Marhaba!

I'm realizing that when I live the most amazing city in the world, I don't want to spend my time on the computer, emailing, blogging, facebook, etc. So in order to cut back my time, I am just going to copy my email to my family and put it on my blog so any friends can see what I'm doing too. Sorry, family for the repeat. Sorry if it's too much detail, feel free to skim if you wish. As soon as I get back from Egypt I'll probably have my camera cord and can post pictures, until then, it's just description:

First off, I think everywhere should have church on Saturday and a free day on Sunday. It's so nice to have a day after the sabbath to just relax rather than just rush back to school. On Sunday a group of about ten of us set out for the Old City early in the morning. We first went to the Dome of the Rock. Holy cow, way better than any pictures make it out to be. It was huge and so beautiful. It has a huge dome that is gold with the entire building covered in mosaics. I was in complete awe. Unfortunately right now they are only letting Muslims into it, so we could only see the outside, but it was still great. The Dome is on the site where Solomon's temple was originally and there is still one wall left from it a little ways down, which is the western or Wailing Wall where all the Jews go to pray and welcome in the Sabbath on Fridays. There are always people there praying to it though, so we saw a group of Jews there and it was really neat to see. We're going there on friday as a field trip which is when it will be completely packed, so I'm excited to see that too. It was there that we got our pictures with some Israeli soldiers too. I asked him to show his gun in the picture and he was more than happy to oblige. After that we went on Ramparts Walk. We walk on top of the whole outer wall and see the entire City from a spectacular view. It took a good few hours, but then again we stopped like every ten minutes to take tons of pictures, but it was really fun. We then went to West Jerusalem and got some delicious gelato and just hung out on Ben Yehuda street for a while. It was a very fun free day.

Monday we had our Geography field trip. We started out at Nabi Samwill. It is supposedly the tomb of the prophet Samuel, but it's really not. It was still cool to go and see it though, it was a huge ancient looking church and we were able to go on the roof and see a great view of the city. Then we went to Augsuta Victoria which is a church on the Mount of Olives, just up from the center/our palace. The Lutherans own it and it is a beautiful Cathedral covered in mosaics, they argue that it was there that Christ ascended into heaven. We climbed a few hundred stairs to the top of the bell tower to see another really great view. Then we went to the Seven Arches Overlook, it was just a place where we had yet another view of the city. The next place we went was Haas Promenade Overlook. Yes, another view. But this was the place where Abraham first saw Mt. Moriah (temple Mount) where he was commanded to sacrafice Isaac. We read those scriptures while we were sitting there and it was really neat. We went to one more place called Deir Elyas, which had a really good view of Bethlehem. See a theme? We were kind of overloaded with great views of the city. It was really fun though!

Tuesday we had classes in the morning and then went out into the Old City in the afternoon. We were on a hunt for pasteries. We tried a few and they were nasty. Like Mazza nasty. One even tasted like soap. So we went to this guy, Shaban, he is a merchant that LOVES the mormons. He always gives us juice when we go to him and he makes BYU Jerusalem shirts for us when we leave. I got really cool scripture case from him and we all got really hot genie pants from him haha. We asked him where his favorite pastry shop was and he showed us and they were still nasty. I think I'll just stick with my toasted pita bread filled with peanut butter and nutella for desert, its a favorite here in the center.

Yesterday we had a little free time, so a group of us went to Zedekiah's Cave. People say that that is where Zedekiah hid from the Babylonians when they were coming after him, but thats not necessarily doctrine. What is really awesome about it though is that all the stone used to build Solomon's temple came from that quarry. It was so cool, I loved it there. Totally worth the 10 shekels we had to pay to get in. It was the biggest cave I've ever seen, obviously because they had to get a ton of stone out of there for the temple. It was amazing to think that people carved stone out from there and carried it all the way to Mt. Moriah-it's definitely a good walk. We could see all the places they had cut out the stone and everything. We were the only ones in the cave, so we went to the back and sat down and we read different passages in the OT about Solomon's temple and the quarry the got the stone from. It was so awesome! I loved it!

I think today after lunch we are going to go to West Jeru to explore. We've heard about this neighborhood that is like ultra orthodox jewish and so we want to go look around and try to find that. Tonight my committee is throwing a grand opening party for the Shekel Shack, its just a little snack bar here in the center and all the money we earn goes to the memory committee to make us stuff for when we leave. We're having a ribbon cutting ceremony and everything.

Tomorrow we are going on a field trip to the Western Wall to watch the Jews welcome in the Sabbath. I'm so excited for that, there are going to be thousands of them there, all praying and writing their prayers on papers to put into the wall. I think it will be really neat. Later tomorrow night my committee is having another in center activity since we can't leave the center on Friday nights. We are playing sardines and watching the Prince of Egypt to get us ready for our Egypt trip a week from today. I think it will be really fun!