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