Remember how everybody here thinks I eat a trillion chocolate pitas? Well on my birthday, a couple girls brought me out a plate of chocolate covered pitas and I discovered that the Center had starting using a new nutella. I am not a fan of the new kind, it just tastes gross to me, so I don't eat it anymore! The "Shekel Shack" had the original nutella for a little while, but then they ran out and I have not had a chocolate covered pita as part of a meal since my birthday. At the world's greatest talent show last Thursday night, a couple girls wrote and performed a song about peanut butter, nutella, and pita and they dedicated it to me! Later on in the night the Judd family put on a little skit and threw out a shout out to me about chocolate pitas. Clearly people are not quite aware that I haven't eaten nutella pitas for a month. This morning I was in the "Oasis" (where we have our meals) and Sara looks over to me and, with a look of amazement on her face, points to the nutella. You can only imagine what was going through my mind now, so I got my pita and spread the nutella on it. Wow, it was the most heavenly experience, absolutely magical! And that was the beginning of what has been an incredible day!
Monday, October 8, 2012
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Top Turkey Adventures
Turkey is amazing!!! I had no idea how much was there!
-Turkey is the world's best kept secret! Who knew it was so absolutely beautiful? Well, apparently a lot of people since Instanbul is a city of over 20 million with 8 million tourists every year. But it's still the world's best kept secret.
- Be careful what food you eat in Turkey. It's sketchy. The watermelon is the absolute best I've ever had though!
- Ugur the Tour Guide (to properly pronounce "Ugur," just take the "T" off "Tour") gave our bus Turkish dancing lessons. He loved that we are sisters and laugh really loud. He would walk up behind me and simply say "Hahaha" and wait for me to laugh!
- Liz and I were given separation orders and restricted from sitting next to each other on the bus for the last half of the week by Ugur. It was traumatizing but probably healthy for everyone else.
- We stayed in some legit hotels! When we asked our director how long it would take to get to the beach from one hotel, he answered with "four seconds." That was a bit of an exaggeration. It only took two. Dance party on the beach? Oh yes!
- The sites were phenomenal! We'll get pictures up soon, but the history and architecture involving these sites was absolutely incredible. Until then, just go Google Hagia Sophia, Basilica Cistern and the Blue Mosque so you'll know what I'm talking about. Exquisite!
-It IS possible to meet someone, break up with your previous boyfriend/girlfriend, date and be officially engaged (proposal and all) within THREE WEEKS of arriving at the center. We have proof.
-It's possible to learn Turkish dancing on a tour bus. Just be careful to not throw in any American moves.
-We saw one of the most gorgeous sunsets I have ever seen across the Aegan Sea outside of our hotel one night! You know those sunsets that even pictures can't even begin to grasp? It was beyond that.
-Turkish Delight is nothing like I ever imagined! It's good, but definitely a different experience than I expected. There are various different kinds, but we tried some jelly-sort of kind with powdered sugar around the outside.
-Traveling to places that Paul taught at is quite the experience, it totally changes the way I read those epistles once I know more of the whole story.
-I know know how the Greeks felt when they climbed into the Trojan horse.
-The scenery on ferry rides and boat rides from Europe to Asia is beautiful. I felt like I spent those precious hours just living in a movie. The model shoot we took might have helped with that....
-86 carat diamonds are rather large. And they are worth a lot, so be careful what you throw away cause you might find some pretty large gems.
-Shopping in Turkey yields successful rewards. I never would have guessed that I could buy so much with only $15.
-Last but not least: bus rides are wonderful. Nothing brings a group of 42 college students together in every possible way like living on a bus for seven days! :)
-Turkey is the world's best kept secret! Who knew it was so absolutely beautiful? Well, apparently a lot of people since Instanbul is a city of over 20 million with 8 million tourists every year. But it's still the world's best kept secret.
- Be careful what food you eat in Turkey. It's sketchy. The watermelon is the absolute best I've ever had though!
