Jerusalem

For those of you that didn’t know, I am attending BYU Jerusalem this semester. I left Utah on August 28^th, so I have only been here a few days, but it seems a lot longer than that. I can’t upload any pictures right now, but I will get up early tomorrow and upload some. It is a great experience to be here. I have meet most of the 82 other students that came with me, and we have become fast friends. 

Our days have been pretty full, and we are still trying to get over the jet lag, but it ha been fun. Jerusalem is a lot denser than I thought that it was going to be. There are tons of buildings, and it seems that almost of the buildable land has been built on.  I am looking out over the city right now, from my patio, I can see many landmarks like the old city, including the “Dome of the Rock” (the Muslim temple where they believe that Abraham was going to sacrifice his son, Ishmael, and the Jews and Christians believe it was Isaac), the Church of the Holy Seplicure (Lots of different sites there but manly where the Jews believe that Jesus was laid to be prepared for burial before going to the Garden Tomb), Rockefeller Museum (the first Archaeological museum in Israel, I haven’t been there, but it is supposed to be cool), and many other area’s that I don’t know what are yet, but I’m sure that I will learn. 

The Jerusalem Center is in East Jerusalem, where the Palestinians (Muslims and Palestinian Christians) live. I am still having a hard time with directions because the Center is on a hill (Mount Scopus) and directions are diagonal (My patio points southwest I believe), the other side of the Old City starts West Jerusalem where the Israeli’s (Mostly Jews) live. 

Our first day here, we landed in Tel Aviv which is right on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Driving here took about 40 minutes, and although we were all dead tired from being on a plane for the previous 11 hours, and having left Salt Lake a day and a half ago, it was col seeing what we could out of the bus window. I have learned that the drivers are a little crazy, and there are next to none sidewalks, however, the drivers will usually give you a honk before flying by you. Also, there is no flat country here. The song “Far, Far, Away on Judea’s Plains” Should have been “Far, Far, Away on Judea’s Hills” or I guess for us it is “Near, Near, so Close, on Judea’s Hills.” Any place that doesn’t have buildings on it, has olive trees, they are all over here. I went to Peru a few years ago, and there were terraces built into the mountains everywhere for farming, It is close to the same here, only it is olive trees instead of gardens. 

The first day was mostly orientation meetings, which seem to have been happing in some way every since Monday. The second day, we where split into groups, and got to have a tour of the city. The Palestinian part of the city is kind of older and trashy. Going into the Old City, I was expecting to see old building everywhere, and have it seem like a special place in the sense that it was peaceful, and people respect it more that it was. Immediately after walking in through the gate, (We entered from Damascus Gate), it was like an outside farmers market, until we left. There were people selling things everywhere.  There was anything and everything you would ever need, shoes, jewelry, fresh produce, Jerusalem bagels, candy, pharmacy, blow dryers, silver works, clothes, anything you would need was lining the small streets in the old city. Then suddenly, you would be in the courtyard of a church, here there wouldn’t be any merchants, but there would be huge tour groups with the leader yelling the history of that church, and what was inside. There were also some merchants that were handing out their business card, with a map of where to find them. It was a little crazy. However, It was really cool to be there.  We only went into two churches, and a hospice, but there is so much more to see, I can’t wait to see the rest of it.  We came out of Jaffa’s gate, into West Jerusalem. That side of the city is more modern, there was a modern mall underground that my tour guide pointed out, and then we walked through a courtyard that had real looking concrete pillows (Brother Judd warned us that they were concrete before we saw them, and we all kind of laughed thinking that we would be able to tell that they were concrete, but they looked authentically like a pillow, colored and textured with indents to sit on, it was kind of amazing), then we hurried to Ben Yehdan Street. This street was like a main street? There were strip malls on both sides that were very modern. There were also sky scrapers, and other things that you would expect to find in a big American city.  We spend a little time there, and then got on vans to come back to the center.

Today after church, we went to the Garden of Gethsemane, which was really neat. There was a sectioned off garden, that was full of really old olive trees, and then on the outside was the Church of the Nations. It was really peaceful there, even after the other tourists started coming, it kept that peaceful feeling that I had been expecting. I tool my Bible, and read the accounts what happened there in Mathew, Mark, and Luke, and then wrote in my Journal. I will be returning there often. 

Other things that happen here often: There is call to prayer that is blasted through a huge speaker system that fills the valley 5 times a day, I haven’t decided exactly what times it is at, but it does include about 7:00 pm, and about 4:30 am, it is going on right now, I think it also goes off about 10 pm, and sometime in the middle of the day.  There are fireworks that go off all the time, at all hours. You can’t see them, but it sounds like a firecracker. 

We started classes yesterday, and I am overwhelmed already. And we only had two classes, which were both two hours long instead of the usual 50 min. There will be a few days that does that, but it will be mostly 50 min. Old Testament in interesting, I knew when I came here that I was coming to where the Savior walked, and healed and performed miracles, but it didn’t really click that most of the Old Testament happened here as well. It is really cool to be here and learn in the places where special events happened. The other class that we had was Ancient Near Eastern Studies. This is the class that I am freaking out about. We have a test next week, and it is on the basic Geography, History, and Archaeology of the Middle East. I am excited to learn about it, but it has been a lot of information in a very little time.

 Anyway I will write again later, and try to keep this blog up to date. Lots of fun things happening!