Swimming, Snorkeling, Storytelling and at the Red Sea

So we got really good at posting pictures lately, but haven't written too much about our adventures. Clearly we need to balance this out a little more! On our free day this week we went down to Eilat. I'm including a map so you can have a little bit of an idea for all of this. We drove from Jerusalem (upper right-ish on the map) down to Eilat and the Red Sea (like the one from the Bible that Moses parted? Yup. Same one!). Then we went snorkeling! I went on a little run with a couple of girls while we were down there too. We were told not to go too far south because we were rather close to Egypt. I didn't realize until we left how close we really were! We were only about a mile and a half from the border. I just about reached my goal to go to Egypt! Unfortunately we didn't quite make it. Someday :) Anyway, it was my first time snorkeling and I absolutely loved it. Just like living in an aquarium! The water was gorgeous and pretty warm and we just sat at the beach all day. Ken mentioned it was getting a little chilly up there...sorry we can't sympathize with you right now! It was a nice boost for the week since we spent the rest of the week inside, studying for midterms and finals.

The Jerusalem Schedule

It has come to my attention that we haven't really told you too much about our day-to-day lives here in Jerusalem. Now is the time to fix that mistake! Here's our typical week:

Monday: Field trip day! Depending on the field trip schedule for the day, we're generally gone all or most of the day on field trips all across Jerusalem and Israel. It's amazing! We come home for dinner and then have FHE with our little Family Home Evening groups.

Tuesday: We have classes all morning until about 2 or 3 PM generally with an hour break in the morning for announcements and linen exchange (clean sheets! Yay!). As soon as we're out of class, we grab all of our stuff and run out to the city! Sunset is around 5 PM, so we have to be back by then. We hurry up the hill to the center and then sit on the grass just inside the gate at the bottom, looking over all of Jerusalem. It faces the west, so we watch the sun go down and night become alive over the city. This is my absolute favorite time of the day! That usually takes us up until dinner (at 6).

Wednesday: Class until 3-ish generally, then run to the city and watch the sunset again. After dinner we have a forum with various professional speakers.

Thursday: Cleaning checks! We usually remember, but we've discovered the senior couple that checks our rooms have gotten much more lax since we got here. On the off-chance that we forgot to clean, this comes in handy! We have class until 3-ish again, then run to the city and come back in time for sunset! (Are you catching a pattern here?)

Friday: I love Fridays! They really aren't super different than weekdays, but they're just fabulous. We usually have sandwiches for lunch which is beautiful. We have class until 3 (and even if we don't, we can't leave the center until 3 on Fridays because the city is chaotic for Friday prayers). Sometimes we'll have a humanitarian project as we did this afternoon. As soon as 3:00 hits, we run out to the city! All of the Jewish things close early for Shabbat, so it's much more difficult to find places to go. We're out until 5 again though, when we come back for sunset! After dinner we have a movie night. Sometimes they're good movies...sometimes they're not quite as exciting though and we find something else to do :)

Shabbat: Saturday is our Sabbath, so we start out the day with breakfast and choir before church starts at 10. We meet with the Jerusalem Center branch. It includes the students, our professors and their families, some caregivers that work here, international employees and their families, and all the random visitors that come to Jerusalem. It's so great! We have a Primary, Young Men and Young Women, just like normal! It's fun because it's not just a single's ward, but we are mixed up with a regular branch. After church ends, we head to either the Garden of Gethsemane, the Garden Tomb, or the Church of St. Anne's (next to the Pools of Bethesda) to sing, ponder, read and study. Dinner is at 4, then we do Sabbath stuff the rest of the night. P.S. I could definitely get used to having Sabbath first in the weekend! It's nice to have more time after the Sabbath to get stuff done before the week starts again. Oh, and we watch the sunset.

Sunday: Free day! We get a sack lunch and are free for the day! Last week we went to the Red Sea. We've gone to the Biblical zoo, the beach at Tel Aviv, the Israel Museum, Dome of the Rock, Western Wall and a million other places. Occasionally we do some homework too...occasionally :) And we DEFINITELY watch the sunset as well!

Images from Istanbul!

