Real Blog Post

 Right. So I completely don't know how to move that top picture down. Computer retarded. But whatever! So that my dear family is a picture of my very first felafel in the Holy Land!! Mmm. :) YUMMY! For you who haven't had the pleasure, a felafel is a couple balls of fried ground up chick peas (quite like a meatball, but not meat) and veggies- tomatoes/cucumbers/etc.. and fries dumped into a pita! Oh man. They are good stuff. Have a feeling i'll be frequenting felafel shops this semester!
          But I realized I haven't really done a good blog post- since you are living vicariously through me. I guess i'll step up the experience a little bit. I have been here at the Jerusalem Center for over a week now! Crazy. So the first couple day, as I mentioned earlier was basically orientation and kinda getting into the JC life. It is such a different world over here- including school. We have a class of 80 some odd people that you study with, live with, go to class with, party with, do everything with! I can now understand Hailey when she said she gained 80 new best friends! You can't escape em! :) Just kidding. I love it. I'm learning a lot about attitude and how I just need to be open and love people instead of find differences to keep people at a distance.Cause I gotta face the facts- they're not going anywhere and neither am I!
         Anywho- so I will report on Sun. through today cause I guess I haven't really said anything about that. So Sunday is our free day here since we have church on Saturdays. (gonna be weird for a bit I think) But on Sunday All the students got up and ate breakfast, then pretty much dispersed to the Old City! My little group of about ten or so decided to try to get up on the temple mount which turned out to be a good choice! We got there and there was no line and walked straight through security and onto a practically empty temple mount! It was really neat! Mom and Dad you remember that humungous line when we went up? Yuck. But we had lots of time to look around and take pretty pictures- see below
         After that we went to exchange our money and head back to a productive night of studying... ehem... ehem... Kinda. It's sometimes hard to focus with so many people, alright?
         Then Mon. was our first official field trip. It was a long tiring day [not to mention hot] but it was neat! We just went around to places overlooking Jerusalem and other Biblical cities around Jerusalem. We went up in a giant tower on top of a cathedral called Augusta Victoria. We also went to the Seven Arches Hotel lookout above the jewish graves on the mount of Olives. It gives you a neat view of the Old City from the South side. Then we went to some fields overlooking Bethlehem which many Biblical people passed through. Apparently, pretty near where we were Jacob's wife, Rachel, [Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat's Mom] died after giving birth to Benjamin. It is a pretty cool opportunity to talk about these stories in the classroom, and then take a bus ride to all of these same places! It really gives you a different perspective on the people in the Bible. Then, our final destination was Nabi Samwel, a place dedicated to the prophet Samuel. I gotta be honest- i'm not quite sure why, but I think he was born there? Or died there? But there was a synagogue we went in to with a cenotaph (an empty tomb in memory of the person who it was made for) of Samuel and we went down and saw it.
        When all was said and done, we came back, ate some dinner, did some homework, and CRASHED! man walking outside and learning all day is an exhausting experience. But i'll get used to it I guess. Maybe i'll loose weight yet! Ya... no. Too much yummy stuff here. Don't worry Mom. I'm not going crazy.
         Tues. was pretty much all classes and homework. Boring. But We did have Palestine and Judaism for the first time along with Hebrew. Gonna be demanding. Poop. But It's ok. I think I have a leg up in a lot of aspects. I have taken a Middle East class before, already been here and learned a lot about the culture, and I'm just a genius. So i'm not concerned about studying too much. Just playin Parents!! I'm working hard I promise. But really, that was it for Tues.
          So that brings us to today! Woke up and went to Old Testament as well as Near Eastern Studies (man our teacher for that class is intense! He was straight up yelling GO!! GO GO!! to us each time we were supposed to get out of the bus for field trips. He was a paratrooper apparently. Makes sense. But we'll see how his tests are and then I'll decide if it is a respectable intense or an annoying intense. Hopefully the first.) Then Hebrew got cancelled (teacher wasn't feeling well... day 2... we'll see how this trend goes. Maybe Our final will be how to say get better in Hebrew!) So we ate lunch and went out to the City! We hit up Zacharia's Caves which are these giant caves under the Old City which supposedly were carved out to use the rock for the first temple- Solomons Temple. Nifty for sure! A nice break from the heat too! We whistled a beautiful duet and video'd it. I'll have to post that another time cause it was tough just getting these pics on. But it was fun. Then we just roamed the city some more. And now I'm back. Tada! Fancy how that happens. But it's been good. I'm getting more used to being here. It's getting better. I know this is an amazing experience and i'm a lucky duck to be having it. So in appreciation- i'm sharing it with you. So you better be grateful too!
          Here are a couple pictures-

 Here is the sunset first day at the Center (Hence looking like this...)

 Mackenzie and I in front of the Dome of the Rock
[Above is handstands of course! Couldn't move it down again. Wow.]

Dome of the Rock

 The view of the Dome of the Rock for Seven Arches. Pretty Amazing!

 I'm pointing to Bethlehem in the distance. 

A grotto-like cave they suspect Christ was born in. Not the typical stable you think of hu? 

So... that's it from me. I hope everything is going wonderful with everything back home! Love you all! I wish you could all be seeing what I am- but then Christopher would be causing a whole new style of havoc never to be seen within the Holy Land...

Love you!

Lizzie