Dear People,
I remember that when I was little, Dad explained to me that the Dead Sea is so salty people walk in and just float. Since then I have always wanted to float in the Dead Sea, though I thought I might have to make do with the Great Salt Lake. But behold! Yesterday we drove down and swam in the Dead Sea. You really can just sit in the water. I sat and lay flat on my back and rolled around. Some people played cards or silly BYU games like "Bunny Bunny." The water felt like baby oil, and since nothing can grow in it it was clear and clean and blue. You had to be careful, though, not to get any in your eyes or mouth.
The week before, we went to Jordan for four days. I love Jordan. We spent an entire day at Petra, the place with all the beautiful rock-carving in the cliffs. You have probably seen part of it (The Treasury) in photos, but it's a huge complex, with cliffs and colored rocks like something out of Southern Utah, but filled with ancient carvings. Lazy Utes, not providing us with ancient carvings.
Jordanians seem generally very nice. We had to have a Jordanian guide by law, but he was cool. He spent twenty-eight years in the US, so he had perfect English, and he's Catholic. He explained to us why he likes the monarchy--because he feels a democracy would discriminate against the Christian minority.
On two nights we got to spend free time in Amman. Three friends and I wandered around the streets until we stumbled upon a zoo. The man at the gate told us it took 1 dinar to enter, but we didn't have any money on us. We had a pleasant conversation with him using his ten words of English and Ryan's ten words of Arabic. Everyone said their name and where they were from and smiled at each other, and then he waved for us to go in for free. The zoo had white peacocks and a parrot that spoke Arabic and squirrels. The sign on the squirrels' big cage said that their natural habitat was the mountains and they prefer to live in "ancient oak trees." We decided that if we had never seen a squirrel before, we would think it was adorable and coo over it.
Love,
Stella
Monday, April 12, 2010
A Lack of Color
means it is the January of my junior year of high school, and I am Depressed About a Boy. I turn off the lights in my room, close the blinds, and sit in front of my computer listening to "A Lack of Color" on repeat.
Marcie comes in and makes me turn on the lights and watch Ask a Ninja until I laugh and am happy again. It is my favorite memory of my friend.
And when I see you, I really see you upside down. But my brain knows better. It picks you up and turns you round, turns you around. - Death Cab for Cutie, "A Lack of Color"
Marcie comes in and makes me turn on the lights and watch Ask a Ninja until I laugh and am happy again. It is my favorite memory of my friend.
And when I see you, I really see you upside down. But my brain knows better. It picks you up and turns you round, turns you around. - Death Cab for Cutie, "A Lack of Color"
Saturday, March 27, 2010
March 27
Dear ones,
I spent almost two weeks in Galilee. We stayed in little bungalows right off the Sea; coming out of my door, I only have to walk twenty feet to find a grassy slope down to a little brown beach, with the Sea of Galilee beyond, and green mountains on the other shore. Every other day we went on field trips around the area; otherwise we stayed behind in Ein Gev, the Kibbutz that hosted us. On those days we had three hours of New Testament class in the morning (it went surprisingly fast) after which we had a whole free day. We mostly spent the time relaxing on the beach or the grass overlooking the beach. Everyone brought books. I brought The Bronze Bow from the Jerusalem Center library, a perfect book since it's set in Galilee.
The sun was warm, but a cold wind blue off of the water. We wore sweatshirts and wrapped ourselves in the itchy pink blankets from our rooms. The cold didn't keep us from swimming. For the first couple of days the wind was strong enough to make big waves, and we frolicked in them. I didn't swim much after the wind died down; I'm not sure what to do in water if there are no waves. The Sea was stunningly beautiful when it was still, though--silver-green during the day, bronzy-red at sunset, black at night with gold streaks from the reflection of Tiberias on the opposite shore. We came in the best season of the year, when everything was green green green. My favorite days were spent reading or talking on the shore, or standing ankle deep in the water skipping stones, or making castles and pots out of muddy clay.
On three nights we had bonfires where we sang and told stories, baked scones over hot coals, and made 'Smores. It's hard to find regular marshmallows in Israel, and impossible to find graham crackers, so we ate 'Smores with pink, fruity-flavored marshmallows and giant animal crackers. One night we played "Ride that Pony," one of those games you learn at EFY or during your freshman year at BYU. It involves singing a loud, fast song. Some Jewish girls were sitting up the beach from us, and they ran over to join us. "You know that?" they said, surprised, and sang us the Hebrew version. Then they played with us. For the last bonfire we had a testimony meeting that went for three hours.
On the days we went out, we went everywhere. We saw a plethora of ancient synogogues and more churches than you can shake a stick at. Memorable churches include the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, this huge modern-art 60's building our professor called "a monstrosity." Inside they seemed to be going for a factory-like asthetic with cement walls, twisted iron candelabras, weirdly sloping ceilings and columns, abstract stained-glass windows with lots of red. The church was filled with paintings of Mary from all sorts of different countries. The one from the United States was modern and angry-looking, but I liked the painting from Korea that depicted Mary as a Korean woman in traditional dress.
My two favorite churches were the Church of the Transfiguration and a little church marking the traditional site where the resurrected Jesus gave his disciples breakfast. Church of the Transfiguration stood on top of a mountain, a towering building of white stone, beautifully carved. Inside, you walked over a grate in the floor where people slipped their prayers on folded-up paper. The ceilings soared, held up by plain wooden beams, and the altar was inside a little cave, backed by stained glass peacocks and surrounded by mosaics of angels with peacock wings on a blue background. All light and airy and large. My other favorite church was exactly the opposite, a tiny, one-room building built out of black basalt, within a vast garden, right on the shore.
Every church we went we sang. They all have beautiful acoustics. Other tourists filmed us with their cameras, and once my friends Michael, Jeff, and Allison sang, "Be Still My Soul" and made three German women cry.
Also we saw many ruins. We explored an entire ruined town, a Hellenized town featuring a bathhouse and a temple to Bachus, all destroyed in an earthquake. I climbed on toppled-over columns and the remains of walls. My favorite ruins were the remains of a Crusader/Muslim fortress, up on the top of a mountain. A lot of the walls remained or had been restored, and towers we could climb. Signs everywhere said, "Danger Abyss," and if you looked over the sides of the Crusader walls the mountain dropped straight down to green valleys. I would call the height "dizzying" if heights made me dizzy. A castle on a mountain! Really!
We swam in swimming holes where locals have been swimming for thousands of years. The water was blue and warm, and fish nibbled at my toes; it reminded me of floating around in my friend Sam's pond in Mississippi, where the fish would try to eat us, only here the water was clear enough to see the fish approaching my feet. We rafted down the Jordan River and splashed cold green water on each other. We visited a spot on the Jordan where people come from all over the world to be re-baptized and watched a Protestand minister give a little sermon and re-baptize his congregation. It was funny to hear him describe to these old people how to hold themselves--"Hold your arms like this, and I'll hold your arm there. You can hold your nose closed if you want to..." I came to the odd realization that, as young Mormons, we're unusally good at being baptized.
One day we took a boat across the Sea of Galilee back to the Kibbutz. The owners of the boat put up an American flag and played "The Star-Spangled Banner" over their speakers. Then they played "Put your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee" and I thought of Dad.
We went to Akko, a Mediterranean port city where the Crusaders had their capital after they were driven out of Jerusalem. After the lecture, they set us free to roam the city. Kate, Snarky Jonathan and I bought bubbles. Then we went up on a short tower by the blue blue water and blue the bubbles which the wind off the water ripped away. A Jewish showed up to look out over the water as well. A little boy with a blue kepah and soft blonde sidelocks and his two sisters danced in our bubbles and laughed and shrieked.
On the modern side of things, we walked through a green and viny park, where a spring runs to the Jordan river in a thousand little trails, to an overlook where we could see Lebanon to our left and Syria to our right. Ein Gev was right up next to the Golan Heights, where Syria used to shoot rockets down at the Israeli Kibbutzim below. Israel took over the Golan in 1967, and there are still bunkers and trenches everywhere, and fields surrounded by fences with signs that say "Danger! Active Mines!" Israel is considering giving the Golan back to Syria in order to make a strong Arab ally, but it's a tricky situation because of the water sources there and the usual Israeli groups who hate giving up land. The Druze villages up in the hills sort of keep a foot in both camps, serving in the Israeli military while keeping up a connection with Syria. The Druze are an interesting little religion, an offshoot of Islam who keep their rituals perfectly secret. We drove through some of their villages and saw men in traditional Druze clothing working in the apple orchards, men in baggy pants and white caps.
