Just Another Day in the Holy Land

I was talking to some girls at dinner last about how everyday here is such an adventure, and we talk about it so nonchalantly. Every night the first thing we ask each other is, "So, what did you do today?". Sometimes you get the answer of, "oh, I stayed in and caught up on some reading." but most of the time it's some amazing activity with a really fun story attached. And yet, it's so common place to have an exciting story here that we just expect a cool story when we ask that question. So although, I didn't do anything amazing today by Jerusalem Center standards, it was still a pretty sweet day by any other standards. So here is my "average"day that I had today. :)


This morning we had 4 hours of class in the morning (Old Testiment and Jewish History) and after lunch a group of us went into the Old City - walking along the now clean streets - and spent about about and hour or so wandering around the Old City, checking out the shops and wandering down streets we hadn't been to yet. We ended up at our favorite shop, Shaban's. He is the nicest man and loves "his mormon students" and gives us really good deals on everything. He gave us free orange juice and pitas while we were talking to him.

It's so funny how everyone here recognizes us. Everytime we walk down the street we get a ton of people call out to us, "Hey mormons! We love the mormons!" We won't even be wearing any BYU stuff but they all just somehow seem to know who we are, and they love us!

So, anyway, after we left Shaban's we went over to the Pool of Bethesda, where Christ healed the lame man that had been sitting by the waters edge for years. They have excavated down to were the pool actually was and it was beautiful. There is also a church there (of course) and the 6 of us went in there and sang I am a Child of God and I Know that My Redeemer Lives. It sounded so pretty - the accoustics were amazing. And afterwards, a Russian man who lives here came over to us and told us it was beautiful and talked to us for a while. I love being able to meet the people. There are so many different cultures and backgrounds here, but everyone is so nice. I've been able to meet some really interesting people here.

Then we came back, ate dinner on the patio overlooking the city as the sunset. Like I said, just another average day in the Holy Land. :)