Post-finals perfection

Wow! I didn't realize it's been this long since I've last written... sorry! This week was awesome, and I have a lot to share.

In my last post, I talked about my excursion with some friends in West Jerusalem for some post-finals frolicking. I suppose the rest of this past week was a continuation of said celebration!

Saturday was amazing... fast and testimony meeting. We were on lockdown for the rest of the day, so I had a lot of thinking time. Life is stressful, and more and more I'm appreciating the opportunity to take a step back and take an inventory of my life. Saturday night we were all privledged to hear an organ concert from Bro. Whipple (who is an AMAZING man and an AMAZING organist) overlooking the city lights of Jerusalem.

Sunday was the best/perfect day ever! In the morning 10 of us left for Tel Aviv. Even while we were driving, we were all ridiculously happy. We shopped for a bit, hung out at the beach for a few hours, and did some wandering. It was awesome to go to the beach and just veg. We made sand pyramids (sand castles are SO a western hemisphere thing!), took slow-motion silouette videos, and frolicked about. We even got pizza and gelato!!! But the best part of the day was just relaxing and talking with some of my favorite people.

Monday was a field trip to Bethlehem, which was an amazing learning experience, and not in all of the ways you might expect. Bethlehem is in the West Bank, and so we went through a few checkpoints to get throught the wall separating Jerusalem from the West Bank. Once in the WB, we found that it wasn't so different. Our first stop was Bethlehem University, which is run by the Catholic Church, although it has a Muslim majority. We heard a lecture from a Palestinian activist (although the room was super warm, so I may have been doing my narcoleptic Argentinian impression), and then had a Q&A session with 3 students of the university. 2 of them lived in the WB, but one was from Jerusalem. She has special paperwork in order for her to get through the checkpoints. On it, her nationality is left blank. Israel won't grant her citizenship, but won't allow her Palestinian citizenship either. A girl w/o a country. Then we walked around the campus, feeling kind of on display. We were able to visit the church of the Nativity, as well as a few other churches. The have churches for everything! There's even the milk grotto church, which commemorates where Mary supposedly had a nurding mis-hap and spilled some milk. Weird? Weirded out? Confused? Me too. The Nativity church was beautiful, but not peaceful. Tour groups were stampeding while the priest was trying to rush us thru, "pictures 2 at a time please!!!". Suprsingly, the most peaceful place was on a street corner just waiting around for others to do their shopping.

Wednesday a group of us went to go to Oskar Shindler's grave. Once we'd walked for 30ish minutes, we found the gate locked. So we decided to wander a bit. We went to the Church of Gallicantu, which is where the trial of Christ may have taken place. Its also where Peter and John may have been imprisoned. Its my favorite church here thus far. As opposed to the other churches, it is bright inside. We also went to the Dormition Abbey, which memorializes Mary's death. But the best part of the day was discussions with friends about the meaning of life... That night we had an Arab culture night. A man and his son came and talked to us about the prayer, and sang a few verses out of the Quran for us. Then we stuffed ourselves with DELICIOUS Arab food (yeah Hummus!!!) and then preceded to do Arabic folk dancing.

Thursday we had another field trip to some Biblical gardens. I wasn't expecting much, but it was actually one of my favorite field trips thus far. We walked around beautiful gardens (which made me feel like I was on a hike in Henry Coe) talking about Bible stories, hand making pitas, and reflecting on life.

***Note, I'm getting tired and so I realize these posts are getting shorter, sorry!***

Lastly, for the past few days I've started doing some circuit training with a few friends from here. My legs are dead, my butt is sore, but my gut is retreating!

Alas my friends... I need to sleep. I'll probably read this in the morning and edit all of it. Sorry if you read the ADD version. Love ya!