One night we were taken to a fish restaurant and served "St. Peter's Fish," which they fry whole. Jeni, Kate, Elizabeth and I made a pact that if we each ate our fish's eyeball we would go on a roadtrip to California this Thanksgiving. We all managed to eat the eyeball, though not without some difficulties, so now I have plans for Thanksgiving! Yay! Afterwards they took us around the Sea of Galilee to Tiberias. I love Tiberias. We only spent an hour there, but it was a beautiful hour. We got icecream and wandered up and down the boardwalk. An old man sat on a folding chair playing the accordian. We held hands and ran around in a circle in the street in front of him, doing our best clumsy imitation of an Israeli folk dance. Then he played "Od Yavo Shalom Aleinu," a song our Hebrew teacher taught us, so we were able to sing along and clap our hands. Then he announced (with a heavy Hebrew accent) that he would play us some Strauss, and we fake-waltzed. At the end of the night he told us, "Thank You" and we told him, "Todah."
A beautiful, beautiful two weeks. We went on so many field trips that by the end we felt overwhelmed by all the sights we had seen and all the things we had learned (I've only given you a sampling). On the other hand we had a lot of free time, days worth of time to read and contemplate, to listen to the sound of birds and frogs and to look out over the water for hours. Very spiritual, very sweet.
Love,
Stella
I spent almost two weeks in Galilee. We stayed in little bungalows right off the Sea; coming out of my door, I only have to walk twenty feet to find a grassy slope down to a little brown beach, with the Sea of Galilee beyond, and green mountains on the other shore. Every other day we went on field trips around the area; otherwise we stayed behind in Ein Gev, the Kibbutz that hosted us. On those days we had three hours of New Testament class in the morning (it went surprisingly fast) after which we had a whole free day. We mostly spent the time relaxing on the beach or the grass overlooking the beach. Everyone brought books. I brought The Bronze Bow from the Jerusalem Center library, a perfect book since it's set in Galilee.
The sun was warm, but a cold wind blue off of the water. We wore sweatshirts and wrapped ourselves in the itchy pink blankets from our rooms. The cold didn't keep us from swimming. For the first couple of days the wind was strong enough to make big waves, and we frolicked in them. I didn't swim much after the wind died down; I'm not sure what to do in water if there are no waves. The Sea was stunningly beautiful when it was still, though--silver-green during the day, bronzy-red at sunset, black at night with gold streaks from the reflection of Tiberias on the opposite shore. We came in the best season of the year, when everything was green green green. My favorite days were spent reading or talking on the shore, or standing ankle deep in the water skipping stones, or making castles and pots out of muddy clay.
On three nights we had bonfires where we sang and told stories, baked scones over hot coals, and made 'Smores. It's hard to find regular marshmallows in Israel, and impossible to find graham crackers, so we ate 'Smores with pink, fruity-flavored marshmallows and giant animal crackers. One night we played "Ride that Pony," one of those games you learn at EFY or during your freshman year at BYU. It involves singing a loud, fast song. Some Jewish girls were sitting up the beach from us, and they ran over to join us. "You know that?" they said, surprised, and sang us the Hebrew version. Then they played with us. For the last bonfire we had a testimony meeting that went for three hours.
On the days we went out, we went everywhere. We saw a plethora of ancient synogogues and more churches than you can shake a stick at. Memorable churches include the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, this huge modern-art 60's building our professor called "a monstrosity." Inside they seemed to be going for a factory-like asthetic with cement walls, twisted iron candelabras, weirdly sloping ceilings and columns, abstract stained-glass windows with lots of red. The church was filled with paintings of Mary from all sorts of different countries. The one from the United States was modern and angry-looking, but I liked the painting from Korea that depicted Mary as a Korean woman in traditional dress.
My two favorite churches were the Church of the Transfiguration and a little church marking the traditional site where the resurrected Jesus gave his disciples breakfast. Church of the Transfiguration stood on top of a mountain, a towering building of white stone, beautifully carved. Inside, you walked over a grate in the floor where people slipped their prayers on folded-up paper. The ceilings soared, held up by plain wooden beams, and the altar was inside a little cave, backed by stained glass peacocks and surrounded by mosaics of angels with peacock wings on a blue background. All light and airy and large. My other favorite church was exactly the opposite, a tiny, one-room building built out of black basalt, within a vast garden, right on the shore.
Every church we went we sang. They all have beautiful acoustics. Other tourists filmed us with their cameras, and once my friends Michael, Jeff, and Allison sang, "Be Still My Soul" and made three German women cry.
Also we saw many ruins. We explored an entire ruined town, a Hellenized town featuring a bathhouse and a temple to Bachus, all destroyed in an earthquake. I climbed on toppled-over columns and the remains of walls. My favorite ruins were the remains of a Crusader/Muslim fortress, up on the top of a mountain. A lot of the walls remained or had been restored, and towers we could climb. Signs everywhere said, "Danger Abyss," and if you looked over the sides of the Crusader walls the mountain dropped straight down to green valleys. I would call the height "dizzying" if heights made me dizzy. A castle on a mountain! Really!
We swam in swimming holes where locals have been swimming for thousands of years. The water was blue and warm, and fish nibbled at my toes; it reminded me of floating around in my friend Sam's pond in Mississippi, where the fish would try to eat us, only here the water was clear enough to see the fish approaching my feet. We rafted down the Jordan River and splashed cold green water on each other. We visited a spot on the Jordan where people come from all over the world to be re-baptized and watched a Protestand minister give a little sermon and re-baptize his congregation. It was funny to hear him describe to these old people how to hold themselves--"Hold your arms like this, and I'll hold your arm there. You can hold your nose closed if you want to..." I came to the odd realization that, as young Mormons, we're unusally good at being baptized.
One day we took a boat across the Sea of Galilee back to the Kibbutz. The owners of the boat put up an American flag and played "The Star-Spangled Banner" over their speakers. Then they played "Put your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee" and I thought of Dad.
We went to Akko, a Mediterranean port city where the Crusaders had their capital after they were driven out of Jerusalem. After the lecture, they set us free to roam the city. Kate, Snarky Jonathan and I bought bubbles. Then we went up on a short tower by the blue blue water and blue the bubbles which the wind off the water ripped away. A Jewish showed up to look out over the water as well. A little boy with a blue kepah and soft blonde sidelocks and his two sisters danced in our bubbles and laughed and shrieked.
On the modern side of things, we walked through a green and viny park, where a spring runs to the Jordan river in a thousand little trails, to an overlook where we could see Lebanon to our left and Syria to our right. Ein Gev was right up next to the Golan Heights, where Syria used to shoot rockets down at the Israeli Kibbutzim below. Israel took over the Golan in 1967, and there are still bunkers and trenches everywhere, and fields surrounded by fences with signs that say "Danger! Active Mines!" Israel is considering giving the Golan back to Syria in order to make a strong Arab ally, but it's a tricky situation because of the water sources there and the usual Israeli groups who hate giving up land. The Druze villages up in the hills sort of keep a foot in both camps, serving in the Israeli military while keeping up a connection with Syria. The Druze are an interesting little religion, an offshoot of Islam who keep their rituals perfectly secret. We drove through some of their villages and saw men in traditional Druze clothing working in the apple orchards, men in baggy pants and white caps.
One night we were taken to a fish restaurant and served "St. Peter's Fish," which they fry whole. Jeni, Kate, Elizabeth and I made a pact that if we each ate our fish's eyeball we would go on a roadtrip to California this Thanksgiving. We all managed to eat the eyeball, though not without some difficulties, so now I have plans for Thanksgiving! Yay! Afterwards they took us around the Sea of Galilee to Tiberias. I love Tiberias. We only spent an hour there, but it was a beautiful hour. We got icecream and wandered up and down the boardwalk. An old man sat on a folding chair playing the accordian. We held hands and ran around in a circle in the street in front of him, doing our best clumsy imitation of an Israeli folk dance. Then he played "Od Yavo Shalom Aleinu," a song our Hebrew teacher taught us, so we were able to sing along and clap our hands. Then he announced (with a heavy Hebrew accent) that he would play us some Strauss, and we fake-waltzed. At the end of the night he told us, "Thank You" and we told him, "Todah."