- Ugur the Tour Guide (to properly pronounce "Ugur," just take the "T" off "Tour") gave our bus Turkish dancing lessons. He loved that we are sisters and laugh really loud. He would walk up behind me and simply say "Hahaha" and wait for me to laugh!
- Liz and I were given separation orders and restricted from sitting next to each other on the bus for the last half of the week by Ugur. It was traumatizing but probably healthy for everyone else.
- We stayed in some legit hotels! When we asked our director how long it would take to get to the beach from one hotel, he answered with "four seconds." That was a bit of an exaggeration. It only took two. Dance party on the beach? Oh yes!
- The sites were phenomenal! We'll get pictures up soon, but the history and architecture involving these sites was absolutely incredible. Until then, just go Google Hagia Sophia, Basilica Cistern and the Blue Mosque so you'll know what I'm talking about. Exquisite!
-It IS possible to meet someone, break up with your previous boyfriend/girlfriend, date and be officially engaged (proposal and all) within THREE WEEKS of arriving at the center. We have proof.
-It's possible to learn Turkish dancing on a tour bus. Just be careful to not throw in any American moves.
-We saw one of the most gorgeous sunsets I have ever seen across the Aegan Sea outside of our hotel one night! You know those sunsets that even pictures can't even begin to grasp? It was beyond that.
-Turkish Delight is nothing like I ever imagined! It's good, but definitely a different experience than I expected. There are various different kinds, but we tried some jelly-sort of kind with powdered sugar around the outside.
-Traveling to places that Paul taught at is quite the experience, it totally changes the way I read those epistles once I know more of the whole story.
-I know know how the Greeks felt when they climbed into the Trojan horse.
-The scenery on ferry rides and boat rides from Europe to Asia is beautiful. I felt like I spent those precious hours just living in a movie. The model shoot we took might have helped with that....
-86 carat diamonds are rather large. And they are worth a lot, so be careful what you throw away cause you might find some pretty large gems.
-Shopping in Turkey yields successful rewards. I never would have guessed that I could buy so much with only $15.
-Last but not least: bus rides are wonderful. Nothing brings a group of 42 college students together in every possible way like living on a bus for seven days! :)
Beach and Birthdays
I know this is a few weeks late, but it was just so great that I still had to write about it! The day before my birthday was a free day, so we went to Tel Aviv. All but three of us in the entire group loaded up in buses and headed strait to the beach. We weren't quite sure what to expect, but we got there just after 10:00 and huried into the water. The water was the saltiest ocean I have ever been in (I can't even imagine what it's going to be like when we go to the Dead Sea!), but it was also the warmest water I have ever swam in! I was thrown around and tossed about in that water, it was also the most brutal ocean that I have been in, but it was absolutely magical!! It was SO great to go to the beach! Sara went with a few other girls on a run for almost an hour and I played catch with a couple of people and collected some Israeli sea shells :) no big deal! Then a smaller group of us explored Tel Aviv and came across a gelato shop, so clearly we had to stop and treat ourselves! We had just enough time to go take pictures with the entire coast and city in the background before heading back to the center.
The morning of my birthday I walked out of my room to go to breakfast and there were streamers and a sign on my door as well as a sign hanging up right in front of the cafeteria. It was a field trip day, so I spent the day in the Negev desert. We saw structures from nearly 4,000 years ago including where Abraham stayed for awhile at Beersheva. I was able to call home and after that we partied all night along--it was my best birthday ever!
The morning of my birthday I walked out of my room to go to breakfast and there were streamers and a sign on my door as well as a sign hanging up right in front of the cafeteria. It was a field trip day, so I spent the day in the Negev desert. We saw structures from nearly 4,000 years ago including where Abraham stayed for awhile at Beersheva. I was able to call home and after that we partied all night along--it was my best birthday ever!
Cooking Cookies in the Holy Land? Yes!
