, especially if you're a farmer.

Next we visited the source of the Jericho spring, the one that the prophet Elisha healed by throwing salt into it. Being there, and talking about Elisha, it really made me realize how many amazing things happened in Jericho, besides the walls coming down. Near there was the place where both Elijah and Moses were translated. Elisha spent time there. A not so cool thing was that Zedekiah's sons were killed near there. It has a lot of history. Well, everything here has a lot of history. But Jericho, you don't think about as much. At least I didn't.

Our last visit was to Herod's Winter Palace. Apparently, when they first uncovered it, the archaeologists thought that it was a gymnasium because of all the pools. It wasn't till later that they put together it was a palace complex. Herod's Winter Palace had quite the bloody history. It was the place where he had his brother-in-law, Aristobulus, drowned in the pool.  It was also where he had his oldest son, the heir to the throne, killed, just five days before Herod's own death. And it was the place where Herod himself died. When Herod was on his deathbed, he ordered all the local Jewish leaders to be taken into the nearby hippodrome, and that upon his death they were all to be killed so that someone would be crying at his funeral. It was only through the efforts of his sister that the Jewish leaders were spared.

At the Winter Palace, we talked about legacies, and what kind of legacy we want to leave behind. Herod was a great builder, built beautiful impressive structures, but no one liked him. So much so, that he wanted others to be killed at his death so that someone would be sad. His own family was probably excited to see him go, just so that they knew that they would be safe from his paranoia. Is that really the way to be remembered?

So that's it for Jericho. It was only a half day field trip, so we had the whole afternoon to play! After lunch, I went with a group of people into the city. We're having an Arab culture night on Wednesday, and they encourage us to dress up, so I went into the city with a group of people to look for some clothes. There's a shopkeeper named Shabban who gives really good prices to the BYU students, so we headed there first. I found a skirt, but as we were walking through the old city I kept seeing these beautiful white shirts with embroidered flowers at the bottom, sleeves, and neck. I finally stopped and asked a random shopkeeper for the price, and we started haggling a little. As we were talking, he asked where I was from, and I told him Utah, that I was at the Mormon university. He got so excited, he had me come to the back of his shop, and showed me notes left for him by previous Jerusalem Center students. Like Shabban, he just loves the students, and gives us really good prices, no haggling involved. It made me so happy, he was so excited to meet me and the other students I was with. It just made my day.

Why'd Constantinople get the works...

...that's nobody's business but the Turks!

Great song, great song. Istanbul (Not Constantinople) cover by They Might Be Giants, was more or less our theme song this week, or at least while in Istanbul. According to our tour guide, the name was changed because there was a sign leading into Constantinople that read "to the city" that foreigners thought was the name to the city, and started to call it that.

Basically, this last week was an educational vacation in Turkey, and it was AMAZING! I very much hope that I get the chance in the future to go back. There were so many sites, and just not enough time to see them all. Especially the museums! Ah, just so amazing.

This blog post is going to be the highlights, but there are just so many, it's hard to choose! I think what I'm going to do is make a list of all the places that we went to, and then just talk about my absolute favorites. Here goes. The Sultanahment Mosque (or Blue Mosque), the Basilica Cistern, the Topkapi Palace, a boat ride on the Bosporus Straight, Gallipoli battlefield, Troy, Assos, Pergamum, St. Johns's Basilica, Ephesus, Prienne, Sardis, Thyratira, Bursa, the Hagia Sophia, and the Istanbul Archaeological Museum.

The first that I'm going to talk about is the Gallipoli battlefield. We watched a movie made about it the Friday before we left for Turkey. It's a very good movie, I highly recommend it. In World War I, Great Britain and ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand Allie Corps) forces attacked the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey, hoping to gain access to the Dardenelles, a water way that leads to the Sea of Marmara and then to the Black Sea to open a second front. The allies eventually were forced to pull out, but not after a great loss of life.

