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.