On an Average Day...

This is a little taste of what it's like here at JUC over break--kind of a day-in-the-life sort of post. This was Tuesday, 15 January.



This is my bed--I got up early to have a hot shower. Some mornings (like today) I go for a run in the morning as well. Tuesday I was supposed to go with my friend Jordan and Steve to the Dome of the Rock at 8; I woke them up at 8:15 and found out that they had decided to wait until 12:30 to go. So I went back to bed for a while :)








But I was thankful that I had gotten my hot shower! If I had slept in like them, the hot water would have been done. It's heated from 4:30-8:30, both in the morning and in the afternoon/evening. So that's when "heat" is on in the building. I can tell that my heater is warm if I'm standing right next to it during those times, but I can't feel any difference in the room.







I got a letter from my grandparents! It was a highlight of my day, for sure. I love mail! And grandparents!






Once I got up again, I hung out in the computer lab until lunch. I spend most of my on-campus time here in the compy lab because it's pretty much the only warm spot on campus. Dog (my fish) is also living here until the rest of the building warms up again.






For lunch, I had a cucumber sandwich. No joke... it was an entire cucumber, cut up, in a pita. Probably the worst sandwich ever.





BUT... I had pita with strawberry jam for dessert! Yummy :)






After lunch, Steve (right), Jordan (left), and I went to the Dome of the Rock. This is us on our way through the Old City.







The Dome of the Rock is so beautiful! It's so incredibly ornate.







We peeked in the door (non-Muslims are not allowed in, although bribing the security guard has worked on occasion)








and saw this! Not much, but kind of cool.






Happy friends at the Dome!







There was ice! Jordan was amazed. Ruth was too, of course.









Off to the side and down some stairs, there are these huge piles of rubble and trash. It was very strange.







We climbed around for a while on the piles; we saw lots of trash and a cat that could easily have been demon-possessed. There was another holy cat that was checking out the Mary Magdalene Russian Orthodox church across the valley.




And then we walked along the wall for a while. It felt kind of illegal, but no one yelled at us or anything. There weren't really any people around at all... maybe that's why it felt sketchy.





At one point our walkway got kind of narrow!







We had to hold on to the top of the wall and inch along. A guard came over and was apparently momentarily concerned for my welfare as I crossed here... but he got over it. And then kicked us out.







There are several entrances onto the Temple Mount through little congested shopping streets... kind of cool. There was a very nice Israeli guard at this entrance. We couldn't go back in (tourists aren't allowed in at certain times, like during the Muslim call to prayer, which was about to happen), but he let us take the picture and was very nice.




I just hung out, did some work, the rest of the day. The short-term group that's here for 3 weeks came back that night from their field study up in the Galilee, so we got a free hot meal! It was pretty sweet. After dinner I had a hot chocolate date with my friend Cyndi, who is one of the only other females living on campus right now. We sat and talked for a really long time; it was great. The only problem is that my mug is so big (as you can see from the picture!) that I can't take a sip of hot chocolate while making eye contact with someone. The mug covers my entire face. It's just a kind of weird addition to conversation.



After the hot chocolate date, it was time for bed! It had been a good day.

On the Parents' Visit

Hey y'all! Sorry it's been a while since I posted. With my parents here it was pretty busy! Now they are gone, and I am pretty much the opposite of busy, meaning I do nothing. At least, it's very easy to do nothing. I spent one day doing nothing--I slept until 11, did basically nothing until 4:30 when I realized that I just felt gross and needed to do something. I ended up going to church and then watching a movie with some friends, so it wasn't like I suddenly became super productive, but at least I got off campus. That was yesterday... Today has been a much more productive day. I actually got quite a bit done, and was able to also spend some time with a friend who I haven't seen hardly at all since December. She's living off campus, so it's more of a challenge to get together. I'm the only female student living on campus right now, so that's an interesting dynamic as well. I like hanging out with guys, but it was nice to have some girl time.

Anyhow, this post is really supposed to be about my parents' visit. It was very good, I really enjoyed being able to show them around what is my world right now. I had planned out a few days of our trip for my final project in my Physical Settings class (that's the class that I did all the traveling for last semester), so I was able to amaze them with my brilliance and all I've learned... of course. :) Actually, we had to cut out a good portion of that part of their visit because I was stuck in Atlanta for so long. For another part of the trip, my friend John was traveling with us as a tour guide. He's a grad student here at JUC and knows a lot, so I was able to learn as well, and it was really nice to not have to know about every place that we went. It's hard work! But my parents really enjoyed being here as well--from what my mom said, it was very different from what she was expecting. I think a lot of people don't expect Israel to be a Western country. It really is, in a lot of respects. Of course, in a lot of other respects, it's definitely the Middle East. But there's enough of the West here to be a bit of a surprise.

I will put some pictures up, but there are so many I definitely won't be able to get the full picture, just a little taste of their visit. The first few days are covered in my previous post, so I'll start with our trip to the Negev!


We went to Masada--this is looking out towards the Dead Sea from the top of Masada. Masada means fortress--check out Psalm 62.







My mom and I showing off the Herodian facades at Masada... Herod the Great, late 1st century BC...BCE... whichever you prefer... He was really good at making really grand stuff, and if it wasn't so grand, he was really good at making it look really grand!