The reason I liked this site so much was because of the Turkish attitude towards it. Every year, on the anniversary of the first attack by the ANZAC forces, people from all over Turkey gather to the battlefield. So many people come that after a certain time they close the road, just because there isn't any more room. As the night goes on, they narrate the battle. But they just don't revere and honor the Turkish troops. They very much honor and respect the ANZAC troops as well. The best way that I can really show this is by a quote from Mustafa Kemal Attaturk, a very influential Turkish leader who fought in that battle. "Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives... You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side in this country of ours... you, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom, and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well."

Assos was beautiful. We just visited the acropolis at the top of the hill, but it was so beautiful. It was right on the Aegean sea, on top of a mountain. Behind you there were these beautiful green mountain, and in front of you the sparlking Aegean. It was just beautiful, and peaceful. It's mentioned in Acts 20:13-14 as the place where they picked up Paul, after he wanted to walk by himself from Troas to Assos instead of sailing with his friends. This was during Paul's journey to Jerusalem, and he knew that he wasn't going to be coming back to that place. You could imagine him, walking the 25 miles across the peninsula, thinking about his time as a missionary, and what was about to happen. Walking by himself, so that he could have some time alone to think.

Ephesus is a HUGE city. Well, was a huge city. It was very impressive. It would have been very beautiful. When were were there, there were also several cruise ships in the harbor, so the place was packed. One of the program directors likes to say that "The number one attraction at Ephesus is the cats. The number two attraction at Ephesus is people taking pictures of the cats. The number three attraction at Ephesus is that thing over there (referring to a gladiator show that was put on for the tourists). And then way down on the list is the antiquities." After seeing all the tourist, and taking a few cat pictures myself, I can attest to this.

Before reading the rest of this paragraph, dust off your scriptures and read Acts 19:23-41. Finished?

I was there! I sat in that exact theatre! I stood on the stage of that theatre! As my Old Testament professor put it "There are very few places that we can look at and say with complete certainty that this happened exactly here. But we can say that about this!" To put that scripture in a bit more perspective, that theatre seats 25,000 people. It was such a cool experience, to be there.

Visiting the Hagia Sophia is a dream come true for me. It was something that would have been on my bucket list had I ever though that there was a remote chance that I could have gone there. Having the chance to actually be there...I can't even describe it. The building was beautiful. Just beautiful. The archetecture, what was left of the mosaics, it was just all so breathtaking. It's a museum now, but they left elements up from when it was a mosque, and have uncovered some of the things that were leftover from when it was a church, so it's just a very interesting building. My tour guide said, "I see the Christians come here and cry because they want it to be a church again. I also see the Muslims come here and cry because they want it to be a mosque. I think that it is good that it is a museum because of this." I think I took more pictures there than of anything else in Turkey. It was just...it was literally a dream come true.

The last thing I'm going to talk about is the Istanbul archaeological museum. As I was getting ready to leave the Hagia Sophia, I saw a group of student from the center running out, legitimately running out. I asked them as they passed "Where are you going?" "To the archaeological museum!" "Is it cool?" "They have the oldest know peace treaty in the world there!" That was enough for me to give up my shopping plans and run after them to get there in time. I saw so many just amazing things there. I saw things there that I remember seeing pictures of in history books. One of which being the oldest peace treaty in the world, between the Hittites and the Egyptians. There's apparently a copy of it in the UN building. There's also a sarcophagus there, I believe it's called the Tomb of Alexander the Great, not because it was made for Alexander the Great, but there is a relief covering the outside of it of a battle scene, featuring Alexander the Great. It was amazing. And I got to see real, cuneiform clay tablets! It was so cool! We only had an hour there, but I could have spent a day, at least. We basically just rushed through because we didn't have a lot of time. If I ever get the chance to go back to Turkey, that museum is going to be my first stop.

So, that's the Turkey trip! As I'm sure you've noticed, I skipped over a lot of really cool things. I'd very much encourage every one to look them up. Everywhere we went in Turkey was amazing. The places I talked about were just my favorite.

