Jordan!!!

So a few days ago we got back from Jordan! I absolutely loved going and seeing what there was to see there! Jordan was one of my favorite places ever! Petra was incredible! I dont have a ton of patience to write today so I am going to insert a part of the email that I sent my family after I got home from Jordan! Then I will put pictures up!

Well, lets see… my life the past few bits. First off I have a new favorite song lauren and Michaela and actually I think everyone would like it… its called clockwatching by Jason mraz. Love it. Anyway… I left to Jordan Monday morning very early. We hung out that day and saw a few things like Mt. Nebo and such, and then we went to our hotel and got Turkish baths… wow… that is a story I can really only tell you the full detail in person.. be excited for the explanation haha. Then I just went to bed. We woke up and left at like 6:30 in the morning to go to Petra. Wow is all that I can say about this place. I had no idea that it was going to be that cool. Honestly, WAY cooler than the pyramids and Jordan is a much more fun country than Egypt. Like Egypt was cool, but I was just anxious and paranoid the whole time, things in Jordan were a lot safer, cleaner, and the culture was just more fun. Petra was truly an incredible experience, although it costs more than Disneyland does for a ticket! Freakin nuts huh?! But when you guys do come to Israel, hopefully ill be with you ;) but Jordan is a must. That night Karlee, Ricki, Kate, and I went and just walked around Amman, the capital city, which we had driven to earlier that day right after Petra. The next day we went to a Roman town by Amman called Jerash and walked around and then saw some gladiator, chariot races and random weird things but it was pretty fun! Then that night a group of us went to the Mecca Mall which is this huge mall in Amman, but its not really a touristy place so it was fun because it was a legitimate Muslim Arab mall, I loved it. We had so much fun, I haven’t laughed that hard in a really really long time. Then Thursday we woke up, saw a few random sites, but by that point we were all so done with site seeing that most of us were zoned out completely the only thing that I really paid attention to that day was the baptisimal site on the Jordan river, which isn’t really the site, but whatever.You cant get too much closer to where the site would have actually probably been because it is in war territory haha. But ya, it only took us 2 ½ hours or so to cross the border which was really nice and then we got back and I love being back at the center! Haha It really does feel like home which is really nice. It is just home living with 78 of your best friends having everything pretty much taken care of for you. I love the feeling of living the easy life waking up, having breakfast ready, not needing to really get ready, walking 10 steps to class, 10 steps to the next class, lunch is ready for you, then you can hang out in your room or in any of the hang out rooms, and then dinner is ready for us, and then we hang out, we have a gym in the building and a library, and it just makes life great when you can stay in this building for weeks without leaving and everything you could ever need would be here.

the pictures: first one:my best friend here Karlee and I showing our attitudes towards shopping in an alcove that was once a shop... shes excited, im bored out of my mind

second one: me, judd, karlee, nate

third one: jake, me, and nate and kate at a mosque where i had to wear that robe :)

fourth one:is of my friend ramzi and i in front of the monastary at Petra where he surprised me with a kiss haha

Galilee!

So once again it has been forever since i have updated this and i am sure i have like lost my followers but i dont have time to write. maybe i will get back on and do it soon. But here are some pictures of me at the sea of galilee. one of the greatest places i have been. it is gorgeous and it was some of the funnest 10 days i have ever had. :)

The left picture is my good friend jake and i overlooking the Mediterranean sea at caeseria!

This is one of my best friends Karlee and I- you cant see us well on purpose. she got ready that day and i didn't. haha. gorgeous sunset though....

ill write and put up more pictures later but i have to go practice our dance for the talent show tomorrow night! Peace!

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!