Dreamland

DISCLAIMER: Excuse the lack of pictures. I'm working on it.

The reason for the title is twofold: 1) I am beyond tired and wish I WAS in dreamland; and 2) I feel like I AM in dreamland being here. It honestly doesn't feel real. I mean, I've heard, read, and studied all about Jerusalem in various shapes and forms for the last 24 years. And now I'm actually here? It's almost impossible to wrap my mind around the fact that I am in a place where SO much history has happened. Wow. (Ps. I'm sure the phrases 'wow', 'crazy', and 'SOO cool' will begin to sound extremely redundant in a few months time. Sorry about that. Words entirely fail me here.)

I was completely out of it for my last post, by the way. I just realized I left out two things that I loved from Wednesday. First of all, once we got settled into the Jerusalem Center (henceforth known as the JC), we had an orientation meeting that night in the auditorium. Now, mind you, this is no ordinary auditorium - no, this one comes complete w/ a panoramic view of Jerusalem. We opened the meeting w/ a hymn, and so the very first song we sang in Jerusalem was "Israel, Israel, God is Calling." Loved it.

Second of all, in a later meeting Brother Chadwick (the professor mentioned in my last post)  discussed 2 Nephi 25: 5-6 with us. He said that through this program we are able to be like Nephi because even though we won't always stay in Jerusalem, we will have a better understanding of the scriptures because of our experience here. I just loved his analysis, so I'm going to share the scripture and bold the parts to which we paid particular interest. You can then draw the conclusions, for the sake of brevity.

5 Yea, and my soul delighteth in the words of Isaiah, for I came out from Jerusalem, and mine eyes hath beheld the things of the Jews, and I know that the Jews do understand the things of the prophets, and there is none other people that understand the things which were spoken unto the Jews like unto them, save it be that they are taught after the manner of the things of the Jews.

 6 But behold, I, Nephi, have not taught my children after the manner of the Jews; but behold, I, of myself, have dwelt at Jerusalem, wherefore I know concerning the regions round about; and I have made mention unto my children concerning the judgments of God, which hath come to pass among the Jews, unto my children, according to all that which Isaiah hath spoken, and I do not write them.

I might add that the end of verse 5 was significant because it explains WHY Nephi loved the words of Isaiah so much - he was able to understand them because he had personally been taught after the manner of the things of the Jews. Awesome. (This is one of those parts of my blog that is probably only interesting to me, and boring to the rest of you. Sorry. Just wanna remember some of these things later, ya know?)

Moving on. Yesterday (Thursday) we went on our first walking tour of Jerusalem. It. Was. Awesome. Somehow my little group ended up w/ Brother Chadwick as our guide. (I SWEAR there are other professors here!) I am SOOO glad we had him. He is an archaeologist and knows tons about Israel. The tour was great, although it was a little bit of information overload. Some of yesterday's highlights were:

• Eating pudding for breakfast that was labeled entirely in Hebrew.
• Learning about the different stones that make up the wall of the Old City. (Brother Chadwick showed us the differences in the stone that came from the Crusader era, Herodian Era, etc.) Wanna know which stones were here when Christ was? Come visit me and I'll show you.
• Walking through East Jerusalem (the muslim area). A lot of the shops were closed up for Ramadan, but we still learned all the good places to go later. Also, we each had large water bottles w/ us, but we couldn't drink at all in the muslim areas because we had to be respectful of the fact that they were fasting.
• Walking past the Garden Tomb entrance. (We didn't go in, though.)
• Stopping outside Damascus Gate for a drink before we went in through the muslim quarter of the Old City. While we were drinking, some of the JC security guards came up to us and told us to stop because we were offending the muslims who were walking by us. Brother Chadwick told the security guards to relax because the muslims clearly know we are not part of them and are not fasting, and he didn't want us getting dehydrated, dang it. Cultural sensitivity is a HUGE issue here.
• Entering the Old City through Damascus Gate and seeing all the shops.
• Taking a tour of the Austrian Hospice. This place is a hostel in the bottom and a hotel and restaurant in the top. Or something like that. Way cool though. It looked really medieval-y and I just loved it.
• Following a Procession of the Cross. Almost everyday Christian pilgrims follow the route that Jesus likely took when He was carrying His cross. A few people in the front carry a cross, and the rest of the people follow and sing/chant. There are 14-ish stations where they stop to talk about what happened at that particular station. It's amazing to witness the dedication so many people have toward their religion. The cool thing about being here is instead of being afraid of other religions or instantly categorizing them as something 'bad' because they are different, we are actually encouraged to participate in their various traditions and learn from them. A religion doesn't have to have the restored truth in order to have good qualities. I love that.
• Eating Sesame Bread from the City. (Yes, I ate the bread. No, I did not dip it in the weird spice that came with it.)
• Going to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Most Christians believe this is where Jesus was crucified, anointed, and buried. We climbed the steep stairs (which put Aunt Vickie's stairs to shame. seriously). When we were at the top, we could see the spot where most Christians believe Jesus' cross was, and Bro. Chadwick explained why our church doesn't believe this was the true site of the crucifixion. But if anyone asks, we can now say we have climbed the Hill to Calvary.
• Walking through Jaffa Gate.
• Exploring West Jerusalem. This is the Israeli/Jewish area and it has a WAY different atmosphere. Kind of Mediterranean-ish. I went with my roommates to buy shampoo & conditioner, and it took us a while to figure out what bottles were shampoo in the shop. Since everything was in Hebrew, we weren't sure if we were looking at body wash on accident. (Turns out we were.) We got some help and the lady thought it was hilarious that we couldn't read anything and were 100% helpless, which we were. Literally. 
• Deciding to skip dinner in favor of an hour of SLEEP.
• Playing get-to-know-you games in the gym. I swear I see new students everyday, which is weird since there are only 80 of us.
• Staying up till 3 am w/ Kelsey, reading 20 chapters (!!) of Genesis and taking in-depth notes. Our reading had to be done by 8 am the next day, and last night was the first chance we had to work on it.
• Loving the love stories. (Isaac & Rebekah, Jacob & Rachel)
• Feeling kinda bad for Hagar, Ishmael, and Leah.
• Taking a study break and doing Ab Ripper X in the library at 2 am.
• Choosing to (finally) go to bed rather than update the blog. Best decision ever.

Are you falling asleep yet? I certainly am.....