LOST

I have dedicated 6 years of my life to watching this tv show... and I have not wasted a second of my time. I was really nervous that I would not like the finale, but gosh was I wrong. A group of us here love lost and are obsessed, so we ordered pizza and had cookies and had a party. We watched the recap which i thought was good, then watched the 2 hour finale. I do not want to give anything away to those of you who have yet to watch it, but i will advise you that it will be one of the best things you ever do.

I definitely lost about 20 of my best friends when the show ended though. I have grown up with them and I feel like I really do know them and then all the sudden they wont be there. I am really upset about it. But after the finale, not one of us said a word for about 4 minutes straight as I wiped a few tears and my friend Lauren wiped a billion tears, we felt so happy. I was at one hundred percent peace and it honestly made me feel so good inside. I am so happy that it turned out with a good feeling. After we watched we talked about feelings for about 2 hours. It was Lauren and I's rule that there was to be no analyzing, only feelings talk. We all felt very complete and very satisfied. I loved it so so much.

The Past Bit

Okay so I know I haven't written for a while so here goes a quick overview- i will skip egypt for now and come back to it later.. right now we are going to focus on my amazing past 3 days :)

Friday:

Okay so Friday happened. And it was great. Friday is the day before Shabbat or the sabbath, which means you need challah bread, or sabbath bread. So we went to west Jerusalem after we finished our service project at the center. There was a small group of us that tried to get over there before things closed for shabbat. We got amazing bread, smoothie type things, and then walked around for a bit. Overall it was a great few hours. After I upload photos to my computer tonight I will have to add some, because it was so great. We then just walked around the Old City and talked to some shop keepers but mostly just bought gummy candies, the candy i live off of here. haha When we were back right out side the gates of the center were a handful of Palestinian boys dancing. It was kinda folk dancing and stepping together. We danced with them for about 40 minutes til we were so hungry we had to leave them. They were teaching us dances and stuff. it was tight. Then the best part of the day happened.. LOST... after this I will make a whole post about that. :)

Saturday:

Fast Shabbat. And it is a forced fast here whereas the cafeteria doesn't serve lunch or dinner. killer. But it was a really good meeting and relief society also was very good. Right when church got out and our home teachers left we went to the Garden of Gethsemane. The easiest path to Gethsemane is through Orson Hyde Garden. It is a really pretty place, but it is really secluded. My roommate and a few other people got mugged there about a week and a half ago. So it has been off limits, but we got to go yesterday and they had our sweet security guys stationed the whole way through it was awesome! Gethsemane is always a great experience. We stayed for probably a little over an hour and just wrote in my journal and read. I love being there, it has such a great spirit about it.

A few days ago my friends and I met a family that 3 of my friends had met before. We hung out with the family and talked to them for a couple hours and they invited us to their cousins wedding. We are not allowed in East Jerusalem past sundown but we tried anyway to get permission and they turned us down. But a few of our other friends went and met them too and got invited and so finally we got clearance. I went to a Muslim marriage ceremony!!!! It was so much fun! We were the only non-Muslims but it was so much fun. The girls were in one room and the boys in another. They all loved us. The kids were playing with us the whole time and we were up dancing also. It was such an amazing experience.

Sunday (today):

Sunday here is like saturday, weird I know. A group of 8 of us woke up and left the center at 6 in the morning and went to mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It was a cool experience. Then we looked through the church for a few hours and felt where the cross aparently was in the stone and saw th slab of stone Christ has been said to have been laid on. After that we went to West Jerusalem to the outdoor mall and had crepes for breakfast where I made friends with Aladdin who works there, it was alot of fun. Then we went to a very Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community and went inside an Ethiopian church. Then we went to the YMCA bell tower and were able to play the bells. I played "Nearer My God to Thee" so the whole city of Jerusalem could here it was awesome! Then we went to King David's Hotel, which if i ever come back here I will stay there, its awesome! Then we went to East Jerusalem to exchange money with Aladdin Jr, my favorite person, and then to Omars to look at olive wood. It has been a long day and now I have a lot of homework before dinner in two hours plus I am dead. But being here is great and I love every second of it. Its starting to go by fast and I am just kinda freaking out. haha

Egypt!

Okay so I dont have time right now to write about Egypt, we got home late last night and I have incredible amounts of homework to do before Tuesday when classes start back up so I will just post a few pictures :) Hope everyone is doing great! Shout out to Brooklyn who just got married a few days ago, and Emily Reynolds who got engaged about a week ago! love them both so much!