When we go on field trips we have to be super prepared with everything: sunglasses, headsets and receivers, scarves, backpacks, water, notebooks, good walking shoes, smiles, watches, t-shirts, cargo pants and everything else imaginable...basically sometimes we just look like extreme tourists. And we love every second of it! This was at the Basilica Cistern in Turkey. Super cool!

Hello Turkey!!!

First time trying Turkish Delight!!!

This was when we ate lunch on the ocean. LITERALLY on the ocean!

Welcome to the Blue Mosque. Imagine this in REAL life. 

We all got to be super close friends after spending an endless amount of time on bus rides in Turkey! Here we told secrets, learned Turkish dance moves, slept, had our fortunes told and SO much more!

Just the view from my balcony at the hotel in Turkey. I wasn't kidding when I said it was legit!

Liz just leading the troops at Pergamon. 

No worries. I now know my future!

At Ephesus! Just in case you didn't know, Paul lived here for a while and wrote some of the books in the Bible here. Super great!

Ephesus again! Just modeling with the statue. Don't worry, we haven't changed :)

The amphitheater at Pergamon. It is absolutely enormous!

Looking up from the amphitheater. The top is FAR away. 

Another hotel view of the Aegan Sea. It just got better and better each night!

Do you SEE those watermelons??? This has a special dedication to Briggs, but really I just think those are the coolest ever. That's why it's up even though it's blurry and creepy :)

On the shore at Nicaea. The Nicene Creed was written here. Our discussion reminded me of how grateful I am for the Restoration of the gospel!

Sara's just adorable. Need I say more?

Hagia Sophia and it's amazingness! You can look up more pictures online. It's insane. 

This is how pictures work with our group.
Sara (to Liz): "Oh, we should both take a picture with our tour guide before we leave!"
Liz: "Great idea! Ugur, can we take a picture with you?"
Everyone else: "ME TOO!!!!"
I have never seen a group gather faster in my life than when someone wants to take a picture. It's remarkable! We didn't even say anything to anyone else, but within about 30 seconds it exploded from 3 to 42. We even attracted someone NOT in our group!

Turkey has this crazy chewy ice cream, so we clearly had to try some! Definitely worth it. 

Quite possibly THE best shopping trip of my life. I can't even explain how successful we were or how fulfilled we felt afterwards! 

Just Liz being a cute little model outside of our restaurant in Turkey  right before we left!

Fish Filipino-Style. Needless to say, I was overjoyed! Some others weren't quite so thrilled...

This is Ugur, our Turkish Tour Guide. He gave us a restraining order from each other. He taught us Turkish dance moves. He took us all over Turkey. And he loves Sara's laugh. 

Getting ready for our first day of adventures in Turkey!

Istanbul has one European side and one Asian side. We are on the European side and across the water is Asia! Definitely made it to both continents... Bucket list? Check!

PS, did we tell you we went to Troy? Yep. Legit Trojan horse right there. Straight up artifact. 

What does it say?! (Hint: Liz and Kayla on the ends aren't part of the word!)

Those pillars were ENORMOUS!

More Pictures!

Emily, Eleisha, Liz, and Sara inside of tombs from a couple of
.thousand years ago! :) No big deal

Liz, Michael, Sara, and Liz slinging stones where David killed Goliath.  Michael showed us how it's
..done, don't worry, we all would have killed Goliath
Except for Sara.

West Jerusalem

Jerusalem is split into the east side and the west side.  The east side is where we live and where the Old  City is, so we don't go into West Jerusalem very often.  It takes a little longer to get there,  and it's a little nicer than East Jerusalem.  These pictures are from our afternoon in West Jerusalem 

This is at the parade we went to for Sukkot.  Several
 !countries were represented there, it was crowded

We went to a bakery while we were there and bought a few
 ,delicious breads/pastries.  We bought some khallah bread
which is what the Jews have for the Sabbath.  It's light and
!fluffy and sweet but not too sweet!  It's delicious

There is a little area about the size of a
basketball court with these seats in it of all
:colors and sizes.  The coolest part about it
they are cement! You don't dive into these
!seats

"Day at the Museum"

