Introducing...The Oasis

       I thought that today might be an appropriate day to show you where we eat every day. This is what we call the Oasis. The food here is certainly not your typical college student's PB&J for lunch with a bowl of Top Ramen for dinner. It’s about as far from food on a budget as you can get, let me explain a little better. Our head chef, when he is not cooking for JC students is the cook for... the King of Jordan. That’s correct, you read the words right...the King of Jordan! haha pretty awesome I'll admit :D ok but a bit of a disclaimer, we've never had a meal quite as fancy as the pictures you see here, today a film crew came in to remake the Jerusalem Center video and I suspect that this may have influenced the elaborateness of the meals that we had today. Whatever the reason, I was impressed.

          So the Oasis itself is pretty spectacular. We often eat outside with the view of the Old City just over the JC rose bushes. You couldn't ask for a better view! Oh and the best part...we don't have to wash our own dishes ;)

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The Book of Samuel

The Old Testament is really quite remarkable! I've never read so much of it all at once. The assignment for today is to read all of first Samuel and halfway through the second book of Samuel too. Needless to say, it's a lot. But I'm really enjoying it, I'm beginning to get a feel of the continuity of the Israelite story not just a conglomeration of cool stories stacked in a book. It's a lot of work and so therefore I'm learning tons :) I love learning.


Sorry about the boring pictures, I don't really know what else to post because this really is what I've been staring at all day.

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Shephelah

I love field trips. Today we spent the entire day stomping around The Shephelah, where many of the Biblical stories took place. For example the picture directly beneath this paragraph is in the valley of Sorek, where Samson was born and raised. Pretty awesome to be there :)

This picture overlooks the Elah Valley, the very one where David slew Goliath!

Practicing up on our sling shot skills in David's infamous valley.

This is our fellow JC student David conquering Goliath (aka the tallest JC student in our class)

These limestone caves were just awesome. Not a whole lot to do with the Biblical stories...but they had fantastic acoustics :D

Like I said, these caves inspired awesomness ;)

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The day of holidays

Today I and about 98% of all the JC students got up at four in the morning so that we could see the sun rise on the western wall on Shavuot. It was a simple experience, there wasn't any organized celebration as far as I was aware of but the place was absolutely packed! Everyone there was quietly reading or reciting personal prayers to heaven. It was beautiful and awe inspiring. After our early morning adventures I went with a group to Mass. Seeing as today is also the day of Pentecost I thought it a rather fitting time for me attend one for the first time. I really enjoyed it! At first it was surprising to be participating in a form of Christian worship again. I mean we have services as Latter day Saints bit I've been to so many Islamic and Jewish places of worship recently that I was genuinely surprised to be singing praises to Jesus Christ. I loved it, of corse it was different from what I'm used to but I loved to sing and worship with other Christians together in Jerusalem on the day if Pentecost. There is something remarkable about the people of faith that live here in Jerusalem, there is a certain... humility about them I guess, every person of faith that I have met shows a quiet awe and respect for this place the holy land. What happened here is bigger than all of us, and it seems to me that many people
understand that.

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The Sabbath

        I love the Sabbath. No week is complete without it and no day makes me feel more at home than our wonderful day of worship. We got to sing in Sacrament meeting today. The ward choir is excellent, such a talented group of students here. I have nothing but good things to say about everybody, I love them. Its slightly hilarious though because when it was time for the choir to go up and sing about 70% of the whole congregation stood up and walked on stage. The student body makes up a huge amount of the branch and of the students almost all of them are in the ward choir. Sounds really great too, we've got a lot of talent and a choir director with a lot of knowledge so it’s a good combination. We sight read an arrangement of "Master the Tempest is Raging" today. It’s pretty hard, but it sounds AMAZING. I can't wait to learn it and then sing it from a boat on the waters of Galilee. Life here is so full of different activities that provide for such an enriching experience. Life is good :)

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A Walk Through Jerusalem

‘tis a lovely thing to spend the afternoon in Jerusalem. We just went out for a walk, we didn’t have any destination in mind but simply went out to enjoy the city. It was a nice way to spend our time after hours of class on end today. Hmm so much homework and so many classes, its hard to find the balance between fun time spent in the city and time spent with a text book at home. Well I enjoy what I’m learning and I enjoy time in the city so I suppose it’s a win win either way. On Sunday my friends and I are planning to spend the entire day out and I'm stoked. We're headed to the Western Wall at 4:30 in the morning to see the dawn of a Jewish holiday and then we'll go to the temple mount and after that spend the rest of the time in the Israel museum (which I hear is really awesome). So I'm getting excited about that. In the mean time I am really looking forward to Shabbat. It got cut short last week because we were flying back from Turkey, but tomorrow we have all three hours of church and a whole day that I can't do any homework :D I love Shabbat, it brings happiness to my soul :D Hehe ok it must be getting late or something, goodnight.

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The Promised Pictures

As promised these are the pictures from yesterday's Arab Culture Night. It was a really good time, not gonna lie I thought it was awesome. I didn't expect it to be so elaborate when I heard about it, but they really made it into something great. A lot of the students went out and bought clothing for the event but quite a few others just borrowed from Shabbon (the Merchant friend of the JC who offered to let me take a product he was selling and pay for it later) He's quite the favorite around here:) So yep, that was last night. Today has consisted of doing homework and ...yeah homework some more. So unless you want another picture of my papers and laptop I'll be content to leave you with these stories and pictures from last night :D

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wow, time is moving fast!