To end this post, I'm going to talk about the fish. From the beginning, we were told that our very last meal in Turkey was going to be a fish, and entire fish, eyeballs and everything still there. I don't really like fish, but I tried all the meatballs, even though I don't like ground meat, and so I determined to try the fish. It was actually really, really good. And I ate all of it. Yes, I ate an entire fish. Except the eyeballs. I wasn't willing to go quite that far.

Well, that's it for the Turkey trip. In the airport, and again at a few of the hotels, I was able to get pretty good wifi, and they don't block facebook at airports. :) I've posted several pictures, of both Jerusalem and Turkey on my facebook. There's aren't any descriptions, as I couldn't figure out how to put them on with my ipod. But check them out!

One short day...

A friend requested that I do a post about what a normal day is like here in the Jerusalem center. So I'm just going to go through my day today, give an idea of what we do here every day. One thing to realize though is that really, there is no such thing as a normal day here. The class schedule changes from day to day, week to week. We generally have church on Saturday, free day on Sunday, field trip on Monday, and then classes the rest of the week. Emphasis on generally.

Today is Friday. I woke up, went to the gym, took a shower, breakfast, turned in a paper for my Palestine class, then went Old Testament. I've been trying to go to the gym every day I don't go out into the city or have a field trip, because I'm really afraid of gaining weight. Apparantly it's a thing for people to gain weight while in the Jerusalem center. It's super easy to see why. Three all you can eat meals a day, plus a ton of amazing food out in the city...if I can come out of this place the same weight I was when I came in, I'll be happy. In Old Testament today we talked about the tabernacle, then Joshua, then back to the 10 commandments because we ran out of time to move on to Judges. Next was our Judaism class. We finished talking about the Torah and the Talmud today, and did a brief overview of Jewish history in the middle ages. Not a lot of good things happened to the Jews in the middle ages.

Lunch, hummas today (fresh, real hummas and pitas are the best ever!), then to Palestine class. We talked about the law systems of Islam, and kind of how they formed. After that, I went to a class taught by one of the professor's 12 year old daughter on how to write the letters of the Arabic alphabet. She's been taking Arabic in the international school she's been attending, and so she imparted her wealth of knowledge to us.

An hour break, and then dinner! Today was ice cream day! I got passionfruit and cookies and creme. So good, and so good together. Mmm, passion fruit. They do a good job at this cafeteria making Mediterranian style foods, while still having enough Western foods and variety that we don't get tired of it.

And that's a normal day for us here. Notice, I spent the entire day in the Jerusalem center. One of the religion professors here told us that after a month we'll all be singing "We all live in a limestone submarine...." I'm starting to feel it.

Over the course of the semester here we take a total of 15 credit hours. However, they break the up the courses into two terms, make the first term about a week longer than BYU's spring term, and front weight it. To put that more simply, I'm taking 10 credit hours of classes for the rough equivalent of a term or a block class, and then 5 credits for the remainder of my time here. In a normal BYU term, you generally don't take more than 7, and the limit is 9.

To put that even more simply, we have a ton of homework, at least 6 hours of class on the days that we have class, and we're all dying a little.

But, it's Friday night, tomorrow is the Sabbath, and I'm going to Turkey on Monday! In the words of my friend, Bryce, "We live in Jerusalem, and we're going to Turkey. Dang." So while classes and homework are crazy, we're going to have a week-long extended fieldtrip, and it's all going to be great!

Shavuot

This post is the story of how twenty some odd college students and one stressed out security guard walked to the Western Wall at 5:30 in the morning.

That's basically the story. Today is the holiday of Shavuot, or the Festival of Weeks. I've been told that it it Pentecost in Christianity, but I'm not sure about that. It's the holiday to celebrate when Moses received the Torah. Jews celebrate by going to the synagogue at 11 pm and reading the Torah all night, until 4 in the morning. At that time, everyone in Jerusalem leaves their synagogues and walk to the Western Wall and say their morning prayers together as the sun rises.

So naturally, we had to go check it out. They don't like us leaving the center that early, before it's fully light out, hence the security guard. It was very different being at the Western Wall today as opposed to Friday night. Everyone there was a lot more solemn, more reverent. There wasn't any dancing or singing, just praying. And it was packed. There was no way to get even close to the wall. They extended the dividing line between the girls and the boys side because there were so many more people. I saw a couple of guys carrying a legit Torah to the wall.

