Let me take yo' picta!

I think I have been in Jeru for approximately three weeks?? Maybe only two weeks? I can't honestly keep track of time here anymore because I am so super busy and am doing so many things everyday! I am finally going to be posting PICTURES from my study abroad in Jerusalem and I'll update you on the things I did over the last week :)

This lovely lady is my roommate in Jerusalem! He name would Emily Christensen and I pretty much adore her with all of my heart :) We like to play music loudly in the morning, and take lots of sunset pictures, and eat many many chocolate pitas! (Can I just say that the pitas with nutella are sooooo amazing in Jerusalem and they are even better toasted :)

This is the view of Jerusalem from my balcony and holy hannah the sunsets here are gorgeous! I have never seen anything quite so pretty. The Old City is off to the left in this picture. 

This picture is of the Old City! You can see the Dome of the Rock which is the large, golden dome in the center of the Old City. It is about a twenty minute walk into the Old City on a given day, we pass through East Jerusalem to get to the Old City. I go there almost everyday to see old churches, beautiful architecture, and to see all of the different shops and cafes that dot the Old City! 

These are the other two girls I am living with while in Jerusalem! Kayla Soderberg and Lauren Leudtke, I love them both dearly and am truly enjoying living with them! 

I have gone a lot of places in the lat few weeks! I have blogged a little about these places, but I am simply going to load lots of pictures and say what it is and what I did there :)

This is me and Miss Kaylen :) We are on our field trip to see some ancient cities in Israel. IT was so freakin' hot! My shirt was totally soaking by the end of the day, I know way too much detail haha :) 

This ALADDIN! Just like the movie, okay you don't actually say it that way, but just go along with it. Haha, this is where the students exchange their money into shekels. Or sheks as we have started to call them. Aladdin is super awesome and so easy to work with! 

This is me, Em, and Kaylen standing in front of Golgotha the place where Christ was supposedly crucified. We were able to go into the Garden tomb which resides right below this place and the area around the Garden tomb has been restored into a garden and is a very beautiful place to spend the afternoon. There were a lot of groups holding worship services the day that we went to visit the Garden tomb and my favorite people were a large group of Africans who were singing way loud and truly showing how much they enjoyed being in the Garden tomb. 

This is Zedekiah's cave, the place where King Solomon carved out rock and used these stones to build the First Temple in Jerusalem. This place was super cool to visit because it's super dark and goes on for like a mile under the Old City. 

Me and Emily on the Ramparts walk around the city which was super awesome :) We got to see so much of the city it was totally amazing! 

View from the ramparts walk! 

Damascus Gate: an entrance into the Old City

This is the Augusta Victoria Chapel where Protestant Catholics go and worship. While we were there we got to hear a professional organist and she was fabulous! This building dates back hundreds of years, so it was amazing to see all of the artwork and architecture in this place. 

This is me standing on the Bethlehem Overlook and Bethlehem is out to the right side! 

These are just a smattering of all of the places that I have been! There is so much to see and do in Jerusalem, so I will keep trying to post pictures and sharing the cool experiences I have! I leave for Turkey on Sunday, so wish me luck because there is a Grand Bazaar.... I have been told that everyone just spends lots of money there.... I am giving myself a budget haha :) Also, Turkey has some of the most famous buildings in the whole world like Hagia Sofia, Troy, and the Blue Mosque! I get to see all of these places plus lots and lots more, also I will be staying in hotels along the beach all week, so everybody I don't know If I am taking my laptop, but I will have lots of picture and stories for when I get back :) 

Genie pants have changed my life!

GENIE PANTS HAVE CHANGED MY LIFE!

So kids... I'm living in Jerusalem and I will be here for the next three months. I get to go out into the city everyday to shop, eat ethnic food, do service projects in the city, meet new people, and most of all I get to visit all sorts of places that date back thousands of years.

Anyways, I went to a shop the other day in the Christian quarter of the city and I went to Shuban's (a little clothing/jewelry/cool stuff shop) and I found GENIE PANTS! They are silver, blue, and have gold on them. They are super silky and soft to touch and wear and so comfy and relaxing :) Pretty much everybody should buy genie pants from Jerusalem because they will probably change your life.

My favorite person that I have met so far in Jerusalem is named Omar. Omar is a shopkeeper on Saladin Street who sells carved olivewood figurines. He is a very good friend to the Mormons and the students at the Jerusalem University and has been selling his carvings to the students for over forty years. He has  a super neat man and loves working with the LDS students. I talked to him for almost an hour about his family, his work, and living in the Holy Land.

