Opportunities of a Lifetime

What a week!  My goodness I think we all suffered the effects of heat exhaustion this week after our wanderings in the wilderness of Monday and just exhaustion in general with everything finally catching up to us.  We had 2 tests this week…already…and lots of other assignments and readings to do.  But putting all that ‘fun’ stuff aside I still found time to do actual fun things this week too :)  

We have officially been named the “blessed semester.”  Why!?  Well first it started out with us being called the experimental or test or guinea pig semester and none of those really fit.  Haha!  We are the pioneers of this study abroad with being the first group to go to Greece.  Typically they take the group to Egypt but it just isn’t safe right now so we get to be the ones who have the adventure of Greece instead which is still going to be awesome.  We leave in the middle of the night to go to the Tel Aviv airport (like literally the middle of the night…1:00 am) and then we will make our way to Greece and be there Sunday morning.  As soon as we get off of the plane it is pretty much going to be go, go, go!  They have our schedule jammed packed with things to see and places to visit.  It’s going to be an adventure for sure but so so so good! 

We got to go on a tour of the Center…underground!  We were all rocking the hard hats as we climbed around under there and then got to write our names on the wall to make our mark of being here.  

We had an Arab Culture night which was so cool.  We started the night with two sheiks that came and recited a passage from the Koran about Mary.  It was beautifully done!  When they recite the Koran it is almost like they sing it.  There is a lot of emotion that is put into it.  The two sheiks who came and did it for us are the ones who do the call to prayer that is sounded across the city every day which was really cool to find out.  Now I can say that I have met the men who I hear on the speakers around the city at the call to prayer times.  After the recitation they then did the call to prayer for us and a question/answer session afterwards.  Then we had a traditional Arab dinner which was SO good!  I didn’t know what in the world I was dishing up on my plate but it all tasted delicious.  After dinner we all went into the gym and watched an Arab dance performance and then they taught us how to do part of the dance.  By the end we were all so hot and sweaty but all full of smiles.  It was such a wonderful night!

Yesterday afternoon I ended up going on a fun adventure that really wasn’t planned at all but so many good things happened and we found a lot of hidden treasures around town.  It ended up being just a group of three: Alec, Dane and me. We knew we wanted to go see the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Western Wall but we had no plan with how we were going to accomplish that.  We ended up taking this round about way through the Old City to get to the Holy Sepulcher and on our way tried this yummy Arab churro dessert thing and found tons of random churches down these streets none of us had ever been on which was just the start of our adventure.  We made it to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher at a perfect time.  So Friday’s here are the Holy Day for Muslims and the welcoming of the Sabbath for the Jews so most of the shops and things around the city are shut down by like 5 or 6 and people are instead out worshipping or at church services.  As part of this on Friday’s there is a processional called Via Dolorosa.  It goes along a street through the Old City that is believed to be the path that Jesus walked on the way to His crucifixion.  The Church is the last stop on this route which commemorates the hill of the crucifixion and the tomb of Christ’s burial.  There were like 15-20 monks who all congregated inside and sang and then went and gathered in front of the sepulcher and performed this ceremonial ritual.  It was so interesting!  We wandered around the Church and found all of these alcoves of hidden treasures.  One route led us out into this corridor that connected to the Queen Helen Church Coptic Orthodox.  There was a sign on the wall that said that in the basement there was a cistern (large water well) that provide water for drinking and building the Holy Sepulcher Church.  We ended up going down into this underground cistern that was huge.  It was like a mini cave underground with tons of water in it still.  It had such great acoustics that we decided to sing a hymn- Be Still My Soul.  It was incredibly beautiful!  Just as we finished sining we heard a group coming down so we were just going to leave and call it perfect timing.   Haha nope…it was a group from the Negev desert (Beersheba which is where we were on Monday) and they heard us and wanted us to sing for them.  We ended up singing “Nearer My God to Thee” for them and I felt the spirit so strongly.  There’s nothing like bearing testimony and doing missionary work through singing.  It was a wonderful experience!  They all were so grateful we sang for them and all thought we were professionals.  Alec, Dane and I decided to call ourselves the Coptic Trio after that ;)  We made our way over to the Western Wall overlook and watched for a bit as they all came to welcome in the Sabbath.  As we were out and about it was so neat to see all the different ways of worship.  There are so many good people in this world!  It amazes me.  We ended the night with everyone watching Hercules in preparation to leave for Greece :)  

Fun thing I learned this week:

Hy-Gel = hand sanitizer: when you ask a convenience store if they have hand sanitizer to buy you end up getting quite a few weird looks.  When they start explaining like the stuff you wash your hands with without using water then you both finally get on the same page and realize that it has a different name here.  Kinda funny!

Well I need to pack my bags and go to bed early tonight because my alarm at 12:30 am tonight is not going to be a pleasant surprise.  Haha!  I’m so excited though for this week’s Greece adventures!!! :)