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.