The Old City Again

After realizing that the Dome of the Rock Plaza was closed on Saturday, we wanted to try again. This time we went with friends.

Before we needed to meet Jay and Bryce, we wanted to walk around for a little while in the old city. We took a route avoiding shuk in the Old City to end up in the Kardo (the old roman thoroughfare that used to hold shops). As we were wandering through the shops we bumped into them and headed in the direction I thought was towards the plaza.

It turns out to be a lot harder to navigate the old city than I anticipated. Instead of immediately finding the entrance to the plaza, we found my favorite Falafel place in the entire city! I will talk about it later when we get back into the shuk (market). After stopping to reorient, we backtracked towards the Via De La Rosa to find our direction. We ended up outside the Austrian Hospice, a place I had been earlier this year with HUC (blog post here). I ran in to get some directions.

The only way for us to access the plaza is right next to the Kotel. After going through the checkpoint, we walked to the southern edge of the Kotel to find the entrance. We were informed by the security guard that it was closed to visitors at that point. I was confused because the websites I consulted said we should have been able to get up at that time of the day.

The security guard that we talked to didn't give us any good information so we kept looking around for the entry point. When we went towards the archeological park we were stopped by somebody more knowledgeable. We asked him when we could go up and he gave us an exact set of times.

At this point we went back towards the Kardo to do a little shopping. Jay and Bryce wanted to grab lunch at a bagel place in the Jewish Quarter. Kaitlin and I wanted to grab a falafel so we went back to this shop we had rediscovered earlier. I'm so glad we found this place!

There is something special about their spices and the way they put everything together for you. It really is the best stuff you can find. Near the Damascus Gate street, just off of the Via De La Rosa there is a point at which two roads come together and make a nice little square. The falafel shop is right on the corner. For 7 sheck you can get a really tasty falafel. Right next door is a great coffee shop.

I had never had their coffee before, but I bought a half pound so I can make turkish coffee. I was excited at the chance to pick up that coffee and have a great falafel with Kaitlin. She really seemed to enjoy the falafel too. And after that we walked through some of the shops. Kaitlin ended up picking up a couple of gifts for her friends and family back home.

Afterwards we looked in to renting a car to take down to the Dead Sea and Masada the next day and I showed her my campus. I don't remember exactly what we did the rest of the evening. I think we cooked dinner and hung out at home to get ready to head south the next day. This was when we had some issues with the internet and I took her to Cafe Yehoshua to have a hot chocolate and use their internet to plan the route.

As you can read later, it probably would have served us better to research more than we did. We had a few issues with the car and getting around Jerusalem and to Masada.

That's all for now.

Shabbat with Kaitlin

We slept in a little on Saturday. I made some pancakes and we had a nice big meal together to celebrate New Years and finally being together. It had been way too long.

We decided to go to the old city and walk around since most things are closed on Shabbat here. It was pretty quite in the the shopping areas and it was nice to walk around. We tried to get to the Dome of the Rock/Temple Mount because it is supposed to be incredible up there. There were specific times that we are allowed up there because we are not Muslim.

There were a few routes that we could have taken, but apparently only one is the right way up. We never found it. Instead we checkout out the Kotel, but didn't walk down to it. It was Shabbat, so pictures were not allowed. While we were wandering, I showed her the Kardo (the shopping area in the Jewish Quarter) and we explored a little bit more.



While circling the streets of the old city we found an ancient city wall from the 1st Temple Period. Think 900's BCE for the rough time period. It was pretty cool to find that.


It was about that time of the night for the sun to go down. On of my friends had sent out an email that there would be Havdallah (A Saturday night service that puts an end to Shabbat), so we walked that way. For dinner we decided that it would be a great idea to go down to Emek Rafayim (German Colony Area) to have dinner.

At Cafit (a dairy only restaurant down there) we ordered Cheese Burgers. No, not a hamburger with cheese, but a burger made entirely of cheese. It's a fried stack of cheese served on a bun like a burger. So incredibly tasty. If you have the chance, I would highly recommend picking one up.

That about did it for Saturday.

She Arrived!

On Friday Kaitlin finally arrived in Israel. In the morning I was trying to get some last minute things ready. I bought some groceries for Shabbat, cleaned the apartment, started on a little bit of laundry and then I needed to wait.