Tonight, I went to the Western Wall for Shabbat and Shabbat is the Jewish sabbath and everyone celebrates it by going to the Western Wall. The Western Wall is the wall that is the last standing place of the second temple that was destroyed in 70 A.D. Hundreds of Jews go everyday to pray at the wall and you are able to write blessings on pieces of paper and put them in the wall. I was able to go to this place and observe Jews praying to God in a place that they hold very dear and sacred. I met a girl named Marion who is a Jew and she lives about twenty minutes away from Jerusalem. She is nineteen years old and I got to learn all about the Jewish culture and religion. It was so neat to talk to a girl my age and to see how she lived her life halfway across the world from me.

I am loving meeting people here and learning more about the culture of these different groups of people. I truly want to understand the history and culture of this city. I have been put in charge of a humanitarian aid committee while I am here and I had my first service project today! 55 people came to the service project to make school kits. The school kits are given to villages and elementary schools all over Jerusalem. We made almost 2200 school kits and they will help hundreds of kids all over the city and state. I cannot wait to do more service projects outside in the city and get to know people even better!

I am going to Tel Aviv on Sunday and will spend the day at the beach which I am super excited for, b asically I am loving life here :) I am having a slight problem putting my pictures on my laptop, so I shall try and get pictures really soon!

Love you all

Ellen

To Jerusalem and Back Again!

Alright everybody I am finally updating my blog after a week and a half of being super busy because I have been traveling to Jerusalem! I was able to have a goodbye party last Saturday and it was so great to see many of my Provo friends before I left the  country for four months! Also, on Monday I was able to have a goodbye party with my family and I loved seeing all of them, so thankyou for all of the wellwishes and the goodbyes! Getting ready to leave a country for four months and only being able to pack in two suitcases is not ideal in the least (I finally know how missionaries feel!) I was able to do it miraculously and then spent  the next day and a half traveling halfway across the world to Jerusalem. I will skip the airplane rides because they were just super long and boring! I did meet two very interesting women on the airplane who actually both live in Israel, so it was nice to hear how much  they loved living here and what I should expect.

We got picked up in buses from the airport and drove 40 minutes up into the hills (because Jerusalem is pretty high up in the hills) to get to the Jerusalem Center. The whole group was very jetlagged and tired, but we had a super warm welcoming from the service couples living at the Center, the teachers and their families living here, and the other staff that work at the Jerusalem Center. I have never looked upon a place before and felt so much peace and happiness. The second I stepped within the grounds I could not stop smiling because the spirit here is so peaceful and the building is truly beautiful. The Jerusalem Center is made of huge white stones with many windows looking out over the city. The view from the Center is so beautiful! You can see for miles and miles all over the valley and the Old City lies right in the center of the Valley. One of my favorite things here is the view.

I have only lived in the Jerusalem Center for four days, but already I feel like I have been here for a month because my teachers fill up the time with all sorts of activities, it is honestly a miracle that I even got away to write this blog post! I won't tell you everything I have been doing because that would take a whole day, but I can share with you some of the highlights of this week. Classes started this last Friday and they are going to be super hard! I am going to have to work my tail off to keep up with the reading and homework for all of my classes, but I am very excited for my classes because they all interconnect with each other and help me to understand broader concepts. I was able to go into the Old City this last week and get a tour of it. It was definitely not what I was expecting! The Old City is a complete maze with tons of random stairways and passages leading all over the city. Tons of shopkeepers have little shops along the street and you see the craziest things, like a little boy running and carrying a dead chicken. The culture here is definitely very different from the United States, but I am so excited to get to know these people and to truly understand them for who they are. I want to understand the land and the history that has occurred here for so many years.

I was able to teach nursery today in church and it  was super fun, but wow kids are so tiring sometimes! I forgot how much energy they can take out of you! I am also a co-chair person on the Humanitarian Aid committee and I am so excited for this! I get to spend a lot of my time planning service projects and volunteer opportunities for the students here at the center. We get to teach English to little kids in elementary schools, volunteer at the hospitals, paint a mural at a school, sing for some groups around the city, and we are in charge of a large number of hygiene kits that we need to make every week.

I will add pictures later,  unfortunately I can't add them through the Center's WiFi, so I have to go up to Hebrew University to add pictures, but I have a lot of pictures and will be adding them very soon! The Sabbath here in Jerusalem is on Saturday, so the Church has special permission to meet on Saturdays which is kind of strange to get used to because Sunday is then used like a Saturday!

Enjoy :)