After walking around for a bit in the square, we found a way to the top of an observation tower, where you could look out and see the whole square. It was super beautiful, to see the sun come up over the Mount of Olives and hit the Dome of the Rock. From there, the men's side looked a solid white from all the prayer shawls. At the top of a house behind us were a group of people reading from the Torah. They were just hanging out reading the Torah. Even on top of the house, the women were separated from the men.

Don't worry, we made it back in time for breakfast, but just barely. As we were walking back, all the kids were leaving to go to school. It was fun to see them all in their uniforms waiting at bus stops.

Have a Happy Holiday!

To the Fortress!!!

Today was field trip number two. We went to an area known as the Negev. If I remember right, Negev in Hebrew means dry. It's just about as far South as you can be and still be in Israel. And it's a desert. Dry, hot, but also suprisingly windy. It was so windy, you didn't feel sweaty until you were out of the wind or went inside. And then it felt super gross. But out in the wind it was great.

Our first stop in our trip to the desert was a place called Lakiya to visit a weaving factory there. The weaving factory is owned and run by Bedouin women. The Bedouin people were more or less forced to stop their nomadic lifestyle by the State of Israel. They settled down in towns, some sanctioned by the state, others not. The men would go out and work, and the women would stay home and take care of things. The women would rarely leave their homes because they didn't know how to act in the outside world. They had no skills necessary to really do anything outside the home. The weaving project was created to help these women learn skills in management and finance, more or less basic buisness skills, by selling their weaving, something that they had passed down in their communities for generations. It was really amazing being there, and seeing everything that those women were able to accomplish on their own. They have started to market their wares all around the world. If anyones's interested their website is http://www.lakiya.org/. I'd very much reccoment checking it out.

Next we went to Tel Beer Sheva. A tel is the word for an archaeological site where you can't see any ruins on top, it more or less looks like a big hill, perhaps where a hill shouldn't be. After digging down, the archaeologists will run into walls and other things. The tel dated to the Iron Age, so it's not the Beer Sheva that is mentioned in regards to Abraham and the other patriarchs. The site of that Beer Sheva is most likely under the modern city of Beer Sheba. (From what I've been able to tell, the names Beer Sheva and Beer Sheba are more or less interchangeable. My Old Testament professor today referred to Beer Sheva as the tel and Beer Sheba as the modern city. It's Beersheba in the bible. Wikipedia made me think that it doesn't matter. Confusing? Sorry. :P) The Iron Age is the during the time of King David, Solomon, basically through the first temple period. They had a cistern there underneath the city that you could walk through. It was huge! Crazy huge! There was basically a deep, stone lined pit with a hole in the bottom. You walk through the hole, and into a series of huge plaster lined water chambers underground. It was just cool.

The next place that we visited was tel Arad, and the place where I got the title for this blog. Arad had both an Iron Age fortress on top of the hill, and a Canaanite village at the bottom of the hill. We explored the fortress first. My Old Testament professor told us about how when they were excavating the tel they found in one house pottery shards called ostracon. Ostracon are special pottery shards because they have writing on them, used more or less as disposable letters. A few of the pottery shards deal with events leading to the fall of the the Kingdom of Judah in 586. My professor read a few of them to us. When reading about the fall of the Kingdom of Judah, I've always thought that the people deserved what they were getting. They weren't listening to the prophets, and this was their punishment. But even though they weren't doing everything right, they were still people, people who were doing everything that they could to defend their home against the coming armies, but in the end just couldn't do it on their own. They weren't necessarily evil people, just people who weren't listening to the right people.