There was nothing to do because all of my exams were finished so I sat.

I was waiting to leave to catch a shieirut (shuttle) to the airport to collect Kaitlin, but I couldn't take it anymore. I left my apartment to wait on the street near my pickup point. Luckily I found a way to get some of the West Wing onto my iPod so I could kill some time until the cab arrived.

Emily met me a little bit before we were supposed to leave and we went off to the airport.

Sitting in the arrivals area is one of the most stressful things I had to deal with all week. Not nearly as bad as any of the exams. The plane was almost an hour late and after we saw that the plane landed we stood near the exit so we could wait until our friends got through customs. It took a long time for her to come through and I was very anxious.

I kept standing on my toes and stretching me neck to see over all of the other people. I knew she would be carrying my guitar and every time I saw a guitar my heart started to race a little bit. Emily's friend, on the same flight, came out first even though she saw Kaitlin in line ahead of her.

Finally, finally she popped out of the door. Very bewildered I caught her attention and there was a hug smile on her face. I tried to get as close as I could. When she finally got past the pack of people I gave her a huge hug! Aside from waiting to see her, all I could think about the whole time is that scene from Dogma at the very beginning. Matt Damon and Ben Afflek are discussing how great it is to see the reunions at the airport. They were right. There is so much joy in seeing that person you've been missing after so much time apart.

The rest of the night we spent trying to get to Jerusalem, unpack a little bit. We had dinner at a great restaurant, Dolphin Yam. After hanging out with some of my friends for a while, we met at another of my friends' apartment to celebrate New Years Eve! What a night and what a great way to start off 2011!

I know it's been a while since I've posted much. We've been traveling and the internet at my apartment is shaky at best right now. I hope to be able to update the blog while Kaitlin is here, but we're trying to squeeze as much out of Israel into her visit.

Happy Belated 2011!

Finals

So that happened.

Two tests every day from Sunday through Thursday. My brain is absolutely drained and I don't think I can fit anymore information into it. Then there is the fact that I still need to finish up the Israel Seminar essay that's due at the end of our break.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about the work load we have here. I expected this to be tough. But I've never had 8 exams and a paper in the course of a four days. Uufdah.

I learned a few things during finals week;

I write too much in my notes. When there is too much information it's hard to study it.
I need to take notes on my readings. The chicken scratch I jot down doesn't do a whole lot of good.
Start preparing study guides earlier. You never know how long they might take.
Freeing brain space for a few hours each day us a great idea. Sometimes you just need to do nothing. (Finally watching the West Wing is a great way to do that).

The good part about being so slammed with work is that the last two weeks have flown by faster than anything I can imagine. At the same time that I spent at a minimum of 12 hours a day on campus working on study guides and exams, that was 12 hours out of each day that I wasn't thinking about how soon it is that Kaitlin will be on the ground in Israel.

It's today.

Finals are over and now I need to wait for grades to come in. And that's the end of that chapter!

(Stay tuned to read about my travels with Kaitlin. She's bringing me a replacement camera so pictures will start coming along with these posts again)

Fantasy Football Champion!

I think it was Bill Simmons who said, one thing nobody cares about, but loves to talk about is their own Fantasy Football team. Therefore I will keep this short.

I love sports and I love tracking stats during the year. It gives me a reason to keep caring about football when the Vikings have a year like the one they've had this year. When the opportunity to play fantasy football with some of the other Year in Israel participants this year, I was all over that.

I'm glad I had something to take up some of the few empty spaces in my brain in between classes and everything else. That's all for now, since nobody really cares about my team, as nobody should.

But on the way out I need to boast the fact that I won the season by a narrow margin. Shout out to Ricky who put up a great matchup in the finals.

Not For A While

I just wanted to post quickly that I probably won't be writing much until finals are over. Today is a reading day and tomorrow we begin exams.

Look for something Thursday afternoon (IST) as a recap of everything.

Until then,
Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas from Jerusalem and Bethlehem

Last night, being Christmas Eve, a bunch of us thought it would be a once in a lifetime experience to go into Bethlehem to the Church of the Nativity to see it on Christmas Eve. It made for a long, long night.