A beautiful, beautiful two weeks. We went on so many field trips that by the end we felt overwhelmed by all the sights we had seen and all the things we had learned (I've only given you a sampling). On the other hand we had a lot of free time, days worth of time to read and contemplate, to listen to the sound of birds and frogs and to look out over the water for hours. Very spiritual, very sweet.
Love,
Stella
March 14
Dear lovelies,
Tomorrow morning we head off to Galilee for two weeks. It's going to be so nice because we only go on field trips every other days. On the in between days we stay in the kibbutz, have a few classes in the morning, and then are free to wander around the kibbutz and its beach. I'm bringing a copy of The Bronze Bow from the library here, since it's set in Galilee.
Today a bunch of us went to Tel Aviv on the coast. We spent hours and hours wandering along the shore of the Mediterannean, playing in the waves, and exploring Jaffa, the old city where the whale spat up Jonah (we found a whale-shaped fountain commemorating the event). I always thought of the Mediterannean as warm, but here, at least, it was cold. We got in anyway and splashed around anyway. It made me really miss Gulf Shores. I kept telling anyone who would listen about how the gulf is warm and green-grey and you can see little silver fishes in the waves and you can smell the salt in the air. The Mediterannean tasted plenty salty, but for some reason you couldn't smell it in the air, which disappointed me. I realized that this is the first time I've been to the beach since coming to college.
After the sun sent we walked down the street and got kosher pizza.
There have been some tensions in the Old City, an increased police presence and lots of demonstrations. Some kids even started a fire in the street down near the lower gate of the center. We stood out on our terrace and watched. It'll be nice to get out of Jerusalem.
-Stella
Tomorrow morning we head off to Galilee for two weeks. It's going to be so nice because we only go on field trips every other days. On the in between days we stay in the kibbutz, have a few classes in the morning, and then are free to wander around the kibbutz and its beach. I'm bringing a copy of The Bronze Bow from the library here, since it's set in Galilee.
Today a bunch of us went to Tel Aviv on the coast. We spent hours and hours wandering along the shore of the Mediterannean, playing in the waves, and exploring Jaffa, the old city where the whale spat up Jonah (we found a whale-shaped fountain commemorating the event). I always thought of the Mediterannean as warm, but here, at least, it was cold. We got in anyway and splashed around anyway. It made me really miss Gulf Shores. I kept telling anyone who would listen about how the gulf is warm and green-grey and you can see little silver fishes in the waves and you can smell the salt in the air. The Mediterannean tasted plenty salty, but for some reason you couldn't smell it in the air, which disappointed me. I realized that this is the first time I've been to the beach since coming to college.
After the sun sent we walked down the street and got kosher pizza.
There have been some tensions in the Old City, an increased police presence and lots of demonstrations. Some kids even started a fire in the street down near the lower gate of the center. We stood out on our terrace and watched. It'll be nice to get out of Jerusalem.
-Stella
March 11
Dear people,
Lately, I have spent all day, ever day, doing Things. Last week we had finals, and now we only have two classes. Every afternoon is free, and so we head out into the city looking at sites. There are so many old or beautiful or cool churches here. My favorite is Dormition Abbey--it was built in 1910 to honor Mary. It's light and airy, with lots of white and grey stone, and the chapel has beautiful acoustics that make two girls singing sound like a choir. In the crypt below there's a statue of Mary and mosaics of Old Testament women.
The older churches are cool because they're old, but they tend to be somewhat crowded and gawdy. For example, on Monday we went to Bethlehem and toured the Church of the Nativity. It stands above the cave where, traditionally, Jesus was born. The church was huge and smelled strongly of incense. Mosaics on the wall crumbled away to show bare stone, and painting of saints on the columns have worn down so that you can barely see their faces. A lot of walls have been bare and grey since the Ottomans took their white marble coverings to put in a mosque.
We went down into the cave in a stream. It was covered in brocade hangings, with paintings all around. The manger cut into the rock was covered in marble, and in the spot where the birth supposedly took place they drove a fourteen-pointed iron star into the ground. All very ornate. My favorite part of the trip was when we left the church and gathered in the courtyard of the newer church next door to sing hymns. We sang "Once in Royal David's City," and "Little Town of Bethlehem" and "Silent Night." Some German tourists passing by joined in for "Silent Night" and filmed us with their cameras.
On Monday we leave for Galilee to live in bungalows on the beach for two weeks. I'm so excited!
-Stella
Lately, I have spent all day, ever day, doing Things. Last week we had finals, and now we only have two classes. Every afternoon is free, and so we head out into the city looking at sites. There are so many old or beautiful or cool churches here. My favorite is Dormition Abbey--it was built in 1910 to honor Mary. It's light and airy, with lots of white and grey stone, and the chapel has beautiful acoustics that make two girls singing sound like a choir. In the crypt below there's a statue of Mary and mosaics of Old Testament women.
The older churches are cool because they're old, but they tend to be somewhat crowded and gawdy. For example, on Monday we went to Bethlehem and toured the Church of the Nativity. It stands above the cave where, traditionally, Jesus was born. The church was huge and smelled strongly of incense. Mosaics on the wall crumbled away to show bare stone, and painting of saints on the columns have worn down so that you can barely see their faces. A lot of walls have been bare and grey since the Ottomans took their white marble coverings to put in a mosque.
We went down into the cave in a stream. It was covered in brocade hangings, with paintings all around. The manger cut into the rock was covered in marble, and in the spot where the birth supposedly took place they drove a fourteen-pointed iron star into the ground. All very ornate. My favorite part of the trip was when we left the church and gathered in the courtyard of the newer church next door to sing hymns. We sang "Once in Royal David's City," and "Little Town of Bethlehem" and "Silent Night." Some German tourists passing by joined in for "Silent Night" and filmed us with their cameras.
On Monday we leave for Galilee to live in bungalows on the beach for two weeks. I'm so excited!
-Stella
February 28
Dear ones,
On Friday, an Israeli folk dance teacher came and taught us dances. We danced in circles with our arms flung over each other's shoulders and jumped up and down and frolicked the night away for over an hour. The instructor, Boaz, invited us all to a Purim party at his dance studio.
Purim started tonight at sundown. It celebrates Esther saving the Jews, and it's essentially Jewish Halloween. Everybody dresses up. We were planning to go out on Ben Yehuda street, where there are lots of shops and bakeries and gelatto places, but there's been freezing cold rain all day. And also apparently people are into drunken revelries on Purim, so we decided to go to Boaz's studio instead.
There we met a lot of middle-aged people who have been taking his class for months and knew all the steps. Everyone was in costume and there was a chocolate fountain.
All in all, excitement and joy!
-Stella
On Friday, an Israeli folk dance teacher came and taught us dances. We danced in circles with our arms flung over each other's shoulders and jumped up and down and frolicked the night away for over an hour. The instructor, Boaz, invited us all to a Purim party at his dance studio.
Purim started tonight at sundown. It celebrates Esther saving the Jews, and it's essentially Jewish Halloween. Everybody dresses up. We were planning to go out on Ben Yehuda street, where there are lots of shops and bakeries and gelatto places, but there's been freezing cold rain all day. And also apparently people are into drunken revelries on Purim, so we decided to go to Boaz's studio instead.
There we met a lot of middle-aged people who have been taking his class for months and knew all the steps. Everyone was in costume and there was a chocolate fountain.
All in all, excitement and joy!
-Stella
February 26
To All and Sundry,
So the teacher for our Islam and Palestinian Civilization class is a Christian Arab man from Bethlehem. A couple weeks ago, Dr. Musallam couldn't come to class because of "technical problems" with his permit--it wouldn't scan right, and the soldier at the border wouldn't let him through. He came the next day, but then he was sick, and then the "technical problems" flared up again. And he went days before he could get a new permit. Brother Brown drove to Bethlehem to bring Dr. Musallam our take-home midterms, and we sent a big yellow card with him that said, "We miss you."