Hello! So we're being super terrible at these updates, but there's so much to tell you! We'll get the Turkey update on soon, but for now I just had to let you know my highlight of the week! We have had a strong desire to make chocolate chip cookies (surprise!) ever since coming here. Well, I didn't see any way to make it happen, but apparently some others had a little more faith than I did. :) They checked with one of the senior couples who DOES have an oven and they gave us permission to use it! We put it on our Eventually-We'll-Do-This-List, but I wasn't thinking it would come anytime soon. Well, the other day on our travels around the city we took a spontaneous stop at a little market store. They just happened to have chocolate chips...and then magic happened! We bought everything we needed there and took everything home (after a little stop at the Garden Tomb :)). After dinner that night we escaped to the Bench's apartment and made chocolate chip cookies! It was one of the most magical things ever. Definitely didn't taste quite the same as in Utah, but they were still quite excellent! The best part of it though was spreading the joy throughout the center. We took our big huge plate and just started walking upstairs, handing cookies out to everyone we ran into until they were all gone. I felt like Santa Claus! Freshly-baked homemade chocolate chip cookies are a pretty rare commodity here in the Jerusalem Center and you could feel the joy in the air over such a small thing. It was so much fun! Moral of the story? Cookies + love = happiness :)
Saturday, September 15, 2012
The Voice of Angels
Hello again! Today is Shabbat and we had an amazing day! Everything turned out much better than expected--it was just full of adventures and tender mercies! First of all, they are starting construction in the Center. We have glass EVERYWHERE and they need to replace a lot of it, so we have to move our Sacrament Meeting from the gorgeous room overlooking all of Jerusalem to our Forum room where I'm fighting to stay awake in Ancient Near Eastern Studies every day. I wasn't too excited about that, but then we went to church this morning and they let us have it in our special room still! That changed everything. It's infinitely better. We sang "Come Thou Fount" with our student choir--always amazing! Right after church and meetings, we went to St. Anne's church by the Pools of Bethesda. It is definitely one of our favorite places already in all of Jerusalem and this was only our second time there. Something about the structure of the church building and the materials used make the acoustics absolutely outstanding. I really can't explain it, but it's something everyone should experience! We went and sang hymns with a small group. It's rare to get goose bumps in Jerusalem heat, but that definitely happened more than once. While we were there an Italian group came in and two girls sang "Amazing Grace," which was incredible too! The Pools of Bethesda are also way cool; you can walk down right up to the pool which is probably 20 feet under ground. The stones are from the time of Christ, so it's incredible knowing that we literally walked along the same path as the Savior.
From there we went to the Garden of Gethsemane. This was my (this is now Liz) first time there. Unfortunately, they didn't let us into the private side this time that Sara went to before, and the public side was pretty packed, but that doesn't mean it wasn't cool there! In that same area is the Church of All Nations, so we walked through that as well. You know the picture of Christ praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, the first one to come to your mind? That's legitimately what it looks like there, it's so real! Ya--we live in Jerusalem :)
From there we went to the Garden of Gethsemane. This was my (this is now Liz) first time there. Unfortunately, they didn't let us into the private side this time that Sara went to before, and the public side was pretty packed, but that doesn't mean it wasn't cool there! In that same area is the Church of All Nations, so we walked through that as well. You know the picture of Christ praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, the first one to come to your mind? That's legitimately what it looks like there, it's so real! Ya--we live in Jerusalem :)
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
 |
| Aug. 28, 2012, Salt Lake City Airport We're on our way to Jerusalem! |
 |
| First day of class in the Jerusalem Center :) (We may look like missionaries on P-day, but we're not even allowed to answer questions about the Church.) |
 |
| Jerusalem's Main street in 6th Century |
 |
| Liz at the Orson Hyde Memorial Park |
 |
| Western Wall We made it!! |
 |
| Aladdin's where we exchange our money |
 |
| Church of the Holy Sepulchre |
 |
| Western Wall |
 |
| Dome of the Rock |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)