Hi I'm a blog post from Anniekins!

     Good evening! Just thought I'd check in here really fast before I study for my Near Eastern Studies test.  Yep, our professor decided to give us a test the first week here. Thanks, Prof. I don't think it should be too hard, but I will be studying for a few hours anyway.

     Weekends are a bit confusing for me, because everything is switched around. In the States Saturday is an off day and Sunday is the Sabbath. Here Saturday is the Sabbath and Sunday is an off day (except for Muslims, their holy day is Friday). I still can't get the hang of it! It'll take me a while to get used to. Anyways, on Sunday we headed out into the city for a day of adventure! Or in other words, we wandered around various bits of Jerusalem for four hours in a completely lost kind of way, but it was a lot of fun! If you don't have anything to do and have a lot of time on your hands, go get lost in the Old City! It's great! I liked it because we got to see a side of the Old City that isn't touristafied. One of the things I find beautiful about Jerusalem is that everything is made out of the same kind of stone, and is the same color and texture. To me it seems like Jerusalem is one seamless whole, ancient and rich. We got to see a lot more of that in the residential neighborhoods where everything isn't covered up with shops, signs and people. We also wandered more into the Jewish and Armenian quarters of Jerusalem and saw the differences there between the Muslim quarter. The old city is funny that way; one minute you're in the one culture, and you take a step in a different direction and suddenly you're in an entirely different one. It is so exciting.
     On Monday we had a field trip to a bunch of Jerusalem overlooks. We saw the city from at least five points of view. We went to the Augusta Victoria tower, Hebrew University, and a few other places. The goal of the field trip was to see Jerusalem and especially where Old Testament events happen. We pinpointed the Kidron Valley of Genesis and Mount Moriah where Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac (Mount Moriah is actually where the Temple Mount is today). We also saw Bethlehem for the first time and had some time to spend there. The day as a whole was a lot of fun. Neil jumped into dust devils and danced around like a lunatic, we sang in churches, climbed hundreds of steps to the tops of towers and had a grand old time traipsing around Jerusalem. The scriptures really do come alive here.
     I'm FINALLY learning everyone's names in my group! I guess memorizing eighty people's names is hard or something, because it sure is taking me a long time to do. Not only that, but sometimes I meet people that I have never seen before! Like today I met a girl in my group who I had never met and we've been here for over a week. How on earth does that happen?! We are around each other practically 24 hours a day! It's pretty crazy.
     Funny story! I'm not sure Neil would really want me to be sharing this, but I'm sure he'll thank me later for preserving this wonderful memory for him so here goes. The other day Neil was talking to somebody and they made him laugh while drinking water. I don't know what that did but it hit him wrong, and he suddenly knew he was going to throw up, and soon. There was no trash can in sight and finally after a desperate search for one Neil gives in and pulls his shirt up and throws up right into his shirt. Then he carried it down to his room and dumped it, shirt and all, onto his porch. On his way down some girls were like hey Neil what's in your shirt and he was like you don't want to know and they were like um actually yes we do and he was like no really you don't and they were like YES WE DO and he was like FINE and then they got a peek and skiddaddled really fast. And then Neil took a shower. The end.
      So that's pretty much it for the past few days so between field trips and homework and barfing I would say we are having a pretty fulfilling experience. I might go to Tel Aviv on Sunday to go to the beach and swim in the Mediterranean Sea, so I'm pretty psyched for that! And by the way Neil is completely fine. He is not sick in the least so don't even worry about it Mom.
      Also, as you can see I translated my internet to English, so now everything will be formatted correctly! Yay! As is obvious in the last post, formatting makes a surprisingly big difference.
      Enjoy the rest of your day!

First Week!!! (Annie)

Hey everyone!!! It's so cool that I'm finally in Jerusalem writing to everyone back home! I never thought about actually being in Jerusalem so to be here looking back on the last few days is crazy to me! I hope  everything is going well for everyone in their lives.

                I think I'm still in stun mode from arriving here. It really hasn't sunk in yet that I'm in Jerusalem. Every morning I wake up at around 4:45 to morning prayer and get up around 5:15. Muslims pray five times a day and the mosques have  a call to prayer where somebody recites the Koran through massive speakers. There are three mosques near the Center, so we usually hear the prayers well. I actually really like hearing it, even if it is so early in the morning. I've been trying to adjust my sleeping schedule while I am in my semi-coherent, jet-lagged state to where I get up earlier. My body's whacked out so I'm trying to take advantage of it. But I might have ruined my training because this morning I woke up at five and then fell asleep and slept until EIGHT THIRTY!!!! WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?!! Tomorrow I will wake up at 5:00 so help me!!!

View of Jerusalem. Dome of the Rock is on the right

                From the center we have breathtaking views of Jerusalem and the Old City. It's easy to find the Old City; all you have to do is look for the Dome of the Rock, which stands out with its shiny golden roof.  We live in East Jerusalem, the Palestinian side of Jerusalem, and we are about a twenty minute walk to the Old City. On Thursday we took a tour around the Old City for the first time. Is it weird that it reminds me of Latin America? There are vendors lining the streets in little shops selling clothes and food and shoes and all of that good stuff. Guys catcall on the street and it smells like Latin America. Maybe a little different, but pretty darn close. It's like déjà vu.  

                The only problem is I CAN'T SPEAK THE LANGUAGE!!!!! ARHGWUJHGAE;IOHGVKJ!!!! In East Jerusalem they speak Arabic and in West Jerusalem they speak Hebrew. Fortunately pretty much everyone we need to talk to speaks English, but it is still frustrating to not be able to read the signs or understand people when they're talking to each other. Hopefully I'll get used to it. I guess I'm too used to Latin America, where I basically can understand and speak freely.

                Today is the Sabbath, which is a little weird. In the US the Sabbath is on Sunday, but here it's Saturday. After church we walked to the Garden of Gethsemane. It wasn't really anything like I expected. I guess in my mind I imagined it to be a natural garden with lots of olive trees, quiet and shady and peaceful. But in reality it is a gated off square of land with paths and mostly bare ground, except for about six olive trees. It wasn't bad, necessarily, just different than what I was expecting. It was really cool to be in the place I have read  about in the scriptures. There's a lot of meaning in Gethsemane for me, since my favorite gospel topic is the Atonement.

                In other news, I have a received a very important job here at the Jerusalem Center: I am on the Mail and Linen Committee. This basically means that I have the crucial responsibility of checking off people's names when they drop their linen off to get washed. It also means that I sort the mail. Obviously society would collapse without me. In my opinion it's pretty much the best job ever.

 PS: The reason all of my paragraphs are weird is because my internet is in Hebrew, and so the blog maker is trying to format it in Hebrew, which reads from right to left. I attempted to fix it. Obviously didn't do much. Have fun!