According to Sister Brown, he was deeply touched by the card. Sister Brown sent us a photo of Dr. Musallam holding up the card and beaming, and forwarded us an email from him thanking us and saying that he missed us too. He was able to come yesterday, and today we were supposed to have four full hours of his class to make up for the missed period. But then, this morning, the Israelis closed the border. Purim is on Monday--a festival celebrating Esther, basically a Jewish Halloween. Apparently it's harder to deal with security and identifying suicide bombers when everyone is in costume, so they're closing the West Bank until after Monday.
It's sad, but I think it was good for the students to see the human side of our teacher.
-Stella
So the teacher for our Islam and Palestinian Civilization class is a Christian Arab man from Bethlehem. A couple weeks ago, Dr. Musallam couldn't come to class because of "technical problems" with his permit--it wouldn't scan right, and the soldier at the border wouldn't let him through. He came the next day, but then he was sick, and then the "technical problems" flared up again. And he went days before he could get a new permit. Brother Brown drove to Bethlehem to bring Dr. Musallam our take-home midterms, and we sent a big yellow card with him that said, "We miss you."
According to Sister Brown, he was deeply touched by the card. Sister Brown sent us a photo of Dr. Musallam holding up the card and beaming, and forwarded us an email from him thanking us and saying that he missed us too. He was able to come yesterday, and today we were supposed to have four full hours of his class to make up for the missed period. But then, this morning, the Israelis closed the border. Purim is on Monday--a festival celebrating Esther, basically a Jewish Halloween. Apparently it's harder to deal with security and identifying suicide bombers when everyone is in costume, so they're closing the West Bank until after Monday.
It's sad, but I think it was good for the students to see the human side of our teacher.
-Stella
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
February 16
Salutations,
This Friday a group of twenty of us went with our Judaism teacher to a synagogue in the city. It was a reform synagogue, so boys and girls could sit together, but we tried to disperse ourself through the crowd in groups of two or three so we wouldn't make a huge, silent block.
It turned out to be a youth day, so music was provided by six shaggy-haired sixteen-year-old boys with guitars. The psalms, hymns, and prayers were led by a couple of girls--Laurels, essentially. This meant a lot of singing. Our prayer books had transliterations of the lyrics, but there were no written notes because the songs and prayers can be sung to any melody. It was super hard to follow along, and when we finally caught on to a chorus and were able to belt it out, it felt great. At one point everybody stood up and turned towards the entrance to welcome in the Sabbath Queen.
The music was all in Hebrew, with haunted-sounded folk-y melodies. Momma would have loved it. The feeling during the meeting was vastly different that any Christian church meeting I've gone to, but afterwards, when the meeting was over and everyone milled around and talked, it felt exactly like the milling-around time in the halls after church.
I enjoyed the experience a LOT, but I do want to go to an Orthodox synagogue sometime and see what those feel like.
-Stella
This Friday a group of twenty of us went with our Judaism teacher to a synagogue in the city. It was a reform synagogue, so boys and girls could sit together, but we tried to disperse ourself through the crowd in groups of two or three so we wouldn't make a huge, silent block.
It turned out to be a youth day, so music was provided by six shaggy-haired sixteen-year-old boys with guitars. The psalms, hymns, and prayers were led by a couple of girls--Laurels, essentially. This meant a lot of singing. Our prayer books had transliterations of the lyrics, but there were no written notes because the songs and prayers can be sung to any melody. It was super hard to follow along, and when we finally caught on to a chorus and were able to belt it out, it felt great. At one point everybody stood up and turned towards the entrance to welcome in the Sabbath Queen.
The music was all in Hebrew, with haunted-sounded folk-y melodies. Momma would have loved it. The feeling during the meeting was vastly different that any Christian church meeting I've gone to, but afterwards, when the meeting was over and everyone milled around and talked, it felt exactly like the milling-around time in the halls after church.
I enjoyed the experience a LOT, but I do want to go to an Orthodox synagogue sometime and see what those feel like.
-Stella
February 14
Delightful Ones,
On Thursday a group of seven of us took meals to elderly people in the Old City. It wasn't so much Meals on Wheels since there are no cars in the narrow, windy Old City streets. Meals on Feet. We picked up the meals in this tall, narrow building in the Christian Quarter. On the first floor were board games and couches where the elderly can come and lounge, as well as a lot of wheelchairs with "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" on them. Apparently the Church gives wheelchairs to the organization.
We sat for a while with a man who asked us to call him Abu Balak. He told us about all the things his organization does: sending a nun out to check on people living alone, carrying people in wheelchairs down the many steps of the old city.
Then he led us out into the Christian Quarter. The streets were narrow, like in the Muslim Quarter, but felt more open to the sky, like in the Jewish Quarter. Graffitti crosses were everywhere, and icons hung on the walls. We ended up going to two apartments where old women lived, sitting with them and singing cheerful songs--"There is Sunshine in My Soul" and "Count Your Every Blessing."
One of the women only spoke Arabic, though she seemed to really enjoy us, and we exchanged pleasantries with Abu Balak to translate. The second woman spoke some English. She clapped and danced when we sang and then talked--mostly to me and my friend Kate, since we sat on the couch beside her. She asked Kate if she wanted to get married while she was here, and then recommended her son Jimmy. "If you see Jimmy, you would love him." Then she asked me where I was from. When I said, "Mississipi," she exclaimed "Mississippi!" Then she and Abu Balak laughed very hard for a very long time. It was mysterious.
-Stella
On Thursday a group of seven of us took meals to elderly people in the Old City. It wasn't so much Meals on Wheels since there are no cars in the narrow, windy Old City streets. Meals on Feet. We picked up the meals in this tall, narrow building in the Christian Quarter. On the first floor were board games and couches where the elderly can come and lounge, as well as a lot of wheelchairs with "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" on them. Apparently the Church gives wheelchairs to the organization.
We sat for a while with a man who asked us to call him Abu Balak. He told us about all the things his organization does: sending a nun out to check on people living alone, carrying people in wheelchairs down the many steps of the old city.
Then he led us out into the Christian Quarter. The streets were narrow, like in the Muslim Quarter, but felt more open to the sky, like in the Jewish Quarter. Graffitti crosses were everywhere, and icons hung on the walls. We ended up going to two apartments where old women lived, sitting with them and singing cheerful songs--"There is Sunshine in My Soul" and "Count Your Every Blessing."
One of the women only spoke Arabic, though she seemed to really enjoy us, and we exchanged pleasantries with Abu Balak to translate. The second woman spoke some English. She clapped and danced when we sang and then talked--mostly to me and my friend Kate, since we sat on the couch beside her. She asked Kate if she wanted to get married while she was here, and then recommended her son Jimmy. "If you see Jimmy, you would love him." Then she asked me where I was from. When I said, "Mississipi," she exclaimed "Mississippi!" Then she and Abu Balak laughed very hard for a very long time. It was mysterious.
-Stella
Monday, February 8, 2010
February 8
Dear ones,
We spent the entirety of today trekking about the Shephelah, the low hill country. We saw the place where Samson was born and the valley where David slew Goliath. They even distributed slings and let us wander up and down the valley shooting stones off into the grass. I was actually okay at it, in that I could usually make the stone go forward.
We spent a lot of time underground. There were: the Bell caves, huge white lime quarries shaped like bells with holes in the apex, where we sang and enjoyed the acoustics; cisterns for holding the rain; an underground dovecote lined with dove-sized cubby holes; an olive press complete with wood and stone olive-pressing apparatuses; and Malachi Caves, which were pitch black and lined with holes you could squeeze into and then wriggle through the cave walls, popping out somewhere else. All of the caves smelled like rock and mildew and standing water.
The countryside was beautiful. They say in summer it's all dead and brown, but right now it's covered in bushy green grass, red anenomes, yellow daisies, and little pink flowers. The almond trees are blossoming white and pale pink. Brother Emmett, our Old Testament teacher, says that the locals eat the almond seeds when they're still green and fuzzy. He says they taste like fresh peas, and that you can get almond juice from almond seeds which tastes like marzipan. There were fields everywhere, wheat, grape vines, red peppers protected by canopies of black or white or red plastic. The fields covered in red plastic looked like red lakes and rivers from up on top of the hills.