The Canaanite village was huge, and had a good sized wall all the way around it. It reminded me of the Great Wall of China. The village dates to 2500 BC, so before the time of Abraham. There was a huge well at the very bottom of the village. My professor explained that we don't know a lot about the various buildings in the village, but it was easy to see walls, and what would have been rooms. There are a lot of places around here...well, Jerusalem, where the city is much higher than it was at the time of Jesus. More or less, the only areas of the city that are the same hight as they would have been at that time are the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. But walking through these ruins that have been excavated, people actually walked there. People build that wall out of mud bricks, and you can still see the bricks. People dug that cistern. People who are gone now, but they actually lived. And you can see what they left behind.

One thing that we talked about in regards to the sites we visited were when the people weren't following the God of Israel. In each site that we visited there was some kind of alter or temple that you can tell from various signs that weren't following the Law of Moses. Arad actually had a temple patterned after the temple in Jerusalem. You read about in the scriptures how the people aren't following God, but it's different to actually see the evidence, and to discuss what they were doing wrong. Most of the time they were following a lot of the tenets of the Law of Moses, but there was something, or a few things, that were just off, and they completely missed the mark because of it.

All in all, it was a really great fieldtrip. It was a ton of fun to explore the ruins. And we saw camels! There were camels everywhere! They have camel crossing signs like we have deer crossing signs. Also, there were sheep herds all over the place. We got to see a shepherd herding sheep! It was so cute, the sheep at the front, if they got too far ahead of the shepherd, would stop and wait for the shepherd to catch up before continuing on. Super cool.

Welsome Welcome, Sabbath Evening (and morning too!)

Yesterday evening, we went as a group to the Western Wall to welcome in the Sabbath, Jewish style. I honetly didn't know what I was expecting. People more somber, praying, reverant. I was not expecting a party, which was what it was. There was a bunch of singing and dancing, from both the guys and the girls. From what I understand, Jews worship with the men seperate from the women, so to go up to the wall, the men go to one side, and the women to the other. We met a bunch of American girls on the girl's side. I guess they were touring the Holy Land for their senior trip. They also assumed that we were also Jewish Americans at first, but then they still let us sing and dance with them anyway. It was really fun to see the soldiers singing and dancing with everyone else, dancing around with their assault rifles. Some of them also had some interesting colored berets. As in, turquoise blue, lime green, and orange. All in all, it was really fun. We've decided that we want to have our own Sabbath welcoming party every Friday evening.

To add to that, this evening I was with a big group of JC (Jerusalem Center, for now on) students watching the movie the Prince of Egypt, since we're studying it in Old Testament right now. When it got to that one really fun song when Moses is with the Midianites, we all got up and started dancing in a circle. It was so much fun! I dare anyone who reads this to try it next time they watch Prince of Egypt. Hold hands, sing, and dance in a circle. You'll thank me. :)

Today, after church (don't forget, I have church on Saturday, not Sunday) we walked to the Garden Tomb. It is another site that is thought by a lot of people to be where Christ was crucified, buried, and resurrected. We were given a tour, shown the skull image in the side of the mountain, then the olive press that they found, and then taken to the garden tomb. Afterwards, we went to a group of benches and sang hymns for about half an hour. It's amazing how the same songs that I've been singing all my life take on such new meaning when singing them here. Probably my favorite was Nearer, My God to Thee. There were several other groups of people there who were taking pictures and video taping us singing. It was so peaceful.

I've talked in this blog about both the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Garden Tomb, and so now I want to say a word on both. The truth of it is, there is no definitive proof to really support either site as the site where Jesus was crucified and buried. There are historical inaccuracies with both. And there is also no definitive modern revelation from any leaders in the LDS church to support either.

Protestants coming to the Holy Land felt out of place going to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It wasn't the way that they were used to worshipping, as in, much more ornate and Catholic than they liked, so they began to look for another place that they could worship in a way they were used to. The result of that search was the Garden Tomb. It only follows reason that the LDS church would choose to rever the Garden Tomb for the same reason.

Honestly, whichever you choose as the place where you think Christ was crucified and buried, doesn't matter. Both sites are beautiful, and you can feel the presence at the Holy Ghost at both. All that really matters is the reason why you're there. There are spiritual insights that can be had from both places if you're open to it. Don't just dismiss something because it's different that what you're used to.