Jerusalem Week 2

What a week! It has been crazy busy, and lots of fun.
We had our first field trip on Monday, we went to a few places around Jerusalem/Overlooks from different viewpoints. It was a long day, and it seemed that the same things were pointed out to us from different directions, but it was fun to learn some of the new testament history behind the sites. We read about when and where Rachel died, overlooking the hill they think that she was on, we talked about the Nativity story overlooking shepherds fields, and Bethlehem, David also watched his sheep in the same hills, we talked about Samuel and Saul overlooking their hometowns, and lots of other historically significant places.

Tuesday we started three new classes - Israel, Palestine, and Hebrew. Israel and Palestine are classes on the history of Israel from their different perspectives, and also Modern Day Israel from their viewpoints as well. We have about 30 pages of reading for each class, to be donne before each class period, which means that we had a ton of reading to do. We also had a test on Friday (That was only this morning?) that everyone was freaking out about. It meant that we all studied, probably a little to much for the test, and didn't spend as much time out in the city as we should have.

However, I did go out a few times. On Sunday, a few of us went into the city and and did a few things. We started at the money changers to get some Shekels, then we saw Golgotha (It has been turned into a bus station now), then we went to Zedekiah's cave/King Solomon's Quarry where Zedekiah tried to escape Jerusalem, and where King Solomon got his stones to build the temple. After that we did the Rampart's walk around the top of the city wall around Jerusalem. That was pretty cool, and we had a great view of West Jerusalem, as well as inside the Old city. After that we finished at the Western Wall, AKA the Wailing Wall where the Jews go to be close to the temple since they cant go on temple mount.
Wednesday we also had classes, and then I went out with a few other people. We started at a olive Ward Carving place, called Omar's Souvenirs. He was really cool, he has lots of amazing Olive Wood carvings, many depicting Christ, but also other figures from the bible and Book of Mormon. After that we just shopped for a while, which was a very interesting and cool experience.

Thursday I caught back up from not studying much on Wednesday, and then today I also did homework and then we went to the Western Wall for the beginning of the Sabbath. The place was covered in Jew's, it was amazing. There were all types of people, Jews and Tourists that were there to see.

Tomorrow is the Sabbath, we have district conferenct then we will got to the Garden Tomb, then Sunday, (Treated like our Saturday) we are going to Tel Aviv to the beach. I will write about it next week.