We wandered across hills covered in the ruins of towns and forts, former archaelogical digs now abandoned. We saw black Bedouin tents, and sheep, and white birds with curving necks, the kind we saw all over the Nile. We crawled through caves until our clothes were covered with dust. We saw the shells of armored cars that carried supplies down the road to Jerusalem during the '48 war. Brother Emmett's children came with us, and we played with them. We were told that, under Israeli law, wildflowers are protected, and it is illegal to pick them. We picked them anyway, and pressed anenomes in our scriptures and stuck them in our hair.
-Stella
We spent the entirety of today trekking about the Shephelah, the low hill country. We saw the place where Samson was born and the valley where David slew Goliath. They even distributed slings and let us wander up and down the valley shooting stones off into the grass. I was actually okay at it, in that I could usually make the stone go forward.
We spent a lot of time underground. There were: the Bell caves, huge white lime quarries shaped like bells with holes in the apex, where we sang and enjoyed the acoustics; cisterns for holding the rain; an underground dovecote lined with dove-sized cubby holes; an olive press complete with wood and stone olive-pressing apparatuses; and Malachi Caves, which were pitch black and lined with holes you could squeeze into and then wriggle through the cave walls, popping out somewhere else. All of the caves smelled like rock and mildew and standing water.
The countryside was beautiful. They say in summer it's all dead and brown, but right now it's covered in bushy green grass, red anenomes, yellow daisies, and little pink flowers. The almond trees are blossoming white and pale pink. Brother Emmett, our Old Testament teacher, says that the locals eat the almond seeds when they're still green and fuzzy. He says they taste like fresh peas, and that you can get almond juice from almond seeds which tastes like marzipan. There were fields everywhere, wheat, grape vines, red peppers protected by canopies of black or white or red plastic. The fields covered in red plastic looked like red lakes and rivers from up on top of the hills.
We wandered across hills covered in the ruins of towns and forts, former archaelogical digs now abandoned. We saw black Bedouin tents, and sheep, and white birds with curving necks, the kind we saw all over the Nile. We crawled through caves until our clothes were covered with dust. We saw the shells of armored cars that carried supplies down the road to Jerusalem during the '48 war. Brother Emmett's children came with us, and we played with them. We were told that, under Israeli law, wildflowers are protected, and it is illegal to pick them. We picked them anyway, and pressed anenomes in our scriptures and stuck them in our hair.
-Stella
February 7
Salutations!
When we first got here, the country was still in the grip of a years-long drought. It was hot and dry, and I thought to myself, "How nifty that I did not take up too much room in my suitcase packing warm clothes."
Then, the week we went to Egypt, a cold, heavy rain swept in. And stayed. It washed out roads in the Sinai and made all the waddis flow in the wilderness. This past week, we've been mostly staying in because of the cold and rain. It even hailed. Our rooms are down these hallways which are open to the sky; it's supposed to be reminiscent of a street in the old city. It means that, to get to breakfast in the morning, you have to run down the hall through freezing rain. Friday I went out to get falafel with a couple of friends, and we ate standing under an arch to keep out of the rain. It was a pleasant day, but my hands hurt from the cold and my fingers went stiff.
Today though, was nice: warm in the sun, chilly in the shade or the wind. Two of my roommates and I went out into the world. We saw Absalom's pillar, supposedly the same one mentioned in 2 Samuel. We also walked up stone steps to Zachariah's tomb, and sat on a ledge between the columns, looking down on the boys herding goats below. Then we wandered up along the wall of the city and saw a few more sites. The coolest was Dormition Abbey, this beautiful Byzantine church full of stained glass windows and mosaics. Mary is supposedly buried in the crypt below, though she also supposedly was translated, so maybe it's just a memorial. Either way, there was a statue of Mary in the basement surrounded by glittering mosaics. We met up with some other girls there, and we listened as a Latin song floated up from the crypt. Then we sang, "I Believe in Christ" just because, and the acoustics were amazing.
Afterwards we got hamburgers in a kosher restaurant in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. It was truly delicious, and even now I feel replete. Beautiful day!
-Stella
When we first got here, the country was still in the grip of a years-long drought. It was hot and dry, and I thought to myself, "How nifty that I did not take up too much room in my suitcase packing warm clothes."
Then, the week we went to Egypt, a cold, heavy rain swept in. And stayed. It washed out roads in the Sinai and made all the waddis flow in the wilderness. This past week, we've been mostly staying in because of the cold and rain. It even hailed. Our rooms are down these hallways which are open to the sky; it's supposed to be reminiscent of a street in the old city. It means that, to get to breakfast in the morning, you have to run down the hall through freezing rain. Friday I went out to get falafel with a couple of friends, and we ate standing under an arch to keep out of the rain. It was a pleasant day, but my hands hurt from the cold and my fingers went stiff.
Today though, was nice: warm in the sun, chilly in the shade or the wind. Two of my roommates and I went out into the world. We saw Absalom's pillar, supposedly the same one mentioned in 2 Samuel. We also walked up stone steps to Zachariah's tomb, and sat on a ledge between the columns, looking down on the boys herding goats below. Then we wandered up along the wall of the city and saw a few more sites. The coolest was Dormition Abbey, this beautiful Byzantine church full of stained glass windows and mosaics. Mary is supposedly buried in the crypt below, though she also supposedly was translated, so maybe it's just a memorial. Either way, there was a statue of Mary in the basement surrounded by glittering mosaics. We met up with some other girls there, and we listened as a Latin song floated up from the crypt. Then we sang, "I Believe in Christ" just because, and the acoustics were amazing.
Afterwards we got hamburgers in a kosher restaurant in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. It was truly delicious, and even now I feel replete. Beautiful day!
-Stella
Sunday, January 31, 2010
January 19
Greetings!
I haven't written for a week because I have been in... dun dun dun... Egypt!
Every day was crammed full of sites. We saw the pyramids, and even went inside one. We got into the second biggest pyramid by crawling through this tiny tunnel that sloped up and down and finally opened up into a big burial chamber. It was warm and stuffy inside, and I'm really glad I came in Winter. We kept saying to each other, "I'm taking a drink from my water bottle in a pyramid." "I'm putting my hair in a ponytail in a pyramid." Someone suggested we sing, and so we sang "High on the Mountaintop" since pyramids were designed to be like mountains, a bridge between earth and heaven. Our voices echoed off the walls, which made the harmony resonate, and we sounded really good.
We also saw the Sphinx and so many statues and temples that they all run together in my head. There were hieroglyphs everwhere, and in the Valley of the Kings a lot of them still had the original, three-thousand-year-old paint, all blue and yellow and red. My favorite temple was Karnak temple. It has a colonnade of massive pillars. Walking in felt like walking into a California redwood forest. I was kinda really sick that day, but I'm glad I was well enough to appreciate Karnak. For the next temple I was utterly out of it, and our medical missionary couple took me back to the hotel early in one of the horse-drawn cabs that are everywhere in Luxor.
The entire time we stayed in really nice hotels. Our hotel in Luxor was right on the Nile, so we could go out and sit on the rocks along the shore. Even at the nice hotels the food was pretty repetitive, though. We were told not to drink tap water or eat fresh fruit and vegetables for fear of Ramses' Revenge (I got sick anyway). For every meal we had rice and bread, bland pasta, greasy meat and boring desert. American desert kicks Middle Eastern desert's trash. All they served was dry cakes and sticky pastries and flan. I could have killed for a brownie.
They also seem to have arranged for us to take as many forms of transportation as possible. Within Cairo we rode in a tour bus. We took a plane from Cairo to Luxor. One day in Luxor we took a felucca--a sailboat--down the river to a place where we rode camels around the town. The next day we took a water taxi up to Karnak Temple--someone played music and we danced and the guy at the rudder rocked the boat for us. And then there were horse-drawn carriages throughout Luxor. That night we took an overnight train up to Cairo. The train was pretty sketch: generally dingy, and we were told to put our towels over the pillows because they might have fleas. I still thought it was really cool to sleep in a tiny train cabin with pull down bunk beds. I loved the way lights moved across the cabin as we zoomed past.