We took a fifteen minute walk from school to the Damascus Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem. There were tons of cabs lined up on the side of the road waiting to take all of the pilgrims who were on their way. After a little negotiating, we got into three cabs, two cars and a bus, and headed towards the Bethlehem Border Crossing. Our unmarked cab took us right up to the crossing, but dropped us off there. There are some laws that require certain licenses to cross the border into the West Bank (or as our driver called it, Palestine).

Since it was a pilgrimage holiday, the crossing was very easy. We showed our passports and crossed in a few minutes. Really not a big deal. Once on the other side of the border, we hired another cab from the border towards The Church of the Nativity. It was strange sitting in the front of the cab and hearing the drive saying, "Shit!" when we ran into traffic. I asked him what was wrong and he started to complain about the police and that they were blocking off roads that were open a few hours earlier.

We got let out a five minute walk away from Manger Square because there were road blocks all over the place and guys with big guns told the car to stop. After a few minutes of walking, suddenly the place was packed with people. Shops and restaurants had people spilling out onto the street and we heard Christmas Music in English playing from some of the stores as we passed them.

Finally at the square, we needed to regroup with all of the people we came with. As we were wandering there was a guy with a large coffee warmer so two of us went to get some coffee, it was pretty chilly. It turns out that he was selling something called "Sachlav." It's heated, sweet-milk, with some herbs and other things mixed into it and put on the top. Super sweet and super tasty. Apparently Cup 'o Joe or Cafe Cafe sells that around Jerusalem. I need to check it out.

We toured the square and looked at all of the people. It wasn't possible to get close to the church because there were barricades all over the place and very large police presence. We kept walking.

There were little kids trying to sell us things all over the place. I felt bad telling them no, but after being asked seven or eight times by the same child, I was getting a little annoyed. But as long as we kept walking, we weren't hassled by them.

Wandering around we found a few other Churches, but I have no idea what was special about them. We didn't get the opportunity to go into any of them because Mass was starting soon. Not that we cared too much, but it would have been cool to see what all the churches we for.

On the way back to the square, we stopped in a shop that had a bunch of olive wood carvings. They were beautiful pieces of art. One that really struck my eye, as well as the eyes of a few other people in our group, was a large carving of "The Last Supper." It was really beautiful. Of course none of us were looking to buy anything, we only wanted to look at the artwork. After a few moments we left the shop and met with the larger chunk of our group that we had come with.

At this point a few of them wanted to leave. Not all of did though. A group of six of us wanted to stay to see Mass.

There was a very large screen that had the service inside the church being broadcast on the side of the building. It started a little bit before midnight and we hung around until about 12:30 in the morning. It was interesting hearing the service in Latin translated into Arabic. This meant that none of us really understood a word. The mass of people standing outside the church was incredible. So many people absolutely fixated on the screen listening to the service.

A few people were pushing through the crowd selling coffee, tea and these paper lanterns. You are supposed to light the lantern and let it rise into the air. A few of them were set off and I liked seeing them rise over the people. Looking around the crowd I liked seeing the lights decorating the entire plaza, complete with a large green tree decorated like Christmas Trees back home. Blue lights strung as icicles made me miss winter.

We left the square around 12:30 in the morning to head back to Jerusalem. Our driver that took us to the border told us that the extra security was because the President of the PA, Mahmoud Abbas, was inside the church. That was probably the man they kept focusing on at the front of the congregation, but I couldn't tell who it was initially. This was also the reason that we needed to walk five minutes to get to his taxi.

Another friendly cab ride later we got to the crossing again. This time it was a little longer of a process to get through. There were more people and we needed to cue in a long line. The guard let four people into the screening area at a time and everyone set off the metal detector. When I got through and remembered that I had a ring on my finger, I was surprised that I didn't continue to set off the alarm. It took me three tries to get through without a beep.

In the large cab, we ran into a group of HUC students that had walked to the church starting at 6:30 that evening. It took them about three hours to get there.

It was a pretty cool experience to have here. I'm really glad I took the time to go, especially because I don't know if I will ever have the opportunity to do it again.

My camera is still broken, so I don't have any pictures until I'm able to take the ones my friends let me shoot.

For those who spend today as a celebration, Merry Christmas from Jerusalem.