Just a quick update...

I am way behind on blogging so here is a little catch up... I got back a week ago from Turkey and it was amazing! I have tons of stuff to post from that as well as some pretty comical stuff that will help you get through all the historical stuff. Also this past week we went to see a Bedouin women empowerment group that was really interesting.  So starting with the most recent and getting back to Turkey here are some photos from the trip starting with a little background.

So the trip to get to the bedouin town was really long. It was down in the Negev Desert so we drove about 2 and a half hours and it was definitely the desert because it was really hot! The group we went to see is called SIDREH. The issues that their group focus on have to do with the changes in the way the bedouins are living. Traditionally, as nomads it was the responsibility of women to weave the tents that the families live in as well herd the sheep and goats. As the people are now staying in the same place more and more he women have no way to contribute to the families needs and as most live under the poverty line it is necessary for the women to find work; which is hard because most are illiterate.  Well the rest you can learn from the pictures.

This is our tour guide. She was amazing. She spoke great English and had never left the country. She is 27 and unmarried and is working on her masters in Middle Eastern Studies. She has been working with the group for a while and was really knowledgeable about the issues facing her people. 

One of the ways they help the women is to take one of the sills they already have, weaving and help them to earn money through it. They have completely streamlined the process of making a rug and can finish one is about 7-10 days. This is a picture of one of the women there weaving a rug and we got to watch a whole demonstration on home they make the yarn and weave it. 

This was one of the rugs I liked. They sell the rugs at their showroom as well as stores across israel and on their website. The company is called Lakiya weaving if anyone is interested. A few of the women there will be traveling to New Mexico soon to attend a craftsman show. They were selected from a large group of vendors and for most all of them  it will be their first time out of the country and certainly on a plane. 

Next we visited another smaller village that is an unrecognized group of Bedouins. We were there to learn about the literacy program. The town is just shacks without running water or electricity, even in the small medical clinic. The people there have been unable to get recognized as an actual town so they live on constant fear of the government coming and knocking down their homes. The issue is much more complicated than that but all I can give is the nutshell.  O and those are camels...

The literacy program exists because up until just a few years ago there were no bedouin schools and parents fearing for thier daughters would not send them far away fro school. The result is that almost all the women over 30 are completely illiterate. With the help of the program they learn to read and write Hebrew and Arabic. This way they can have a chance at getting jobs at factories and other places as well as helping to teach their children. As you can tell they are very modest. In their culture usually they do not allow pictures to be taken of their women but they made an exception to us because they are so thankful for the small help our center as given them. 

Isn't this the most precious thing you have ever seen? This little barely a few days old kitten was in a big box of yarn and was still all blind. It was just meowing and it made my heart melt. 

Wartime Lullaby

So as some of you know we who are over in Jerusalem have been experiencing a little unrest. So I am going to tell you a little story. Friday during our Islam class we were given an announcement that there may be some trouble in our neighborhood of East Jerusalem. I didn't think too much of it until they told us that we were not permitted to visit our neighborhood or the Old City. This made me a little concerned but I tried not to think too much of it. After class I headed down to my room and when I got there I started hearing noises and I went outside to look. Well, it seemed that our neighbors were firing guns off the rooftop and lighting smoke bombs in the street. One of my teacher's kid who lives in the Center made me feel soooo much better.

Being a wise little three year old she let me know that she couldn't go to the playground today because they were lighting fires there. She acted like it was nothing. So after movie night I went to get ready for bed and as I was laying there I started to hear these loud booms! Like window shaking loud. So I crept out to my balcony to see and literally right below our building in the street there were gangs of people lighting fires in a dumpster in the street and blowing up more smoke bombs - it was nuts! Then yesterday we went on full lockdown and no one was allowed to leave the center. Needless to say I am excited to go to Turkey today. All this is happening because of Nakba day.