By law, tour groups in Egypt have to have a security guard and an Egyptian tour guide. Our tour guide was really intensely knowledgeable, and he laughed at his own cheesy jokes, which was endearing. I'm really glad the people we toured with were cool, or I might have come out of this experience kinda racist against Egyptians. The only other Egyptians we met were souvenir hawkers. They were really, really pushy and annoying... and kinda touchy, too. Yeah, that was gross. There were all these Bedouins hanging around the pyramids who would shove headdresses onto your heads and keep saying "Picture, picture." Basically they pushed you into taking a picture with them and then charged you a ridiculous amount for them. One girl they even forcibly picked up and put on a donkey. Also, every grody restroom we stopped at charged us an Egyptian pound each--about a fifth of a dollar. And every restroom had a little girl or a woman in a headscarf inside, eager to shove some toilet paper into your hands or turn on the water in the sink for you and then charge for it.
It was a beautiful time. The last night we slept at a somewhat sketch hotel near the base of Mt. Sinai. We were woken up at 2:30 that morning to go on our hike. The hike was grueling. I spent the entire time looking down at my feet trying not to stumble on the rocks, except every now and then I would stop to rest and then I could look up. There were so many stars, and they were so bright. Near the top the trail give ways to stairs--seven hundred steps carved my monks as penance. It reminded me of the part in the Lord of the Rings where Frodo and Sam find the stairs into Mordor. The little group of girls I hiked with got to the top just in time for the sunset. It was biting cold, far below freezing with a cutting wind. We all huddled together on a slope of rock above a ledge. On the other side the mountain fell away to clouds and valleys and smaller mountains. The sunset was burnt orange and the sun when it came up over the far mountain ridge seemed really close and really golden.
Egypt!
-Stella
I haven't written for a week because I have been in... dun dun dun... Egypt!
Every day was crammed full of sites. We saw the pyramids, and even went inside one. We got into the second biggest pyramid by crawling through this tiny tunnel that sloped up and down and finally opened up into a big burial chamber. It was warm and stuffy inside, and I'm really glad I came in Winter. We kept saying to each other, "I'm taking a drink from my water bottle in a pyramid." "I'm putting my hair in a ponytail in a pyramid." Someone suggested we sing, and so we sang "High on the Mountaintop" since pyramids were designed to be like mountains, a bridge between earth and heaven. Our voices echoed off the walls, which made the harmony resonate, and we sounded really good.
We also saw the Sphinx and so many statues and temples that they all run together in my head. There were hieroglyphs everwhere, and in the Valley of the Kings a lot of them still had the original, three-thousand-year-old paint, all blue and yellow and red. My favorite temple was Karnak temple. It has a colonnade of massive pillars. Walking in felt like walking into a California redwood forest. I was kinda really sick that day, but I'm glad I was well enough to appreciate Karnak. For the next temple I was utterly out of it, and our medical missionary couple took me back to the hotel early in one of the horse-drawn cabs that are everywhere in Luxor.
The entire time we stayed in really nice hotels. Our hotel in Luxor was right on the Nile, so we could go out and sit on the rocks along the shore. Even at the nice hotels the food was pretty repetitive, though. We were told not to drink tap water or eat fresh fruit and vegetables for fear of Ramses' Revenge (I got sick anyway). For every meal we had rice and bread, bland pasta, greasy meat and boring desert. American desert kicks Middle Eastern desert's trash. All they served was dry cakes and sticky pastries and flan. I could have killed for a brownie.
They also seem to have arranged for us to take as many forms of transportation as possible. Within Cairo we rode in a tour bus. We took a plane from Cairo to Luxor. One day in Luxor we took a felucca--a sailboat--down the river to a place where we rode camels around the town. The next day we took a water taxi up to Karnak Temple--someone played music and we danced and the guy at the rudder rocked the boat for us. And then there were horse-drawn carriages throughout Luxor. That night we took an overnight train up to Cairo. The train was pretty sketch: generally dingy, and we were told to put our towels over the pillows because they might have fleas. I still thought it was really cool to sleep in a tiny train cabin with pull down bunk beds. I loved the way lights moved across the cabin as we zoomed past.
By law, tour groups in Egypt have to have a security guard and an Egyptian tour guide. Our tour guide was really intensely knowledgeable, and he laughed at his own cheesy jokes, which was endearing. I'm really glad the people we toured with were cool, or I might have come out of this experience kinda racist against Egyptians. The only other Egyptians we met were souvenir hawkers. They were really, really pushy and annoying... and kinda touchy, too. Yeah, that was gross. There were all these Bedouins hanging around the pyramids who would shove headdresses onto your heads and keep saying "Picture, picture." Basically they pushed you into taking a picture with them and then charged you a ridiculous amount for them. One girl they even forcibly picked up and put on a donkey. Also, every grody restroom we stopped at charged us an Egyptian pound each--about a fifth of a dollar. And every restroom had a little girl or a woman in a headscarf inside, eager to shove some toilet paper into your hands or turn on the water in the sink for you and then charge for it.
It was a beautiful time. The last night we slept at a somewhat sketch hotel near the base of Mt. Sinai. We were woken up at 2:30 that morning to go on our hike. The hike was grueling. I spent the entire time looking down at my feet trying not to stumble on the rocks, except every now and then I would stop to rest and then I could look up. There were so many stars, and they were so bright. Near the top the trail give ways to stairs--seven hundred steps carved my monks as penance. It reminded me of the part in the Lord of the Rings where Frodo and Sam find the stairs into Mordor. The little group of girls I hiked with got to the top just in time for the sunset. It was biting cold, far below freezing with a cutting wind. We all huddled together on a slope of rock above a ledge. On the other side the mountain fell away to clouds and valleys and smaller mountains. The sunset was burnt orange and the sun when it came up over the far mountain ridge seemed really close and really golden.
Egypt!
-Stella
January 19
Many cool things have happened in the last few days. A ninety-year-old Holocaust survivor came for one of the classical music concerts in the center, but before hand he talked to us and gave us his life story. He only speaks Polish, Hebrew, and Spanish, so he spoke in Spanish and a couple of our boys translated. He was actually late to the concert because he wanted to answer all of our questions and take a picture with us and dance to "La Cucaracha."
Yesterday we went to Jericho. We walked around a bunch of ruins, and saw the oldest building in the world, which was sorta green and rocky. It was also the one day in hundreds when it rains in the Judean Wilderness, and the valley was cold and drizzly. However, we hiked up the Mount of Temptation to see a monastery, and up in the mountain the air was hot and muggy. The monastery clings to the side of a cliff near the caves where hermits used to live. Inside, the monastery is a narrow hallway along the side of the mountain and a few caves made into rooms. Girls wore our head-scarves, so we stood out slightly less from the Greek Orthodox pilgrims swarming around us. They discovered we were not one of them when they asked us questions in Greek.
On the way back, we stopped at a rise overlooking the Wilderness. It was huge and barren and beautiful. There's a picture in the back of the Bible which I've seen before, but in real life it left me awestruck. We sang "Dear to the Heart of the Shepherd" and did not buy anything from the Bedouins who hung around, much to their consternation. We did take a picture with a couple of the adorable little Bedouin boys, though, and gave them a couple of our sack lunches for their trouble. I wish we could have done something for the littlest boy who dropped his ball down the ravine. It was quite tragic.
In other news, we leave for Egypt in two days. Egypt! Yay!
-Stella
Yesterday we went to Jericho. We walked around a bunch of ruins, and saw the oldest building in the world, which was sorta green and rocky. It was also the one day in hundreds when it rains in the Judean Wilderness, and the valley was cold and drizzly. However, we hiked up the Mount of Temptation to see a monastery, and up in the mountain the air was hot and muggy. The monastery clings to the side of a cliff near the caves where hermits used to live. Inside, the monastery is a narrow hallway along the side of the mountain and a few caves made into rooms. Girls wore our head-scarves, so we stood out slightly less from the Greek Orthodox pilgrims swarming around us. They discovered we were not one of them when they asked us questions in Greek.
On the way back, we stopped at a rise overlooking the Wilderness. It was huge and barren and beautiful. There's a picture in the back of the Bible which I've seen before, but in real life it left me awestruck. We sang "Dear to the Heart of the Shepherd" and did not buy anything from the Bedouins who hung around, much to their consternation. We did take a picture with a couple of the adorable little Bedouin boys, though, and gave them a couple of our sack lunches for their trouble. I wish we could have done something for the littlest boy who dropped his ball down the ravine. It was quite tragic.