In class!

So I am sitting in class kinda bored, 2 hour classes sorta kill me, i just get very bored very quickly haha it is bad but whatever. haha lets see, yesterday we went to Jericho and were able to see alot of pretty cool things there, it was a good time, it was a little rushed i felt like but it was a good time for sure. The people here are great and we always have so much fun. there is so much more homework than i ever thought there would be, but i usually just play anyway- i read my scriptures, so I figure ill get blessings for doing that much :) but i cant justify studying hardcore in the Holy Land, there is too much to go see and do, it is almost overwhelming. We leave for Egypt in 2 days and I am very excited, but very nervous cuz none of us want to get sick. We're going to buy packaged food tomorrow so that we do not get sick while we are there. But it will be so much fun. Yesterday at Jericho we went on a hike dealio up to a monastary and i honestly thought i was going to die i was sweating like crazy. and then we found out it was only in the 80's and in Egypt it was 103 in Cairo and 113 in Luxor, so ya, then we all started to kinda freak out. haha so we'll see how it goes, but im sure that it will be a great time. I am loving my time here, it seems like we have been here forever in some respects, its amazing how fast you get to be friends with people when it is forced upon you haha. but it is good and there are great people here so it is great. We went to the temple mount and went up to the Dome of the Rock, it was so much fun, it really is a gorgeous building. My friends didn't go so they wanna go again tomorrow so i think im gonna go with them and check it out again while we buy stuff for Egypt, i think i need a hat. I fought my mom on it for a long time so i have a running baseball hat that I love, yet I might still die with the heat, so if i can find a cheap hat in the city tomorrow consider it bought regardless of what it looks like haha. but love you all rock life for me at home!

Pictures!

So i am terrible with technology as we all know so my pictures became one post and me telling you what is in the pictures became another!! the second is a sweet shepard and jesse and i on a hill that overlooks bethlehem, the next is jesse and i at the nabi samwil, and then the garden of Gethsemane, have fun! love you all!

Cameron!

Here is a picture of Cam and I on the Old City Wall on Sunday, it was such a fun trip!

Geography Field Trip

Today we went on our first field trip, it was a geography field trip to get oriented with how Jerusalem and all the land around it is laid out. It was a good time that is for sure. We saw Jerusalem from a few different look out points and were able to see places from a distance that we will never be able to go because we are not allowed in the west bank except for a quick day trip to Bethlehem later on in the semester. We also saw where the Jews claim Samuel from the Old Testament to be buried, or atleast that is where they pay their respects, even though we know for sure where he is buried. It was cool to see the Orthodox Jews paying their respects there. It was cool to see everything so far away but in one setting, like we could take the map in our bible of the Holy Land during Jesus's time and turn it the way we were facing and be able to point everything right in front of us. We also were able to sing in one of the only German churches in the Jerusalem area, it was a cool day.

Yesterday we went into the city and walked along the old city walls that are around the Old City and ended up in the Jewish quarter of the city. We went then to the Western Wall, girls on one side, guys on the other. So far, that has been my favorite thing that I have done, and it will be a hard one to beat. The feeling was incredibly peaceful there. Even though I am not Jewish, you could tell that it was a sacred place regardless. We each wrote a prayer down on a piece of paper and went and stuck it in the wall and sat and just pondered for a few minutes. It was so cool to see the Jewish people so actively worshiping at the site of their old temple, it was cool how important it was to them.

We also walked around the old city for a bit, talked to some shop keepers, exchanged money with my new friend Aladdin and his sons and brother who we talked to for a long time. They even gave my friend Ashely a bunch of things because they found out it was her birthday! It was so much fun, my friend Jesse and I promised to go back lots and visit. We also stopped for a few minutes at the church that is now on the site where Pilate and the people condemned Christ to death. That was also a place that was great to feel the spirit at. We sat down and read a few scriptures and we actually found out that that was a very probable place for the story with the 2 women fighting over the baby and they are told they each get half in the Old Testament, took place. So it was a cool day yesterday!

Sabbath!

So today is the Sabbath here and we went to church overlooking the old city and all of Jerusalem. It was really cool that while i was taking the sacrament i was able to look over the beautiful city. It was an incredible experience. First off, I have met this really cute boy... his blog is www.cameronclarkbrown.blogspot.com. Please check him out, I checked him out and he's way fine. I've got it real bad Michael Jackson.

Anyways I have been having a great time and I hope to be engaged by the time a leave. SO EXCITING!!!!