Nakba in Arabic means catastrophe and it is referring to the 1948 creation of the Israel state. It's funny because earlier this week we were at a huge party in West Jerusalem with the Israelis and it was a happy celebration of these events and now we are experiencing the opposite effect of all those events. I really wish I could have taken some pictures because they were literally right outside my window but we were told not to because if either side thought that we were a journalist or a government worker that could cause big problems for us and being dragged into the street and stoned wasn't on my todo list. If you want to know more there is a pretty good article here: http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/palestinian-protesters-clash-with-israeli-forces-in-east-jerusalem-as-nakba-day-begins-1.361793

Well I leave for Turkey in a half hour so I should probably get going. I will be internet-less and phone-less for a week so expect lots of long blog posts when I get back next Sunday.

The Walls Will Tumble... The Walls Will Tumble

"But I'm not gonna cry" So you may be wondering what this is referring to… So basically ever since we went to Jericho this week that Hilary Duff song has been stuck in my head - constantly. You should look it up because it is a cute song but it gets more than a little annoying after five days... Anyways on Monday we headed out on our second field trip and I thought Jericho deserved it's own post so here it is. They aren't lying when they say "going down to Jericho." In Jerusalem the elevation is 2500 ft (probably closer to 2700 ft on top of Mt. Scopus) And Jericho is at 850 ft... below Mediterranean Sea Level. The drive is only about half an hour. As we were driving you could tell it was going to be a hot day, once we hit the Midbar wilderness there was nothing but brown all around us. Every so often nestled in the hills you could see Bedouin camps with their make shift corrugated steel shacks and children next to the freeway with their donkeys. Technically Jericho is in the West Bank and is under Palestinian control. We had to stop at checkpoints as we went along, but overall it was an extremely simple process. It's amazing that there are people who literally cannot get to Jerusalem because of the Separation Wall but the trip to Jericho was so easy because there is no wall in that little window of area. The area of Jericho is just a well but there is a spring there that makes all the land around it incredibly lush. I wish I had gotten a picture of the comparison of all the brown to actual Jericho which is like a tropical oasis.

The Spring of Elisha Fountain!

This is the oldest man made structure dating back to the middle bronze era.  Let's just say my life was not changed by seeing it.

The GREEN fields of Jericho.

This is the actual spring inside its own spring house. It's actually illegal for us to go into the springhouse but the guard on duty liked us so he let us in :)

Our group photo!

Walking the City Walls

The day for it was perfect. There was a light breeze but it was also just warm enough in the bright sun to get a slight tan. Last week we went to the Old City through Jaffa gate and found what I think is the best bang for your buck experience in Jerusalem. For just 6 shekels (less than 2 bucks!) we got to do the ramparts walk. This is basically just a ticket to get up on top of the walls of the City. The views were amazing and it took us a good 2 hours to get from Jaffa Gate to Lions Gate. It probably would have taken less time but I took a ton of pictures. We went in the afternoon so as we were finishing the sun was starting to go down. It really helped orient me with the directions of the city. Even now looking back there are things in pictures that I didn't know about then but I do now. I had a little fun editing them but I hope you like them.

This is the entrance to Damascus Gate if you were looking down from the inside. It smells a lot nicer up on the wall with a breeze compared with down in the market. Also, this is where a lot of people get pick pocketed so hold on to your purse!

DOTR

My Home again! (the one with the arched windows)

So in this pic is the Russian Church of the Ascension in gold. and that hillside is covered in...graves. Just below it is where the Garden of Gethsemane is and this hillside is where many believe the Second Coming (or first if you are Jewish) will occur. Some of the graves date back to the second century and people are still being buried there today!

This was an interesting Catholic funeral procession we saw . The casket was glass and the pallbearers were all bishops or priests or something. I wish I had gotten my camera out sooner.

Just some homes in the old city.

The street outside the birthplace of Mary. I am finding that there are often two places where the event occurred... I wonder how that can happen? lol

Our First Night

I forgot to post this before, but the first night we got here we were exhausted and all I really wanted to do was go to bed but Jerusalem wanted to welcome us here with an awesome thunder and lightning storm. I took a short video of it with my camera and got some of the lightning over The Dome of the Rock.