In other news, we leave for Egypt in two days. Egypt! Yay!
-Stella
Shabbot Shalom! (January 16)
On Friday night, we went to the Western Wall to welcome in Shabbot (Sabbath). It was pretty much one of the best experiences of my life. We couldn't take pictures, because you can't set off an electronic impulse on Shabbot. A couple of girls were trying to write down prayers on little slips of paper to stick in the wall, and a man came up and politely asked them not to write on the Sabbath, either.
These big masses of young men spent sang Hebrew songs and danced, sometimes in a circle with their arms around each other, rushing around, sometimes jumping up and down like a mosh pit. About half of them were the soldiers we see everywhere. The older men in big black hats threw the young men long-suffering looks and tried to suffocate all the dancing with their air of solemnity. It didn't work. Our boys were wearing kepahs (that's the Hebrew word for a yarmulke), and the Jewish boys grabbed them and pulled them in. They danced with them and tried to follow along with the singing and apparently had the time of their lives.
The girls there were less exuberant. There was only one small circle of girls dancing and singing, so few that if we tried to join them it would be obvious that we didn't know what we were doing. Kate and I did stand right outside of their circle clapping with them and singing, "Shabbot Shalom," the song we learned in our Hebrew class this week. There are only two words, so we were able to sing with gusto.
Closer to the Wall things were more reverent. Everyone stood in a sort of orderly crowd, waiting for their turn to go up and pray at the wall. It's segregated by gender, so I went up to the women's side. I stood beside a pair of girl-soldiers who rocked back and forth singing a prayer together, and a couple of middle-aged women wearing heavy eye-shadow and gauzy headscarves, and a white-haired woman dressed like a wealthy Russian woman a hundred years ago.
I put a hand on the wall and slipped a prayer I had written on a piece of paper into a crack in the stone, and it was amazing. I would go back every Friday, except we're not allowed in the Old City after sunset.
Love,
Stella
These big masses of young men spent sang Hebrew songs and danced, sometimes in a circle with their arms around each other, rushing around, sometimes jumping up and down like a mosh pit. About half of them were the soldiers we see everywhere. The older men in big black hats threw the young men long-suffering looks and tried to suffocate all the dancing with their air of solemnity. It didn't work. Our boys were wearing kepahs (that's the Hebrew word for a yarmulke), and the Jewish boys grabbed them and pulled them in. They danced with them and tried to follow along with the singing and apparently had the time of their lives.
The girls there were less exuberant. There was only one small circle of girls dancing and singing, so few that if we tried to join them it would be obvious that we didn't know what we were doing. Kate and I did stand right outside of their circle clapping with them and singing, "Shabbot Shalom," the song we learned in our Hebrew class this week. There are only two words, so we were able to sing with gusto.
Closer to the Wall things were more reverent. Everyone stood in a sort of orderly crowd, waiting for their turn to go up and pray at the wall. It's segregated by gender, so I went up to the women's side. I stood beside a pair of girl-soldiers who rocked back and forth singing a prayer together, and a couple of middle-aged women wearing heavy eye-shadow and gauzy headscarves, and a white-haired woman dressed like a wealthy Russian woman a hundred years ago.
I put a hand on the wall and slipped a prayer I had written on a piece of paper into a crack in the stone, and it was amazing. I would go back every Friday, except we're not allowed in the Old City after sunset.
Love,
Stella
January 13
To Sundry,
Today we were free after lunch, so me and Kate and a boy named John set out to see the Church of St. James. On our way we ended up in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. Up until now I've only been to the Muslim Quarter, and I was surprised by the difference. We walked through a sort of tunnel and suddenly the stone was lighter, the streets wider. There were fewer, bigger shops instead of a crowd of stalls to either side.
There we saw a line of columns that have survived since Roman times. We also found our way to a church which purports to be the home of Mark, which would make it the earliest Christian church, and also the site of the last supper. Inside, the chapel was empty, but we could hear the sound of a woman's voice from the floor below. I didn't recognize the language she spoke, but it was a Syrian Orthodox church. Is Syrian a language? We looked at the box of relics behind glass, and the huge curtain hung up to cover the altar, and a dish of burning candles stuck into sand.
Before I went out I stuck five shekels into my pocket as a beggar fund. I seem to see beggars everywhere and want to give some of them something but each time I don't have money on me, or the group wants to go down a different street, or whatever. Today I saw not a single beggar, so I dropped one of my shekels into the church box.
We visited the Church of St. James in the Armenian Quarter and then walked around the walls of the city. We even went inside the walls for a bit, walking up steep and narrow stone steps where it possible we were not supposed to be. It's surprising how many churches and old sites are ungaurded and free to wander around in. At that point we needed to use the restroom, so we decided to follow the road around the Kidron Valley to the Pillar of Absalom and stop to use the restroom at one of the churches along the way.
We stopped at a huge church with a brilliant mosaic on its eave, passing by a garden to get to the doors, in a generally light-hearted and jovial spirit. Kate said, "This looks like the kind of place with a gift shop," and we figured a place with a gift shop would have restrooms. But when we went inside we found a group of visitors, all very quiet. It was the first quiet church I've been to, besides the empty ones. Huge windows lined the walls, but they were made of dark purple glass, so the light that came through was purple and dim. A huge iron screen stood in front of the doors, so not much light came in there either. Inside it was so shadowed and quiet and reverent that the three of us slipped out again.
John said, "I think that was the Church of All Nations," and I said, "So Gethsemane must be near here." And then we realized that the garden we passed coming in was the Garden of Gethsemane. It was kind of a shocking realization. We slipped along the garden fence, quietly, and asked a monk how to get to the restroom. Then I paid my last four beggar shekels to cover me and Kate (it was two shekels per person).
Afterwards, we went back to Gethsemane and stood leaning on the fence for a long time. The garden is all neat, square flower beds and straight gravel paths around the olive trees. The olive trees there are much older than others I have seen because the trees themselves are considered sacred, and can not be chopped down or burned down like other olive trees. They are gnarled and grey, and only have leaves because younger olive branches have been grafted onto the trunk. It was cool and windy, and a great grey cloud swept in over the garden while we stood there, with light in the distance.
Love,
Stella
Today we were free after lunch, so me and Kate and a boy named John set out to see the Church of St. James. On our way we ended up in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. Up until now I've only been to the Muslim Quarter, and I was surprised by the difference. We walked through a sort of tunnel and suddenly the stone was lighter, the streets wider. There were fewer, bigger shops instead of a crowd of stalls to either side.
There we saw a line of columns that have survived since Roman times. We also found our way to a church which purports to be the home of Mark, which would make it the earliest Christian church, and also the site of the last supper. Inside, the chapel was empty, but we could hear the sound of a woman's voice from the floor below. I didn't recognize the language she spoke, but it was a Syrian Orthodox church. Is Syrian a language? We looked at the box of relics behind glass, and the huge curtain hung up to cover the altar, and a dish of burning candles stuck into sand.
Before I went out I stuck five shekels into my pocket as a beggar fund. I seem to see beggars everywhere and want to give some of them something but each time I don't have money on me, or the group wants to go down a different street, or whatever. Today I saw not a single beggar, so I dropped one of my shekels into the church box.
We visited the Church of St. James in the Armenian Quarter and then walked around the walls of the city. We even went inside the walls for a bit, walking up steep and narrow stone steps where it possible we were not supposed to be. It's surprising how many churches and old sites are ungaurded and free to wander around in. At that point we needed to use the restroom, so we decided to follow the road around the Kidron Valley to the Pillar of Absalom and stop to use the restroom at one of the churches along the way.
We stopped at a huge church with a brilliant mosaic on its eave, passing by a garden to get to the doors, in a generally light-hearted and jovial spirit. Kate said, "This looks like the kind of place with a gift shop," and we figured a place with a gift shop would have restrooms. But when we went inside we found a group of visitors, all very quiet. It was the first quiet church I've been to, besides the empty ones. Huge windows lined the walls, but they were made of dark purple glass, so the light that came through was purple and dim. A huge iron screen stood in front of the doors, so not much light came in there either. Inside it was so shadowed and quiet and reverent that the three of us slipped out again.
