FIRST POST IN THE HOLY LAND

                Ohhhkay, well I’ve always told myself that I wasn’t going to jump on the whole bandwagon of blogging, trying to stick it to the man I guess, but I figure that this is probably better than my boring emails so here we go!  I’m just warning you though, I’m not the best writer and I tend to be one of those people who always starts their journal entries with, “I’m sorry I haven’t written in forever,” so that may just be the worst combination that I’ve got going on.  Nevertheless, I’m really going to try to do a blog post once a week(although I’ve already been here four) and I’ll try to keep it short, sweet, and to the point.  Trying to sum up what has happened since I’ve been here is nearly impossible so I’ll probably just include a lot of pictures so I don’t get too frustrated. 

                First of all, getting here was quite the trip.  My roommate from Provo took me and two others to the airport and honestly yeah, I was a little sad but I wasn’t nervous like I thought I was going to be.  It wasn’t until we got to New York that I realized how nervous I really was and how different of a culture I was about to step into for the next four months.  Seeing the Greek Orthodox men with their curled sideburns and knowing that some of the people on my flight to Tel Aviv couldn't speak English very well really started to scare me.  Even walking through the city the first time, all I could think was what I had just gotten myself into.  Since then though, surprisingly this place is starting to feel home to me and I love the city. 

                This picture is one of the first pictures I took here in the Holy Land!  One of the first couple days we got here it was snowing and we woke up to this beautiful view outside of the Jerusalem Center.  They seriously never get snow here and haven’t had a snow “storm” like this in over 10 years I think they said.  

The Jerusalem Center (JC) is seriously the best…although sometimes I feel a little trapped.  It is the most gorgeous building, located on the Mount of Olives and is basically a big boarding school I feel like.  There are about 60 girls and 20 guys here(I could write a whole blog post about that), we live in four-person apartments, and we live in the same building as our teachers.  We sleep, eat, go to school, workout(not me), and go to church all in the same building.  Although it is a little strange to have one of your teachers in your bishopric and to see your teachers and their families at the movies on Friday night, I actually love it here and can already tell that it’s going to be hard to leave.

But yeah, from the Jerusalem Center we have a gorgeous view of the Dome of the Rock as well as the Old City of Jerusalem.  Pretty much everything is all the same color out in the city but it’s really starting to grow on me!

Confession time, I haven’t really spent much money on the souvenirs. I’m still in the phase of wanting to solely buy food and candy.  Ooops.  The picture of the kid carrying those giant bagel looking things, okay those are delicious.  I’ve only had one so far but it really is just like a giant bagel that you open up and put these green spices inside.  Don’t know what it is or what it’s called but I love it.  The glorious picture of me eating is a schwarma, which is a really popular food here.  It’s basically this delicious meat(I’ve had turkey and lamb so far) that they put inside a pita with a bunch of toppings inside-including fries!  Wooo!

We have already gone to so many places since I’ve been here that I’m going to spare both myself and you from trying to talk about all of them.  Basically though, how our weeks work here is that we go to school Tuesday through Friday, have our Sabbath on Saturday, free day on Sunday, and then a field trip on Monday!  So far some of the highlights have been going to the Garden Tomb, Jericho, the Dome of the Rock, Bethlehem, the Western Wall, the Old City numerous times, the Garden of Gethsemane, and we just got back from our trip to Jordan, which deserves a whole blog post by itself.

                I’ve already met so many wonderful people and I feel lucky to be able to study here in the Holy Land!

Sneak peek at my adventures in Jordan.