Surprise! Sometimes we actually look cute! It's not all the frequent, but as proof that it does happen every once in a while, here's this picture for you :) Also proof that we can occasionally share clothes! We had a shirt-swap with each other that day. This was at the Israel Museum that we went to on Monday. A bunch of students got together to go to the museum and we had to decide whether to walk or get a taxi. I generally vote for walking, but they told us the walk was about an hour long, so we decided in order to save time we'd get a taxi there and walk back. When the others showed up two hours later in absolutely no mood to walk through a museum, our 10 shekels seemed most definitely worth it! Our experience was much better :) 

This is our JESL (Jake, Eleisha, Sara and Liz) group! (Writing all of our names out takes way too much time during journal time, so it's now been shortened.) Don't worry--we have other friends too, but the four of us are together. Always.  It's quite enjoyable! We couldn't resist the urge, so we took some fabulous pictures on the Hebrew letters outside the museum. 

This was part of the modern art exhibit at the Israel museum. Once again, we were quite entertained by it! Notice the reflection in the top of the sculpture as well. It distorted everything, so we could have sat there for hours making faces and playing with our reflections! 

One of our favorites from the mirror thingy mentioned above! 

Alrighty. We have a severe lack of updates on here. It's all with good reason though! Our little group has a goal to get out of the center every single day. We've been pretty fabulous at that so far, but it means we don't have quite as much time to sit and blog...sorry! That also means none of these updates will be chronologically correct, but we do have a few things worth telling you about! 

Last week we went on an adventure to find the Room of the Last Supper. On our way through the city we came across a guy sitting on a bench, playing a hand pan (also called the hang). It was similar in a lot of ways to steel drums, but super different too. After stopping to watch for a few minutes, the musician stopped to explain his instrument to us. We talked for quite a while and learned all about his background and more details about how to play. It was great! He performed some more songs for us before we finally had to leave. We finally found the room of the Last Supper which was cool. It was very simple and not really decorated like most of the sites are, but it was interesting to see and to think about the history there. The roof  provided a gorgeous view of the city as well. We then continued our exploring and went to Dormition Abbey which is the traditional home and site of the death of Mary.

 Since it was Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles--a Jewish holiday), there was a huge gathering of people from all over the world. There were a couple times that we were able to go out and witness some of their forms of celebration.  It was quite spectacular to see a large parade of Jews from far reaching places, from China to Russia and Brazil to various countries of Europe.  It was really neat to see such a so many people who shared a common belief and culture, and how they were united under a banner of religion and a way of life.  It made me think of the unity that we have as members of the church, and how it really is a world wide organization, for the ties that bind us are just as powerful. 

After the parade, we went to  Jewish Bakery and got Hallah bread.  We had high hopes of saving it for Sabbath, but it was so good, we ended up demolishing two loaves before we got back to the center. Their breads are absolutely amazing!

I'm sorry that pictures are so few and far between, but here are some with more on the way soon!

Everybody in Jerusalem recognizes us
 as the students from the  "Mormon University"

Liz with the good nutella!

Sara with "Sara's Cookies" cookie dough.

Jake, Eleisha, Sara, and Liz (JESL) with the empty plates

 after handing out cookies to students around the center.

Sara, Eleisha, and Liz in new genie pants!

Liz and Sara at the beach in Tel Aviv the day before Liz's birthday

Eating gelato in Tel Aviv.

Liz's birthday pictures.

At the Friday night movie in the Forum
(where we also have half of our classes...
...and forums... and now church too).

Sara, Liz, and Jake at a playground in the Old City.

Sara matched the zebra!

Enjoying pizza and mint lemonade in the Old City.

Studying at the Garden Tomb.

 After weekly singing on Shabbat at the Garden Tomb.

 Our fourth visit to the Garden Tomb

with Al, our favorite volunteer.

Jake, Sara, and Hailey at the Tomb.

Liz studying at the Garden 

(the Tomb is in the background).

Just a little party watching "Megamind"

At the Garden of Gethsemane

Sunset from the center.  We watch it every single day.

Jake, Sara, Eleisha, and Liz hanging out on the elevator.