ein karem and hezekiah's tunnel

this weekend, a few of us decided to take a break from studying for midterms and check out this town outside of jerusalem called ein karem. it's supposed to be really fun and full of cool churches and art studios. it definitely lived up to the reputation! however, it is officially summer in jerusalem, and i'm now bowing out of my usual jeans trend until september. i've gotten used to sweating at every hour of the day. it was HOT. oh well, just an excuse to buy ice cream, right? it was such a good day, and i think mostly because we met some really cool people in ein karem. we went to a church and talked to this priest for a while who was so nice to us. he suggested a few hymns for us to sing together, and it was so awesome to have this little bonding moment with this nice, happy, loving priest from ireland who wanted to sing with us! we also met this artist who let us into his studio to show us his work. he's from new york, but moved to jerusalem to paint pictures that portray israel in a positive light. i bought a little print from him that i'm way excited about. i loved meeting them! getting to know them was the highlight of the day. another thing we found was a secret garden...and when i say secret, i mean we probably weren't supposed to be there because the main gate was locked, but we found this tiny back one that was open. i probably should have stayed home to study, but it was so cool and i'm in israel, dang it! i can't sit in a building all day and study! 

the next day, our class took a field trip to hezekiah's tunnel under the old city! so dang refreshing after walking around on a jerusalem summer day. it's pitch black and full of water, so we had to bring headlamps. while we were going through, someone would randomly yell, "lights out!" and we would turn off our headlamps and feel our way through the cave. it was a good weekend. have i mentioned that i love jerusalem? 

these babes have taken me over a month to break in. argggh. but now i think they're pretty fun. and thanks, mom, for making me buy the black ones instead of bright green. you were right. if i had a nickel every time those words came out of my mouth... 

snorkeling in the red sea

last weekend, we went down to eilat to snorkel in the red sea! i had never been snorkeling before and now i think it would be the coolest to be a marine biologist. and i really want to go scuba diving! it was so much fun and a needed break from classes. we played football on the beach but it was so rocky that we all got scraped up. it was a fun day away from jerusalem! 

happy fathers day dad! i wish i could give you a big hug right now. thanks for being a good example to me. you are such a good man. i love you as a dad, but i also just really like you as a person. you always support whatever i am doing. thank you so much. i wouldn't trade our national geographic documentary marathons for anything! 

lately in jerusalem

arab culture night and folk dancing.

nassir, one of my favorite shopkeepers!

the western wall at sunrise on shavuot

pentacost service at a lutheran church in the old city

just perfecting the art of slingshotting

the traveling ice exhibit in west jerusalem

jon schmidt came to jerusalem with a tour and invited our branch to a little concert he put on! 

we went to the waffle bar for a friend's birthday. karen and i shared a banana waffle, but i easily could have eaten the whole thing by myself. also, i love karen low. 

the separation wall between israel and the west bank

we herded sheep and goats on one of our field trips! not as easy as i thought. especially because they only respond to arabic words.  

homemade pitas over a campfire

the solution to campfire smoke. no judgements passed

we went to a concert in a park last night. it reminded me of summer in the states! 

time is flying by. and i love summer. 

yad vashem

we had a really interesting experience this week with yad vashem, which is jerusalem's national holocaust memorial museum. we went there last week for a field trip with our israel and judaism professor and it was something you can't really describe in words. it was kind of like watching schindler's list. it's such a pit-in-your-stomach kind of experience, but it's still really important to understand. going to yad vashem was emotional for sure. same kind of thing: pit-in-your-stomach, but it's still something you should go see. we spent a good hour at these statues outside the museum talking about the zionist movement and how the holocaust plays into it.

we went through the children's memorial. one room had a bunch of pictures projected on the wall and the other had an optical illusion of a million candles floating in the air for each child that died in the holocaust. 

these are a few statues outside of the children's memorial. 

we were not allowed to take cameras into the main museum so i don't have any pictures, but i wouldn't have taken them anyway. it was a really powerful thing. i learned so many things i hadn't known before. one of the most interesting rooms to me was one dedicated to nazi propaganda. there were a lot of sad pictures and stories, but i loved how the last room was full of inspiring stories of non-jews who helped jews escape. it made you leave feeling a little encouraged. i kept thinking of president uchtdorf's talk in general conference called "the merciful obtain mercy" and thought about how i can't make judgements about the horrible acts that happened during the holocaust...that's where the atonement comes in. it covers all the pain and suffering of the jews and the sins of those causing the pain. and it's not my place to be judgmental or resentful about what happened. the atonement casts a different light on the holocaust and the holocaust gives new dimension to the atonement. it was a difficult but positive experience, which i wasn't expecting.

a few days ago, i saw this picture on msn:

it is the same spot we were standing outside yad vashem a week earlier. it was pretty upsetting, especially since we had just learned about those statues and what they mean. but it was really interesting reading the article about who they think did it and why they might have done it. if i had read this before coming here, i wouldn't have understood very well, but now that i'm here and have a better understanding of judaism, it makes sense to me. it was so strange to learn about the zionist movement in class and how much conflict there is within israel, and then to see the conflict in action a couple days later. living here is such a unique learning experience. i can't believe i'm here. 

p.s. i've decided i'm going to get rid of my blog after jerusalem, for a few reasons. i love blogs, but i'm kind of sick of mine haha! 

farewell grandpa evans

this week, my sweet grandpa evans passed away. it's been a tender week, but i feel much more happiness than sadness. my grandpa is finally with my grandma again. fully functioning legs, no wheelchair, no physical pain. he was a force of nature. as my mom said on the phone this week, "grandpa lived big." he did. his life was incredible. his love story with my grandma was not conventional, but incredible. my friend abby always asks me to tell her the story of watching my grandpa say goodbye to my grandma when she was dying. it was the sweetest thing i've ever seen. i'm so happy they're together again. so so happy.