First Night

The first we got her we were exhausted! They took us off the plane after 27 hours of travel and then dragged us through an additional 5 hours of orientations (they did feed us dinner though) and when I finally got to my room all I wanted to do was sleep! but it turned out I had the most amazing view from my room patio and as we were standing out there it started to thunder and lightning. It was so amazing and I videoed this awesome clip of the Dome of the Rock. Turn off the sound though because i am pretty sure I sound like an idiot. Well enjoy the view I had on my first night in the Holy Land :)

May 1st- First day in the City :)

So this was our first free day to explore the city as well as the first time we were able to take cameras with us. We are supposed to leave the center in groups of at least three which can make it hard to do what everyone wants to do. I had planned to head out with one group of people but when I realized there were twenty people with them I decided to hop ship so I invited myself with a smaller group as they were walking out the door. The day ended up being an adventure!

We headed to the Old City via Lion's or St. Stephen's Gate. We were planning to go to The Dome of the Rock but we ended up being there when they don't let white people in (the vendors terms, not mine haha). So we wandered our way into Bethesda. Bethesda is the pools where it is said that Jesus healed a lame man when no one had the compassion to place him in the bubbling waters of Bethesda. There is a cool church there now called St. Anne's after the Virgin Mary's mother. The pictures captions will describe what we did there but one thing I didn't get a picture of was this Spanish woman holding this kitten. There are feral dirty cats all over Jerusalem and as most people know I love cats but even I won't touch these cats because I am pretty sure it would kill me. Well this tourist picked up the kitten and was holding it over her head and cooing to it like in Lion King. It was really ridiculous and you could tell the cat was terrified.

Next we went to Jimmy's Bazaar; Jimmy has a shop selling really cool olive wood carvings and he caters to Mormons. One guy in the group said he needed to go say hi because him mom buys a lot of stuff from Jimmy. Little did we know that his house is like an olive wood museum and she is like Jimmy's best customer. Jimmy welcomed us so warmly and showed us everything in his store and then he took us next door to his friend's restaurant called the Philadelphia. We realized soon after we walked through the door that it was a really nice restaurant that had hosted both Jimmy Carter and Chelsea Clinton. He bought us a shwarma dinner (shwarma is basically meat in pita). It was absolutely amazing food, especially the hummus and we were so stuffed. That's him in the picture with us at the restaurant. We now LOVE Jimmy and visit him often.

Jimmy and us at Philadelphia!

Door to St. Anne's: Interestingly, the church was to be destroyed in the Islamic conquest but was saved by a Muslim whose name I don't remember but it was used for a time as an Islamic school so there is Arabic writing above the door and was later restored to the Catholic church. 

I love the wildflowers here and especially all the poppies. They will all be dead shortly since the rains have been long gone but I am trying to take pictures of them now so I can remember that this place isn't always so brown. 

Bad pic of me but this is in an underground basilica to St. Anne under the church. The colors were so beautiful!

I am so terrible!

I have been doing super good at emailing and kinda of good at journaling and awful at blogging. but I promise to do better from here in out. Don't put too much stake in that however. Well I will just give a rundown for some people still unaware. I have been in Israel now for 2 weeks but it feels like forever and is really starting to feel like home. I am studying at the Jerusalem Center through BYU; the center sits a top Mt. Scopus next to the Hebrew University in East Jerusalem. The neighborhood were the center sits is pretty much entirely Palestinian. It sounds far off because we sit on a mountain but it's really just a 5 minute walk across the Kidron valley to get to the Old City. I feel like we have done a ton since getting here so I will write some posts on the highlights but needless to say they keep us going non-stop. We are taking classes in language, politics, archaeology and bible studies. We have field trips and other activities as well. There are 80 students and two young families as well as 4 service couples that live in the center. This is all the background info I can think of for now but if you want to know anything else just comment and I will answer it in a future post. I apologize for how ugly the blog is. I am technologically challenged and I have already devoted two hours to it and have given up. Well here is to the Holy Land for the next 4 months.

The Jerusalem Center is in the left corner with the black arched windows. Not the best pic but it gives an idea of were it is in relation to the Dome of the Rock and Old City.