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
Saturday, March 27, 2010
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
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