This is the waterfall we hiked to at En Gedi. We talked about some of David's psalms there, like Psalm 42 and Psalm 63.






Looking over the Dead Sea--this is the sea that's talked about in Ezekiel 47:1-12.







My mom and I in front of the Kotel-- the Western Wall, what is sometimes called the Wailing Wall (not by people here).






At Tell Dan, the headwaters of the Jordan River. We hiked around there and got to drink straight from one of the springs! I also climbed up into a hollow tree that's actually called "Winnie the Pooh Tree." In Israel-who knew??







We found a Roman bridge at Caesarea Philippi.







This is Tell Hazor (pronounced hot-sore), which is one of my favorite tells. Hazor was a really important Canaanite city (Joshua 11).





Reading Ruth 4 (which involves city gates) at the city gates of Tell Dan. That's not where this happened, but the city gates thing is a cool visual. Plus my name is Ruth.







At the fish restaurant at the kibbutz where we stayed on the Sea of Galilee, aka the Kinneret. Mom and Dad had what is called St Peter's Fish (probably for the benefit of the tourists)--it's telapia really. It's called St Peter's Fish probably based on the story in Matthew 17:24-27.








We tried to watch the sun rise over the lake from the cliffs of Arbel, which I climbed up and down in a previous trip. (If you remember pictures of people scaling cliffs, that was here.) Unfortunately, it was really foggy and there wasn't much of a sunrise. It was cool anyway, just not sunrise-y. I'd like to go back someday and see a real sunrise there--I'm sure it would be spectacular.








So I threw a toothpick into this hole at Beth Shean when I was there several months ago with my class, and it was still there! We have evidence, it made me really happy!







Also making me happy--on the top of the tell were some Egyptians ruins, and a copy of this stele (a big stone thing with hieroglyphs, basically... I don't even know the true definition of the word "stele"--pronounced "stella") which had my favorite hieroglyph--the duck! How fun!






Speaking of ducks, we saw "cattle egrets"-???? Is this a real thing? I'm still not sure. But that's what my friend John, who was our tour guide, said. We saw cows with these little white birds following them around. It was really funny looking, that's for sure! There's a bird in this picture, but it's kind of hard to see...







Happy family! This is us in a very muddy forest, where we had a picnic one of our last days.


Just for the record, yes, I am wearing the same thing in every single picture. It was cold, and so I wore my fleece and my vest over whatever else I was wearing, every single day. Although it's not as cold as I was expecting--we were expecting cold and rain, which would be normal for this time of year. It is chilly, although not as cold as usual, but there hasn't been much rain this year. It's starting to be a problem, actually, although from a traveler's point of view, it was nice to not have rain! So that was my parents' visit. It was good, they are home safely now, and I have 2 weeks until school starts. (By the way, after my parents left from Tel Aviv, John and I went to IKEA before taking the rental car back to Jerusalem. How exciting is that?? I didn't get a picture though, I forgot. Guess I'll have to go back! That would be fine--I love IKEA! I got a floor lamp and a super cute mini-tree plant. Matt and Alli, I thought of you guys. Let's go to IKEA when I get back to MN, ok?) If I decide to do anything else super exciting during my break, I'll keep y'all updated!

On arrival... with pictures!

[Sorry the pictures weren't working! I tried a shortcut that apparently didn't work so well... I could see them but I guess none of you could!]

I am finally back in Jerusalem!!!! It is soooo good to be back, let me tell you! I arrived in J-Town after a personal-record-breaking 61 hours in transit (I left my house at 2:30 on Friday afternoon and arrived in Jerusalem at 3:30 Monday morning). Here's a brief synopsis. Friday afternoon, I go to the airport early to get some dinner before my flight took off; this flight turns out to be delayed almost 2 hours due to weather. When I arrive in Atlanta I have missed my connecting flight to Tel Aviv, so I spend the next 24 hours in the airport (which, by the way, is in fact bigger than the state of Rhode Island). My flight the next day takes off on time; 2 hours later, the captain announces that something is wrong with the plane's de-icing mechanism, so we are turning around and going back to Atlanta. (If you think that's the worst, just wait.) We sit in the airplane for 2 1/2 hours before the captain announces that if what they're doing doesn't fix the problem in the next 15 minutes, we will deplane, cancel the flight, and fly out the next day. (THIS was the worst moment.) After 23 minutes, we are told that the plane is now functioning properly and will take off shortly. There was a lot of clapping when we touched down in Tel Aviv.

The parents and I are traveling around for the next few days. I keep wanting to say bombing around, because I guess I say that sometimes, but then I realize it would be wildly inappropriate in this context. Yes... so we're off to the Dead Sea and the Negev tomorrow. Here is a snapshot of what we did today... it was an adventure for sure! I'll have to tell more detail later.


We think we found Adullam! This is the first cave we found. See 1 Samuel 22:1-2, 2 Samuel 23:13-14.





Coming down from the top. We were the only tourists we saw pretty much all day, so I decided to go for the super-tourist look.





These are the ruins at the top.





More caves! There were a whole bunch. Pretty sweet.






Even Mom climbed down into the cave, which may or may not have held a first-century tomb... I'm not sure. [Edit: I showed the picture to my teacher, and she thought it was a first-century tomb, just as I thought.]




More family adventures to come!