Well my mom sent me an e-mail showing me all the spelling errors in my last blog. I suppose you'll all have to live with my primitive writing skills. So Jerusalem is pretty amazing... I keep looking out the windows of the Jerusalem Center and seeing the Dome of the Rock on the temple mount. Back in Yakima we have an empty field and an orchard in my back yard.... here we have the Dome of the Rock. Today we went on a brief tour of Jerusalem just walking through the old city. The highlight was probably the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Also it was neat to see the Damascus gate- the old one is being re-opened of a sorts (it's in a big pit) and the current one is about 50 feet above the one used in Christ's time. The trip was only brief... and we had some security follow us on the route because it was Friday and so there was a greater security need in the Old City. Other than that we've pretty much just been doing orientations with many things. The food here at the center is great- I'm going to have to be careful if I don't want to gain weight.
My flight here was pretty unique. First off they assigned me a different group to travel with then the ticket they bought me. So then they had to reroute my flight so I flew directly from Salt Lake to JFK in New York. I was supposed to meet up with my group in New York. I got to the gate and didn't see anyone, though. Well I had a ticket to Tel Aviv and so I figured I'd get on the plane. It turned out the group I'd originally been assigned was delayed and missed the connection- so they had to stay the night over night in JFK, then still had to take the 11-12 hour flight to Tel Aviv today. I was really lucky to be rerouted so I arrived on time. I was actually the first student to arrive in Israel, and I flew alone so I felt pretty legit. Haha. Anyway, the people here are really cool, I'm going to have to work to get to know everyone.
The academics here will be challenging. But we have some highly qualified teachers. From BYU there is a New Testament Scholar, an Egyptologist, and an archeologist. From the teachers not from Utah we have an orthodox Jew and a Muslim teaching modern middle eastern studies, and also local professors teaching Hebrew and Arabic. I think one of the prettiest things so far is hearing the call to prayer several times a day. Yesterday, when we arrived, there was storm clouds over Jerusalem with lightning going off, the call to prayer at the same time, and a spectacular view of the Dome of the Rock- it was pretty cool.
On our tour some of the shopkeepers saw us and hurried to introduce themselves. One's guys card said "This is the Place." I think he's used to some Mormon tourists from Jerusalem. Hey! I sat by a lady on the plane and told her I was going to study at the Mormon University. Turns out she totally knew where it was and had been here several times to the concerts they hold in the main chapel. She was a secular Jew. In front of us was a family of Orthodox Jews- I stopped counting after 12 kids.
Well I have a lot of exciting things ahead of me, it should be fun!!!
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