we can dance, we can dance, everything's outta control

i feel like i have so much to blog about and i have a ton of pictures to share but i don't have time right now! i have midterms next week, so i have been busy studying and writing papers. don't worry mom, lots of pictures soon. we've been having way too much fun around here. exhibit a: ipod dance party.

didn't know what this was until i came here. you send out a playlist that everyone downloads on their ipods and then everyone gathers together and presses play at the same time....and then, what else? you dance! this way, you can dance wherever you want and not bother anyone. we all kind of migrated out the lawn. my favorite part about an ipod dance party is that it's just totally silent until a new song comes on and then everyone simultaneously yells "yeeeeaahh!!!!" it's hilarious and we look retarded. but it's a good little break from homework. notice rachel messick dancing around plugged into her laptop.

i am more and more in love with this place every day.

and will you please check out this blog? this is the essence of jerusalem http://catsofjeru.blogspot.co.il/ these cats are everywhere. and they are so disgusting and mangy. imagine me stopping in the middle of my run to crouch down and talk to a one-eyed kitten. because it happened yesterday.

turkey: part two

ahh, i'm so behind on blogging! i don't think i'm ever going to fully catch up, to be honest. there's too much stuff to blog about it all. so here's the rest of turkey:

the next few days were  spent going to a lot of ancient sites...the main theme of our trip was the journey of paul in asia minor, so we went to a bunch of places that he taught and lived. we went to assos, which is so pretty i can't even describe! it's an ancient greek city that looks over the aegean sea and this beautiful island. pictures just don't do it justice. we had a devotional overlooking the sea and while my professor was talking, there was a storm coming at us from across the water...you could see the dark clouds and rain coming at us. right before it hit the land, the storm just quickly moved south and missed us. it was the coolest visual. oh, and this explains the windy hair pictures! 

i actually stil need to upload some pictures on my computer, so i'm going to skip a few sites and talk about ephesus! ephesus is amazing. you could spend an entire day there. why is it so cool? it's a whole ancient city! not just, like, an ancient pillar here, an ampitheater there...the whole city is still remaining! that a quarter of a million people lived in. how cool is that? 

this ancient greek symbol is now the familiar healthcare symbol. 

this view is one of the pictures in the back of the bible. 

apparently the residents of ephesus still dress like this? (just kidding, they were filming a movie.) 

after ephesus, we went to priene, which is the most beautiful site on a hill that overlooks a valley that used to be part of the sea. it's where paul gave his last lesson before returning to jerusalem to be arrested. the people knew they would not see him again. we had a really great devotional about loved ones that pass away and brother huntsman told a personal story about his dad's death. i'm pretty sure everyone cried a little. it was my favorite devotional and i kept thinking about my grandma passing away at home and what a special time that was for our family, even though it was sad. it was very memorable, especially at this gorgeous site. 

then, we had the rest of the afternoon to play at our hotel. oh, what would you do for a whole afternoon at your hotel, you ask? play board games? not at AQUA FANTASY! that was the name of the hotel we stayed at for two nights. it has like, three giant swimming pools and a water park just for the residents. and hammocks all over the place. and it's on the beach, too. i kept thinking about how if my family came here on vacation, we would never stay somewhere that nice. it was ridiculous. but i am not complaining! we just played all afternoon and then laid on the dock at night and talked. 

the next day, we went to sardis, which was really cool, but instead of taking pictures by ancient ruins again, i wandered off and found a group of school kids to play with haha. 

they were so stinking cute!! they taught me some turkish words and i taught them some english words. they reminded me of my kids in china. i still miss those kids so much. man, i miss teaching. 

ok sorry. the next day was our last and we spent it in nicea and then back to istanbul. nicea is where the nicean creed was written, so we went to constantine's summer palace that overlooks the sea of marmara. 

this is my roommate ashley. she is such a champ. her luggage got lost on the way to istanbul and so she went a whole week without anything. luckily some girls rounded up a few things for her, but still, i love how positive she was. so awesome. 

we took a ferry back over to istanbul. wouldn't it be cool to be one of those young sailors that sails around the world solo? aye aye captain. 

once we got to istanbul, lots of last minute shopping and site seeing occurred. we went to the hagia sophia and the blue mosque. SO INCREDIBLE! the mosque is literally filled with nothing but blue tiles inside. it's the most beautiful mosque i've seen here. 

awful picture, i know. the point and shoot is a little disappointing sometimes. i think i might save up my money and by an slr for myself for christmas....

the hagia sophia is really beautiful and i think it's cool that one of the most famous christian churches is right next to the one of the most famous muslim mosques. see this picture? one of the rulers of the byzantine period had a picture of him, his wife, and jesus put up on one of the walls in tile. when the next ruler came around, he didn't want to take the tiles down or replace the whole thing, so he just cut out everyone's heads and had new ones of him and his wife put in.  that was the second oddest thing of the hagia sophia. the first is that a boy came up to me, grabbed my upper arm, kissed it really hard, and then walked away before i could say anything. and he left bread crumbs on my arm. what? 

brother huntsman and his daughter, rachel. 

ok, i am all pictured out, so i'm going to end things there. that was my trip to turkey! i loved every second of it. it was so beautiful! i really hope i have the chance someday to go back. it was so nice driving into the JC and feeling like i was coming home. i've got lots more to blog about. the weekend has been exciting so far for everyone. think music video makings, meeting shaun white in jerusalem, and a spontaneous jon schmidt concert in a lutheran church. whoah.