John said, "I think that was the Church of All Nations," and I said, "So Gethsemane must be near here." And then we realized that the garden we passed coming in was the Garden of Gethsemane. It was kind of a shocking realization. We slipped along the garden fence, quietly, and asked a monk how to get to the restroom. Then I paid my last four beggar shekels to cover me and Kate (it was two shekels per person).
Afterwards, we went back to Gethsemane and stood leaning on the fence for a long time. The garden is all neat, square flower beds and straight gravel paths around the olive trees. The olive trees there are much older than others I have seen because the trees themselves are considered sacred, and can not be chopped down or burned down like other olive trees. They are gnarled and grey, and only have leaves because younger olive branches have been grafted onto the trunk. It was cool and windy, and a great grey cloud swept in over the garden while we stood there, with light in the distance.
Love,
Stella
January 8
To all:
We were able to go out on the town for the first time without a tour guide today. On Friday, which is the Muslim Holy Day, we're not supposed to be in East Jerusalem before 3:00 or after dark, so we only had two hours unless we wanted to go to West Jerusalem and take a taxi back. By three all of the money changers had already closed, thwarting our plans to get falafel. Instead we wandered around aimlessly looking at stuff. At first it was kind of unnerving. On the tour I felt very confident and wanted to explore every alleyway, but it turns out the city feels a lot different when you are in a group of only three girls with no guide and no security guard trailing behind. After about an hour of wandering we were getting more comfortable, though.
In the city we ran across a streaming crowd of pilgrims chanting in Latin, accompanied by priests and nuns. We also saw a couple Franciscan monks. The Franciscans are the order in charge of taking care of Church sites in the Middle East. You can recognize them because they wear long brown robes with white rope tied around their waist. The rope is tied into three knots for Chastity, Poverty, and Obedience. They look like they could have walked out of Brother Cadfael.
The street signs, instead of showing the familiar American street sign man, show a Jewish man in a brimmed hat. Men in those hats, by the way, are everywhere in the West City, and the hats are different shapes according to whichever group the man belongs to. Some of the hats are fat and furry. You also see strings of soldiers with uzis, some in yarmulkes, some not. Some of the soldiers were young girls; every girl has to serve in the military for a year when she's eighteen.
At sunset we came back to the Center and sat outside on a terrace with roses watching the sunset. The call to prayer started up from different spots across the city, including the hill right next to us, and it went on for half an hour.
We were able to go out on the town for the first time without a tour guide today. On Friday, which is the Muslim Holy Day, we're not supposed to be in East Jerusalem before 3:00 or after dark, so we only had two hours unless we wanted to go to West Jerusalem and take a taxi back. By three all of the money changers had already closed, thwarting our plans to get falafel. Instead we wandered around aimlessly looking at stuff. At first it was kind of unnerving. On the tour I felt very confident and wanted to explore every alleyway, but it turns out the city feels a lot different when you are in a group of only three girls with no guide and no security guard trailing behind. After about an hour of wandering we were getting more comfortable, though.
In the city we ran across a streaming crowd of pilgrims chanting in Latin, accompanied by priests and nuns. We also saw a couple Franciscan monks. The Franciscans are the order in charge of taking care of Church sites in the Middle East. You can recognize them because they wear long brown robes with white rope tied around their waist. The rope is tied into three knots for Chastity, Poverty, and Obedience. They look like they could have walked out of Brother Cadfael.
The street signs, instead of showing the familiar American street sign man, show a Jewish man in a brimmed hat. Men in those hats, by the way, are everywhere in the West City, and the hats are different shapes according to whichever group the man belongs to. Some of the hats are fat and furry. You also see strings of soldiers with uzis, some in yarmulkes, some not. Some of the soldiers were young girls; every girl has to serve in the military for a year when she's eighteen.
At sunset we came back to the Center and sat outside on a terrace with roses watching the sunset. The call to prayer started up from different spots across the city, including the hill right next to us, and it went on for half an hour.
Dispatches from the Holy Land
So I'm off at the Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies this semester, and it occurred to me: why exactly am I not blogging this? Therefore, I'm going to post the emails I send my family. Of course, members of my family are the only people who read my blog...
To whom it may concern:
So I got here last night sometime after six and wandered through several Orientation meetings in a dizzy jet-lagged state until falling into bed at 2:30 PM Utah time. I had no problem sleeping because I barely slept at all during the 9 hour flight to Vienna which turned into a 10 hour flight because of an epic snow storm. I spent most of the time listening to the guy beside me talk about the beautiful young Ukrainian girl he had met on the Internet and was flying out to visit. He also gave me lots of life advice and a 50 cent Ukrainian coin.
Austrians are apparently into color. The Austrian Airlines had yellow-green carpets and aquamarine seats, and the stewardesses were bright red suits with blue ascots.
The Center is a gorgeous building, with big windows looking out on the Old City. We can see the Dome of the Rock from here. It is shiny. We're in the middle of the Palestinian part of Jerusalem and within walking distance of the Garden Tomb and Gethsemane. We went on a tour this morning through lots of windy little streets full of shops. Practically all the women wore headscarves, since we're in a Muslim area. Some were otherwise fashionably dressed, but I also saw girls my age wearing ankle-length housecoats over their jeans.
We also quickly passed through the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is this huge church the Catholics say covers Golgotha and the site of the Resurrection. About twenty different sects all have priests in the buildings, including Armenian Orthodox and Roman Catholic. We saw the little Muslim man who has the keys to the building. According to our tour guide (the district president here) they gave Muslims the keys and let them decide when to close and open the building because none of the different sects would be able to agree on the time.
I thought I'd lose weight here because of having to eat in a cafeteria, but the cafeteria food is actually really delicious. They serve familiar food and some local stuff. Also the city is full of beautiful-smelling falafel stands and stalls selling this bread that comes in a loop. We had some; it's covered in seeds and you sprinkle this salty-herby green powder called zatar on it.
Except for three teachers and a handful of service couples, the staff at the center is not LDS. They are Jews and Muslims and Palestinian Christians. They are also very nice, and when we arrived they told us, "Welcome home."
It is all quite awesome.
Love, Stella
To whom it may concern:
So I got here last night sometime after six and wandered through several Orientation meetings in a dizzy jet-lagged state until falling into bed at 2:30 PM Utah time. I had no problem sleeping because I barely slept at all during the 9 hour flight to Vienna which turned into a 10 hour flight because of an epic snow storm. I spent most of the time listening to the guy beside me talk about the beautiful young Ukrainian girl he had met on the Internet and was flying out to visit. He also gave me lots of life advice and a 50 cent Ukrainian coin.
Austrians are apparently into color. The Austrian Airlines had yellow-green carpets and aquamarine seats, and the stewardesses were bright red suits with blue ascots.
The Center is a gorgeous building, with big windows looking out on the Old City. We can see the Dome of the Rock from here. It is shiny. We're in the middle of the Palestinian part of Jerusalem and within walking distance of the Garden Tomb and Gethsemane. We went on a tour this morning through lots of windy little streets full of shops. Practically all the women wore headscarves, since we're in a Muslim area. Some were otherwise fashionably dressed, but I also saw girls my age wearing ankle-length housecoats over their jeans.
We also quickly passed through the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is this huge church the Catholics say covers Golgotha and the site of the Resurrection. About twenty different sects all have priests in the buildings, including Armenian Orthodox and Roman Catholic. We saw the little Muslim man who has the keys to the building. According to our tour guide (the district president here) they gave Muslims the keys and let them decide when to close and open the building because none of the different sects would be able to agree on the time.
I thought I'd lose weight here because of having to eat in a cafeteria, but the cafeteria food is actually really delicious. They serve familiar food and some local stuff. Also the city is full of beautiful-smelling falafel stands and stalls selling this bread that comes in a loop. We had some; it's covered in seeds and you sprinkle this salty-herby green powder called zatar on it.
Except for three teachers and a handful of service couples, the staff at the center is not LDS. They are Jews and Muslims and Palestinian Christians. They are also very nice, and when we arrived they told us, "Welcome home."
It is all quite awesome.
Love, Stella
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